Once again we are continuing the thread, because the It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 3 message thread was getting kind of long, with several inline images, which could make the thread slow to load.

However, just to "break the ice", I will include a couple of images here. The first is another of my selections late last year aimed at breeding a spider flowered strain.

This next one is a sort of mutation in coloration, in which a marbled effect appeared. There was a streaking in the basic color, revealing an underlying white that seemed to have an unusually reflective property, almost opalescent or iridescent.

That flower appeared last Summer in my Burpeeanas from Burpee (not the ones from Stokes). I did quite a bit of pollination with it to try to preserve this phenotype (visible characteristic), but I won't know until this year if I was successful. I think this "marbled" mutation has great potential that isn't obvious in the picture. The picture doesn't do the effect justice, because its appearance actually shifted as your viewing angle changed, and that effect doesn't show up in the picture.

MM

Both of those flowers are beauties--the last one is a knock-out! The colors are wonderful! Probably everyone reading this thread would like a similar plant! Hope you get many similar offspring!

Believe it or not, I am getting flowers from the Uproar Rose zinnia seeds I got from Park and had started for material for tissue culture not too long ago. I haven't started tissue culture yet, and I must give credit to those lttle plants who want to bloom! But the "blooms" are not worthy to show here! The plants are all of 5" tall with flower buds, one actually starting to show color. I am appreciating your skills of indoor zinnia culture more and more....

JG

That's funny that your little Uproars are trying to bloom at such an early stage. What kind of day length are you giving them? I just decided to buy some Uproar seeds and "throw their genes into my gene pool."

There are a few other commercial varieties that I have been ignoring that I think I am going to try. I think there may be a lot of surprises hiding in that Zinnia "double spiral". They say that humans have a "reptile brain". I am wondering what kind of prehistoric stuff that zinnias might have that is just waiting to be coaxed out.

MM

The zinnias have been given about 16 hours of light per day. I say "about" because my timer broke, so I am manually turning the lights on about 6 AM and turning them off about 10 PM.

I decided to experiment a little with lighting. I had the cool white deluxe tubes and replaced them with two GE Plant and Aquarium and two Sylvania Gro-Lux tubes, alternating, to see if I could get a broader spectrum of light.

I suspect the plants are small at least partially because I gave them a minimum amount of water (I've seen that done in commercial greenhouses to control rate of growth) and I also wanted to try and reduce fungal infections, as I was not using any fungicides.

You were right about branching starting with flower formation. I see just a hint of side-branching coming onto these plants with flower buds. The one (complete, but dwarf) flower that appeared this morning had both male and female parts, so I will try and self-cross it tonight. Don't know if I have any chance whatsoever of getting seeds, but it's the first time I will have ever tried crossing zinnias, so at least it will give me some practice!

I have ladybugs in our house, too, not the native ones, but the ones from Asia. They like the zinnias, although so far I haven't really seen anything on the plants that they could eat (but, then, maybe they are doing a really good job!)

JG

If you have a good box cutter, I bet you can cut through the strips without the starch, etc. I have a utility knife that I got at HD for about 2 bucks. That's with 3 replacement blades. I've been using it to cut carpet into strips to lay in between my raised beds.

What you would want to do it fold the cloth so that it's only as wide at the printed part of your label. Then just whack across with the utility knife using a ruler for a cutting guide. You can use a scrap piece of plywood or even a kitchen cutting board underneath.

JG,

That fabric with the flower prints on it are great! Thank you for showing that to us.

My zinnias last year were just the ordinary kind that come in a package labeled "zinnias." I did save some seed from the ones that didn't have that big cone-shape in the center of the flower. The butterflies liked them a lot.

Karen

Took some pictures--decided to share some of my indoor garden experience--I have much to learn!

Here is the predator ladybug looking for prey...

Here is the tiny axillary bud making its appearance after a flower bud is at the top of the plant...

Here is my dwarf Uproar Rose. I self-crossed it last night, using the anthers of the disc flowers to dust the stigmas of the ray flowers with pollen. There is one disc flower left that I didn't use.

Karen, your flowers are nice and big. I think I like the large-flowered, tall plants the best of all!

