Set up many crosses at once!
I find managing the crosses I make in a season is easier to do, real time, in Excel. So, as I am collecting my seed pods, I log each cross that resulted in seeds into an Excel spreadsheet. I keep some information in that file, for my records that I don’t import into Garden Tracker for Daylilies. It doesn’t matter how much information you track in Excel, but you need to know the name of the Pod Parent and the name of the Pollen parent (of couse!!). Also, these daylilies should already be entered into GTfD prior to importing your crosses.
When I have all my seeds collected, and have decided which crosses I will grow seedlings from, I import all the crosses into Excel at once. This is a really cool process!!
Prepare the Spreadsheet for import from the Crosses Template
- The columns in the crosses template should look like this:
- There is a template for importing crosses here.
- Copy the template to your computer
- Name the template to represent the crosses you are importing
- Populate the columns for Pod Parent and Pollen Parent.
- If you have this information in a different spreadsheet, you can just copy and paste
- The value for the cross year should be the year the crosses were made
- There’s a formula in Column D that should generate the cross name
- The cross name is Pod Parent x Pollen Parent
- Enter the Ploidy for each cross as Tetraploid or Diploid
- If you have programs defined, enter the cross goal
- Review your spreadsheet.
- Make sure the daylily names are exactly as entered in GTfD
- The Cross Name (Column D) is the only required value.
- The formula for this column for the cell in row 2 is: =B2 & ‘ x ‘ & C2
- If the cross names do not automatically populate, copy the formula value from above, starting with the equal sign, into cell D2, and hit enter/return
- Then, copy the formula down the spreadsheet to the end of your crosses.
- Other columns can be left blank, but if Pod Parent or Pollen Parent is left blank the cross heritage will not render
- If a parent is unknown, put a ? in that cell
- See a populated spreadsheet example below
- Be sure to SAVE your spreadsheet before continuing to the next step!
Import the data in the spreadsheet into GTfD, as follows
- Log into GTfD
- Select All Import, New Import from the Admin Panel
- Upload your file
- Select Crosses from the New Items drop down list