Ashton with Ashtons Giggles
620 Harmony Trail
Magnolia , Kentucky 42757
270-528-5325
We are a family owned and operated daylily farm. We are located in South Central Kentucky eight miles from interstate 65 (Bonnieville, exit #71).
We started in the early 90's hybridizing and creating new daylilies. We first started with diploids and in 2 plus years we had over 3 acres growing. What started as a hobby had gone wild and we had daylilies everywhere. At this time we had visited Joe Huber at Huber Farms in Starlight, Indiana several times. I would really like to thank Joe Huber for telling me I needed to look into getting some designer lilies. He carried a lot of these at the time and the ones that I really got interested in were the test. by Bro.Charles Reckamp. I got about 30 different plants, such as "Angels Smile", Techny Peace", "Holy Grail", "Techny Spider" and many more from Joe and a whole new world opened up to us. Then we continued to meet lots of other hybridizers and all were helpful in continuing our "gone wild" hobby. In the mid to late 90's, John Rice, John Shooter, Dan Trimmer and others, all were great help in our program's success. At this time, we met 2 people that changed our program forever. We traveled to Newton, Alabama and Graceland Gardens, where we met Cindy and Larry Grace, the owners. They both were very upfront and straight forward about questions that we had to ask. As time went on, I learned about Diploid Conversions and a little bit about how to judge what I was looking for from Larry. We purchased some "Tet. Linda Agin", "Tet. Siloam Ralph Henry", "Tet. Ultimate Perfection", "Tet. Mt. Almond" and other conversion seedlings and continue today using as many conversions and new genes into our program as we can get.
We registered our first flowers for Spring 2007, even though people have been on us for years to introduce plants. We still do about 20 per cent diploids for conversions and the balance Tets. This last year we had about 5,000 Dip. seeds and 20,000 Tet. seeds. With the quality of plants we have now, we feel like we are going to try and be very selective with half as many seeds in the future. Again, a special thanks to all who have helped us and words can't express what goes for Larry and Cindy Grace.
We are pleased to present our 2008 Introductions. We have eleven tetraploids and one diploid, all of which we believe to be not only beautiful, but to also exhibit outstanding habits. Our photos do not do these flowers justice, having been taken after they were divided and went through eleven weeks of very hot and dry conditions.
We would like to take this opportunity to extend our thanks to all of the great people we have met this year. We truly appreciate the wonderful opportunities we were afforded this past year, being able to travel and meet individuals, many of whom have been of so much help to us.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us by buying our flowers. We hope each of you have as much success and enjoyment from them as we have.
A special thanks to our friend Larry Grace for sharing pollen with us, and all of his help!
Thank you,
Herbie Phelps, Gale Phelps,
Daughter, Rachel Lynn Sims and Husband, Scott
Daughter, Gerri Gale,
Grandsons, Ashton and Sawyer