JG

Without a good light set-up I'm still 6 weeks from starting zinnia seeds. So for now I'll have to settle for watching what others are doing. I did start some lettuce in a few of my pipe pots to give them a try. I'll have to carry them inside on really cold nights.

I've spent this week updating my library card. The point was to get online access to some of the science journals, thinking I might find some useful info on zinnias. I'm having a hard time getting the remote home use to work and the nitwits at the library are not much help. I can get to a great collection of classical music, many ebooks, and car repair manuals for every thing back to 1950. But the stuff I want, like a JSTOR portal, eludes me. High tech comes only slowly to the small backwood towns of Arkansas.

As you know, I am enthusiastic about the possibilities of hybridizing scabiosa flowered zinnias with bigger zinnias, with the idea of getting new flower forms. Here is a link to pictures of Centaurea cyanoides which has one of the flower forms that I think zinnias might be able to have. If I find a zinnia like that in my zinnia patch, I will certainly treat it as a "breeder".

MM

Although JSTOR is primarily aimed at libraries, academic institutions, community colleges, museums and such, there is a possibility for individuals to access JSTOR documents.

MM

I am a bit alarmed by that ladybug on your zinnia! A couple of weeks ago I noticed some ladybugs on my zinnias and I wondered what they could be eating. I looked carefully for aphids, and didn't find any, even with very close inspection.

Unfortunately, that gave me a false sense of security. Then I noticed my zinnia leaves turning light green, as if something was eating the chlorophyll right out of their leaf cells. Their leaves started to dry out and the plants started to die.

I still couldn't see what the problem was, and wrongly suspected that I might have over-fertilized them, so I began watering and flooding them with melted snow water, warmed to room temperature, as an inexpensive substitute for distilled water, hoping to flush out and dilute the excess minerals. That didn't help, and the epidemic quickly spread to every zinnia I had.

During a "post mortem" of one of my plants using an 8-power magnifier, I spotted a few almost microscopic mite-like animals on the dead leaves. There were also numerous black spots on the dead leaves, which made me suspect a fungus disease. The little "bugs" seemed much too small to have caused such devastating damage.

But since the snow water flooding had no effect, I decided to take a closer look at my remaining still living zinnia cuttings, which were declining rapidly with the epidemic. I used a 30-power pocket microscope that my son had given me many years ago. As I brought it into focus, I was horrified! The still living leaves were covered with hordes of tiny creatures. It reminded me of those tiny creatures in one of the Dr. Seuss stories, and of the parody of them in one of the Simpson's cartoon episodes. Tiny little microscopic civilizations! I also thought of that classic news coverage of the burning of the Hindenberg zeppelin. Oh, the humanity! Am I over-dramatizing this? Not from my viewpoint.

I am now reasonably certain that the culprits are flower thrips. The baby first-instars are essentially too small to see with the naked eye, and the second instars are also nearly invisible because of their small size, their near transparency, and their very close match to the color of the zinnia leaves. If you look closely you can see the adults without magnification, if you know what you are looking for, but they are also small and slender-bodied, so they would weigh only a tiny fraction of what an aphid would. Those black dots I saw were probably their droppings. Apparently they can suck the chlorophyll right out of a leaf cell.

The adults have odd feather-like wings and can fly. Unlike many aphids, all of them seemed active and, since they were rapidly running out of zinnia sap, restless. Apparently the lady bugs were "pigging out" on them, but considering the explosive growth of their population, the ladybugs didn't amount to a "drop in the bucket".

In an attempt to rescue a few zinnias, I took some cuttings, thoroughly washed them under a faucet, and planted them. Apparently the washing didn't get all of them, because several of the cuttings died soon after inserting them in separate pots.

If the roads permit, I'll try to get some systemic insecticide tomorrow, but I think that will be more as an exercise to learn to kill them, because none of my cuttings look like they are going to survive. I'll provide more details later. JG, hopefully you don't and won't have a thrips problem, but in the future I will pay much closer attention to the appearance of ladybugs on my indoor zinnias. Your picture now looks much more scary to me.

