Does anyone have a smart phone app for recording crosses on the fly?
I suggest you check with the fly geneticists. No joke, just a pun. Actually you probably want something more to do with plants, flies breed without human intervention. The corn breeders have had a newsletter ever since Barbara McClintock’s day. But the Arabidopsis folks are more likely to be hi-tech. I’ll ask round.
ON the fly, not OF the fly 
Thanks, Larry.
I wonder if you can create a simple data entry screen that allows you to collect records on your smart phone that can be transferred to an Excel database.
This link shows a sample screen.
http://xldatasoft.com/exceldb.htm
I make handwritten notes in the garden that I then type up into my excel spreadsheets. Low tech, but my cross volume is not that large.
Cathy
Central NJ, zone 7a
I’m like Cathy; I make my notes on paper and then manually transfer the info to my Excel spread sheet. I hadn’t thought about it, but I could use the notes on my phone instead of pen and paper. If there was an app that would upload that info directly to the spread sheet, that would be cool. The info would only have to be entered once so there would be less chance of mistakes.
I guess I’m more “low tech”. If I want to keep record of what I crossed, I’ll write them down prior to making them after wandering the garden to see what is available, then go out with a copy of the list to accomplish them. I know folks who garden with their phone or tablet, but I find having to keep the blamed things safe from dirt, scratches, water and being dropped or dropping something on them out in the dirt more of a burden than handling a piece of paper I can throw away if too severely damaged.
I do the same thing Kim, I’ll make a list of the crosses I want to make and how many pollinations I want to do before I go out to do them. If I’m not able to make all of the pollinations on the list that day, they’re still on the list to do for later.
I just added Excel to my I-phone, (they’re claiming it was free). I have all my rose info in a Dropbox account and now I’m able to access the spread sheets direct from my phone if I want to. I don’t have use a second app to enter the data and then transfer it to my spread sheet. I can add the data directly to spread sheets from my phone if I so choose. It’s an option but I don’t know if I’ll use it, I may still use pen and paper.
I could see some advantages in being able to dictate via Siri, but wouldn’t the automatic spell-check result in some interesting cultivar names?
I’m almost tempted to dictate “Gartendirektor Otto Linne” and “Cuisse de Nymphe émue” just to see what Siri enters… I can imagine finding I had crossed “Barroom… rose child” with something.
The more I’m thinking about it, the more the old note pad is looking good…
Actually Don, I immediately imaged a Gary Larson cartoon of some mad scientist looking like a beetle, sitting at a microscope with a very tiny brush recording the cross on the fly. Such detail work is a real pain in the thorax.
I never record my crosses until I harvest the hips, and collect the fallen tagging tape under the bush. I can a get a close enough count then. Why bother sooner? Similarly, germinations are just recorded on the ziploc bag for stratification with date, then tabulated in the off season, a year after starting stratification.
My practice is the same as Kim although I list available mothers as I emasculate then go back and do crosses so as to get emasculations done before it is too late. It takes all day and all night so I use Klieg lights in the gazebo which attracts no end of…
![knowinsects[1].jpg](https://forum.rosehybridizers.org/uploads/default/original/1X/7494a8b256c22d0f5aedf06015ac11d8059a2b0b.jpeg)
That’s pretty much what I have done, Don. I list the emasculated blooms with the quantity I’ve done, then I usually list out what crosses I wish to make to remind me of what I was thinking while doing the preparation. I don’t retain that information after those are accomplished because I’m most concerned with what has succeeded than what I attempted. The tags hanging around the failed pollinations tell me what didn’t work so I often retry them when possible. This climate permits me to continue pollinating late winter through fall if I choose, so there is usually sufficient time to try what I want. I voluntarily stop late July to the first of August in hopes of beating the squirrels and rats to the hips. If many remain by late October, they quickly become food. Fortunately, the days remain sufficiently light until rather late that time of year so I don’t require artificial lighting, but there are a host of insects to deal with, so I commiserate with you!
An advantage of an app would be easily to collect and catalog pictures of seedlings. I’d like to create something with Filemaker Pro but that desire is a long ways from reality.
I like to keep track of the crosses I try in addition to the crosses that made it.
That way, I can recognize roses that are just not good hip producers and specific crosses that do not seem to result in successful hips.
So the stats I keep are:
Number of crosses attempted and what they were
Number of crosses succeeded (and by subtraction, the number that failed and which specific crosses failed)
Number of seeds per successful cross
Number of germinations per cross
Cathy
Central NJ, zone 7a
Cathy, I get all that information, just a bit at a time. Using colored tagging tapes (about 24 kinds) I know the pollen donors even when the tape falls under the bush. I count hips and seed extraction time.
Really like the idea of photo matching crosses, especially with breeding stock that isn’t yet on HMF. Good idea Joe. Just need some HS kid to write the program for your app.
Years ago when I first got into hybridizing roses there was a program called Hybridizer Pro that incorporated a lot of the things Joe is talking about. You couldn’t input info from your phone because smart phones hadn’t been invented yet. It wasn’t quite what I wanted so I tried creating my own database using Access that was to include all the physical traits of the rose along with photos of them. It proved to be more difficult to get something that I liked than I was willing to put time into, so I never finished it. I since moved on to using Excel instead of Access which I find easier to use.