“Blushing Princess’ children were on average far better than Pink Vanguard’s children with the same father. But in the end, the best plants were from Pink Vanguard x Lavender Baby as I had ten times as much plants to choose from. ”

This is a great article Koen. It’s always educational to hear about other’s hybridizing results. But in the end it can be as you said in your quote : More than the public may realize, rather than intrinsically being a matter of cleverness, hybridizing is often a numbers game.

We see a wonderful registered result from a cross, but we don’t see all of the others from that very same cross that were duds. Growing many seedlings from the same cross may be the brute-force method it’s true, but that’s often what it takes to get a pleasing result.