MM

I'm really sorry to hear what happened to your plants! Hopefully you were able to rescue any seeds if they were there. You had put so much work into all of that indoor gardening.

I have a fairly powerful magnifying glass, and so far, I don't see anything. Of course, from what you experienced, these creatures may not be all that visible.

For us, the lady bugs are an annual problem. They manage to hide in every nook and cranny and as fall and winter move on, they emerge and walk about the dining room , in particular. I saw several bugs on the zinnias, but others don't seem to find any interest in the plants, so I don't know what will happen! I think I will stay away from insecticides and just see what will occur. Pretty soon I will set up some tissue culture, and if there are any small bugs, I don't think they will get past the clorox and alcohol treatment used for surface-sterilizing.

Speaking of insecticides, I wonder if some of that soap spray might work to discourage bugs? It's called "Safer's, I think.

The centaurea form would be interesting in zinnias. I have had a few come close to that in form, but of course, not in color! I really like that shade of blue.

JG

I garden with a sand/clay mix and while it has many advantages over topsoil there are a few things that must be watched, like a nematode buildup.

Running a search on "zinnia" at the site http://www.eap.mcgill.ca/general/home_frames.htm
resulted in some articles, mostly in French, which I translated with Altavista at
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

It seems that zinnias can be used to control some nematodes. From the articles found ....

"Zinnia, which secretes an agent nématicide, make it possible to reduce the populations of Mr. incognita and nematodes réniformes when inserted with tomatos (Tiyagi et al.., 1986)."

Thanks for your sympathy about the loss of my cuttings zinnias to the thrips. I saved the seedheads, although I doubt that there will be any seeds because there were no pollinator insects and I deliberately didn't pollinate in an effort to encourage vegetative growth.

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so I'm going to try to be philosophical about it. Hopefully, the next time, the thrips won't catch me unawares. Oddly, they haven't been a noticeable problem out in the garden.

I think that I will be aware the next time the thrips start to become a problem. There are a couple of systemic Bayer Advanced products for roses that I am going to try. Also, Merit, which is basically just imidacloprid, is fairly good as an anti-thrips systemic. Imidacloprid is also an ingredient in the two Bayer Advanced rose products. The rose growers have trouble with thrips becoming resistant, so they alternate between spinosad products and imidacloprid products. Also, Acephate is inexpensive and effective, but smells very bad, so it is suitable for use only outdoors, but must used with care to avoid killing bees.

Some people think Acephate may be responsible, at least partly, for the recent die-off of bees that has been observed in many areas. We have no shortage of honeybees around here, but even if they did die off somehow, we have plenty of other bees that do pollination, such as bumblebees and carpenter bees. There are also some order Diptera flies that do a good job of mimicking bees, but I think they may just be drinking nectar. I also have doubts that the numerous butterflies are doing any pollination. They seem to be totally preoccupied with sipping nectar. As do the hummingbirds.

This experience was far from a total loss. I may be a bit sadder, but I am wiser. I guess I had quite a bit of hubris in thinking that my asexual propagation of zinnias was making them immortal. Actually, I haven't given up on achieving long term propagation of selected zinnia breeders. Some of the cuttings that I just lost originated from zinnias that I germinated in late March and early April of 2007. They grew for nearly a year, despite our short growing season.

I am thinking of more ways to provide a healthy indoor environment for zinnia plants. I need to devise a way to wash the plants regularly to simulate rain. And these cuttings didn't have fans blowing on them, like I usually provide for my seedlings. The thrips had much too easy a time flying around in my zinnias with their flimsy feather wings. A fan that pulled air, instead of pushing the air, could pull the little boogers into a filter trap. They can fly for miles by just "floating" in the air while the wind moves them, but they are very weak flyers and couldn't buck any kind of headwind at all.

I still hope to get a stereo microscope to keep a closer eye on what is going on in my zinnia ecosystem. Last Spring in my zinnia patch I noticed a lot of ant dens and ants that seemed to be herding aphids. Many of the ant dens were suspiciously located right at the base of my zinnia plants. Two or three zinnia blooms developed serious looking aphid infestations with ants tending them, so I blasted them out of the flowerheads with the GreenCure spray, and that seemed to eliminate them. Most were wingless and not equipped for a long hike from where they landed on the ground. Still, it was very common to see a small ant wandering around in a zinnia flower or on the plant. I didn't go after the ants last year, but I am going to be taking a closer look at their activities this year. I now know of several insecticides that could control them.

They say that when you fall off of a horse, you should get back on. I'm going to start germinating a few zinnias indoors this week, and I will take cuttings from zinnias on a routine basis, throughout the growing season. And I am now regarding the growing season as all year. I still have a supply of seed that I saved from the plants that I took the cuttings from. I was just hoping to increase that seed supply with the cuttings. However, my first objective was to convert each cutting into a large zinnia bush, but the thrips prevented that. This time.

The thrips were a setback, but only a temporary setback. I'm also going to experiment with your idea about using insecticidal soap spray. I don't have any right now, but I do have some copper soap spray that I am going to apply to a surviving cutting. Maybe those little thrips won't like walking on soap.

MM

Getting the ideal environment indoors for the plants will be tough, but it's an interesting challenge. You have done very well thus far, it's just important to anticipate all the events that may happen so you will be ready for them.. Outside, all the creatures in the garden seem to be very interdependent. That is why I am very cautious about adding any chemicals outdoors. What may be hard on certain harmful insects may very well have an impact on their predators and the food chain in both directions of them, maybe even the plants and the little microbes in the soil. Living things have so much in common, and some effects may go unrecognized.

One of the things I enjoy most about the zinnia garden are all the things that you can discover there--the finches, the different kinds of beetles, the lightning bugs, garter snakes, an occasional rabbit nest, the ladybird moths, hummingbirds, toads, and frogs. If I were a better photographer, I think that whole mini-ecosystem would be a neat thing to document. Here, next to the zinnia garden, is a little fellow I discovered one day in the daylilies. He was quickly dehydrating in the heat of the day, and wasn't quite sure what to do. I sprinkled some water on him, and he seemed to be much relieved, and he was gone within an hour. I believe both the lttle frog and the insect predator you see on the other side of the flower may have been using the lily as bait, waiting for certain pollinators to visit.

JG

"If I were a better photographer, I think that whole mini-ecosystem would be a neat thing to document."

You seem to be doing rather well. That frog and mantis on the daylily, apparently both waiting in ambush, are quite a good picture. You don't see that everyday. I still hope to get a digital SLR by Spring. Only about one in five of my "point-and-shoot" pictures "turn out".

"One of the things I enjoy most about the zinnia garden are all the things that you can discover there--the finches, the different kinds of beetles, the lightning bugs, garter snakes, an occasional rabbit nest, the ladybird moths, hummingbirds, toads, and frogs."

No rabbits here, but we have had a huge female snapping turtle visit the garden the last two years. She did a surprising amount of damage, biting off plants and eating parts of them. She dug a lot of places and buried eggs. A month or two later small baby snappers emerged, and my little granddaughter enjoyed catching them in a can and, with the supervision of my daughter, returning them to a nearby pond. Last year my son helped me catch the big female in a big red plastic bushel basket and the two of us together carried it to the same pond. If it reappears this year and we can capture it again, we will take it to a more remote body of water.

We also get gray squirrels, red squirrels, ground squirrels, and chipmunks as frequent visitors, but they don't seem to bother the zinnias. They do sample almost anything edible, and eat a lot of my daughter's strawberries. Most of the damage done to the zinnias was apparently from the deer, and that was mostly accidental trampling rather than actually eating them.

I discovered the hard way that at least one species of seed-eating birds really like zinnia seeds. Now I use the "hair nets" to protect maturing seed heads from them during the Summer. Apparently they have migrated away by Fall and I can let zinnia seedheads mature without protection.

A flock of 30 or so wild turkeys visit occasionally, but they seem more interested in eating bugs and dandelion greens in the backyard lawn than in my zinnia patch.

We have had gardens here beginning in 2003, and so far I haven't used any insecticides or toxic materials at all. I have sprayed a lot GreenCure®, but it is nontoxic. I have controlled Japanese Beetles and Tomato Hornworms by hand picking. I spare the JBs that have the white parasite eggs on their back. Every time a cutworm fells a zinnia plant I patiently dig around the stem until I find it and take my revenge. I ignore the grasshoppers, because they eat mostly grass in the lawn. However, I am not an organic gardener, so I do use non-organic nutrients as needed and I will use carefully selected and applied insecticides when the need arises. I will make a conscious effort not to kill beneficial insects.

MM

The hairnets around the flowers have a lot of good uses. I plan on using those both to control what flowers are crossed as well as protection from the seed-eaters. I'm hoping also that the patch of sunflowers I grow will be a good distraction for the birds (incidentally, Park Seed has a nice collection of sunflowers, and I bought several different kinds).

I've also had snapping turtles cross the garden, but they laid no eggs that I know of. After the gentle box turtles I knew in Pennsylvania, these surprised me with their speed and defensive hissing and threats!

Pls8++,
The anti-nematode character in zinnias you read about is interesting. There are apparently a lot of chemicals in plants that are effective toward different pests. My daughter had a science fair project where she sprayed different plant extracts on other plants to hopefully protect them against spider mite infestation. Supporting the literature, the geraniums did a good job if their "juice" was applied early. A similar experiment can be done on Petri plates where plant juices have been applied on top of the agar. You plate out bacteria on the dishes and see which plant extracts have a zone where no bacteria will grow close to them....

JG

In the breeding of zinnias I can well see the benefit of cloning to extend the life of a particularly good plant. As I expect to rogue a number of the plants from my garden this year, I think I'll use these "off" plants to experiment with different cloning methods.

Cuttings is the first to come to mind and is probably the easiest. The drawback being the maintenance of plants over the winter.

The tissue culture that JG talks about would be an interesting thing to try, but I suspect there is a good bit of start up cost / equipment needed.

I have one other thing to try. A lot of plants we call annuals have at least some potential as a shot lived perennial. I plan to test this on zinnias. Under some conditions, plants regrow from sprouts at the root/ stem junction. This is common among plants of the aster family. It is my plan to expose this junction on a mature plant where I will make a small injury and apply a rooting hormone. A few days later the stem will be cut a couple of inches above ground. After a few more days the plant will be dug and the dirt shook from the roots. The plant will then be bagged and placed in the frig at just above freezing. After a couple of months I will see if I can replant with success. If I can make this work it would be a backup to loosing the cuttings over winter. Plus it would not require the TLC needed for cuttings all winter.

I'm so sorry to hear about your cuttings. I was so looking forward to them making it through the winter. My cats discourage indoor gardening, so I don't know much about growing plants inside. How do these bugs get onto plants that are in the house?

However, I think your experiences do prove that zinnia cuttings can be successfully grown -- which is amazing.

Karen

"Cuttings is the first to come to mind and is probably the easiest. The drawback being the maintenance of plants over the winter."

Cuttings are easy to take and start. They were doing rather well inside under fluorescent lights until the thrips made their appearance. But you are right, they were taking a lot of maintenance. I was having to water them every day or two. Eventually I will try to think of some way of automating some of that maintenance. Some hydroponic systems will run almost unattended. Or so I have been told.

"A lot of plants we call annuals have at least some potential as a short lived perennial. I plan to test this on zinnias."

I have wondered that myself. I know there are some ornamentals that are grown as annuals that are actually perennials that get nipped by freezing weather, but would continue growing if the climate were milder. However, as far as I know, Zinnia elegans is not in that category, and is classified as an annual. But it may be that zinnias have not really been put to the test in this regard.

However, this is kind of unexplored territory, and I will be interested in the results of your experiments. I also wonder how my zinnias would have developed if the thrips hadn't killed them. My zinnias have always died because of frost or they completely went to seed or some pest or disease got them. I wonder what would happen in a greenhouse if you deadheaded them and kept all pests and diseases at bay. I wonder how big a zinnia plant could get under those circumstances.

MM

"How do these bugs get onto plants that are in the house?"

I wondered that, too. After taking the cuttings I rinsed them in Physan 20, which should have removed everything. Apparently it did. But then I brought a lot of seedheads in from my zinnia patch and set them on nearby shelves to dry out. I suspect the thrips came in on some of those seedheads. I pick some seedheads while they are slightly green, because I have discovered that they don't have to be completely dead for the seeds to be good. During the summer I pluck some petals while they still have color and plant those green seeds in order to give my second generation a two or three weeks head start.

This year I will have to figure out some way to "quarantine" any seedheads that I am bringing in. I can't very well pop them into the microwave, but I can't sack them up in plastic bags either, because I need them to dry out reasonably fast. Fortunately I have a few months to figure that problem out.

MM

MM,

Maybe you can separate the seeds from the seedhead even when they are green. That is what I do every year to save the seeds from the birds. When I harvest the flower heads, I cut them off with scissors, then outside, I separate the petals from the seeds, then bring the seeds alone into the house to dry out on newspaper. I guess you could do the same out in the garage. I've noticed the seedheads themselves are loaded with all kinds of spiders, worms, and insects when I separate the seeds. Maybe when the seeds are dried, you could surface-sterilize and rinse them, and get rid of any creatures for good.

Anyway, you have done an absolutely good job of taking summer's zinnias and prolonging them through the winter. I bet you can make annuals last a pretty long time if you keep removing flowers. It is the annuals' flowers that send the signal to the rest of the plant that their job is done, and that they die, because now the next generation is ready to go. This sort of thing doesn't happen in perennials. But I'm sure you already know that as you've mentioned something to that nature above!

Anyway, as I wrote to a friend, "You can take the seeds out of the summer, but you can't take the summer out of the seeds." My plants aren't so glorious as yours, but the color is brightening up the dining room!

JG

That picture of your zinnias blooming indoors in small containers is very interesting. As I recall, those are the commercial F1 hybrid, Uproar Rose. Their flowers remind me of Profusions, which I know aren't anything like Uproar Rose. I think the smaller flowers may be due to the small root volume that they have. I think the flowers might be larger if they were moved to larger quarters, by repotting them to provide a lot more root volume.

The foliage looks good and the plants seem healthy. Maybe this growth response of zinnias is analogous to aquarium fish, whose equilibrium size seems to depend on the size of the aquarium they are in. I think it is really neat that you are successfully growing zinnias as a house plant. You won't find zinnias listed in any house plant book that I know of.

I purchased some square 10-inch pots to repot my zinnia cutting plants into for the "long haul" indoors, but the thrips frustrated that. I think they have enough root volume to support a pretty good sized zinnia plant indoors. They were listed as "rose bush pots".

Last year I grew my original yellow marigold flowered F1 hybrid zinnia indoors, and eventually repotted it in a round 10-inch pot. It grew to a nice little bush with dozens of flowers that I hand pollinated. It produced a good yield of seedheads with over a hundred viable seeds. It spent its entire seed-to-seed life cycle indoors as a houseplant under overdriven fluorescent lights. I planted about two dozen of its F2 seeds out into the garden in a midseason plantout and they produced an obviously related bunch of siblings, but none of them were what you would call marigold flowered. None of them became "breeders".

Today I reconfigured my computer office plant stand to hold three shelves with about 20 inches between shelves. That will allow me to start a crop of zinnias under 10-inch humidity domes with some room to grow. I will repot them to 4¼ inch "soda pop" pots to be moved to more widely spaced shelves out here in the breezeway.

Even so, I will have to apply growth regulator to keep the plants from growing too tall. I had intentions to apply growth regulator to my cutting-plants, but somehow never did. This time I will spray my seedlings with their first application at about the second-true-leaf stage, in order to keep their height under some degree of control. As those plants start to develop, I will make a second application two or three nodes later. As time goes on, I will decide whether I need to make further applications of growth regulator. Commercial growers usually don't make more than two applications, but then they don't keep their plants around as long as I intend to keep mine.

The growth regulator is supposed to control mainly the internodal length, but I am curious as to whether it also reduces flower size. This continues to be a learning experience.

MM

I'm sure the reason the flowers on the zinnias are daisy-like, and not having multiple-layers of petals, is because of the stress they have experienced due to dehydrating conditions, as well as restricted root growth--kind of a bonsai-type reaction. I surely wasn't giving them optimum environment, just hoping to get a little material for tissue culture. I will have to compare these plants to the garden-grown ones this summer, from the same lots of seeds--if I'm lucky, maybe I can transplant these plants I have outdoors in May and document the flower change due to environment. I still haven't given up getting some material for tissue culture from these, but my free time lately has been very limited and I haven't yet had a chance! And, I have to say, that typically tissue culture involves setting out hundreds if not thousands of explants at a time, partly due to the contamination that is expected, and I know I won't be doing that!

I not only started up Uproar Rose seeds, but also Royal Purple from Stokes and Park's Pick Purple in that group that are in the Pyrex dish. Now I'm wondering where that coral flower came from? Could that be the Uproar Rose--I wouldn't think, judging by the catalog pictures I've seen!
And, I wouldn't think it would be either of the two Purples, either. Once in a while, I know that seed-sorting at the company level isn't 100% perfect.....Something else that wasn't perfect was my tracking of the plants when I transferred them to peat pots and rearranged them in the dish--thus, I'm not sure at all of the source of the coral flower!

What sort of product do you use to control internode growth? I know gibberellins induce it, but don't know what inhibits/antagonizes those! I noticed my plants started to elongate shortly after the flower came out....

JG

I'll bet your little blooms are Uproar Rose plants, responding to a "bonsai-like" environment. I saw similar atypical results in some of my zinnia cuttings in 2½ - inch square pots.

"What sort of product do you use to control internode growth?"

I haven't used any of it yet, but I obtained a quantity of B-Nine WSG (water soluble granules) from an Internet source. Here is some B-Nine WSG information. I couldn't find a "retail" quantity of the stuff, and the smallest amount I could find was a one-pound package. That should last me quite a while, since you dilute it a lot to make the spray solution. You can't keep the solution for more than a day, so you have to make up fresh solution every time you use it.

There are a lot of different plant growth regulator (PGR) products that growers use, but B-Nine WSG is one of the most popular ones. It's not necessarily one of the newest to enter the market, but a lot of commercial growers use it to control the height of their bedding plants, including zinnias. It's not for use on vegetables.

I'm really depending on this stuff working, because at the moment both of my 24" x 48" plant stands are set up with three shelves each, which limits the height of plants that they can accommodate to about a foot, allowing several inches for the depth of the pot. I probably will have to reconfigure the shelf unit out here in the breezeway to two shelves, to handle larger plants.

(My computer died during a recent multi-day power outage, and my wife and son have their computers here in our breezeway, so that is where I am working now until we can rebuild my computer. The power went out in a particularly destructive way, going off and then on repeatedly, which apparently overcame my surge protector. Both my motherboard and my monitor succumbed. My computer already had problems, so we weren't too surprised that it was the only casualty.)

The 18" x 48" plant stand that is also in this breezeway is already reconfigured to two shelves, and it can handle plants up to 26 inches tall. Since zinnias can easily exceed that height, I will probably be using quite a bit of the B-Nine growth regulator this Winter and early Spring.

MM

It will be interesting to see how that growth regulator you have will work with the zinnias, particularly with flower development. As I said before, I am noticing that as soon as the buds on the flowers I have now start to show color, the plants start to quickly get taller--it seems that the two activities are closely related. About fifteen years ago, I worked at a large greenhouse as a part-time helper in the early spring in preparation for the gardening season market. For the most part, plant growth was controlled by carefully limiting the amount of water the plants received along with nipping off flower buds of some kinds of annuals. We started very few zinnias until late spring, as they matured so quickly, and I don't recall holding them back in any manner.

I keep hoping that signs of spring will show soon out here in Indiana, but there's been little evidence of that! We've had extreme fluctuations of temperature, alternating sixty degree days with days of very low temperatures in the teens. There have been ice storms, flooding, dense fog, and heavy snow. Now we're looking forward to another ice storm. I have no idea what this sort of weather is going to do to my perennial garden, but I'm afraid, at least, the irises are going to take a hit.

Can't wait for the zinnia season to come.....

JG

"Can't wait for the zinnia season to come....."

Me either. In a sense, I haven't waited. The first of the seeds I planted three days ago began coming up yesterday. They are from my whitish pink-tinged marigold flowered zinnia. Some should be F1 hybrids with large light-colored zinnias, and potentially quite interesting.

I have over a hundred of the 2½-inch square pots planted with seeds from various breeders. In about three weeks, maybe a little sooner, I will be doing the first application of B-Nine. I wonder if its name is a "take-off" on "benign". As plant growth regulators go, it is supposed to be sort of benign.

"It will be interesting to see how that growth regulator you have will work with the zinnias, particularly with flower development. As I said before, I am noticing that as soon as the buds on the flowers I have now start to show color, the plants start to quickly get taller--it seems that the two activities are closely related."

I have noticed that, too. With my limited shelf space, it's going to be a battle keeping my plant height under tight control. I fully expect them to come into flower while still under strong influence from the growth regulator.

That's when I will get some idea what repeated dosing with B-Nine does to the flowers. I will try to take a few pictures of them. I plan to "cull" my indoor zinnias at first flower and many of the remaining "keepers" will be subdivided into cuttings. I can't set any zinnias out into my zinnia patch until about Memorial day. That's our "safe" no-frost date. I may do some indoor pollination and seed saving.

Incidentally, I did get maybe 200 good seeds from my cuttings despite the ravages of the thrips. I guess gravity moved some pollen to stigmas.

It has been snowing here quite frequently. I am hoping for some kind of let-up so I can make some more progress on my lean-to greenhouse project.

More later.

MM

Those light pink zinnias you have are really pretty. I hope the traits are carried well onto the next generation! A bouquet of those would make a very nice entry for your state fair.

I will plant some seeds for the summer, probably starting in mid-April. Usually it is safe to put the warm-season annuals in the garden here about May 10. The seeds I plant early will be those expensive ones with 10 to 15 seeds in a packet, just to make sure I get the maximum number of plants possible. Examples of those that I have now are the two shades of Swizzles (I'll try those this year--first time since the last time, about 5-6 years ago), Park's Big Red, the Ruffles Hybrid Mix, the Uproar Rose (that is a nice color, can't wait to see the full-sized flower!), Zowie Yellow Flames, Park's Sunshine Mix, Parks Hybrid Gold Sun, Select Seeds' Yellow Peruvian and Old Mexico. Then, when May comes, I'll put the rest of the seeds directly into the garden along with other beds I am going to have to prepare.

You will certainly enjoy the greenhouse. This time next year, you will have lots of flowering plants. That will make the winter so enjoyable when you're not out on the slopes.

JG

I plan to experiment this year with crosses between the Peruvian zinnias (they come in yellow and red) and Z. elegans/violacea and also Zinnia haageana (Persian Carpets and Aztec Sunset) as tentative ventures into interspecific crosses. I want to stay with chromosome number 24 zinnias initially. Even with that restriction, I anticipate lots of fertility problems, so most of my crosses will remain intraspecific.

I also plan to plant a few Swizzles. I halfway expected one or two new Swizzles this year -- maybe a white and pink one or a yellow and pink one. I also halfway expected another Zowie or another Uproar.

I grew up in the Midwest and never took up skiing. Too bad, because the road that goes by here has a couple of hills that you could ski on, if you were willing to accept the risk of skiing in traffic. The traffic is fairly light out this way. But I'm guessing it would be illegal, and the absence of a ski lift would take the fun out of it.

I am now tending to over two dozen baby zinnia seedlings under lights, and planning some additional plantings.

MM

The haageana species I have are Persion Carpet, Old Mexico, White Star, Chippendale, and Classic. I only have the one peruviana, Yellow Peruvian. I have the tenuiflora, Red Spider, and then the mixed species zinnia, Profusion. Just to get some new genes into the garden I got Gift Zinnia from Seed Savers Exchange. It is a bright red zinnia (with a lot of disc flowers), originally coming from the Vavilov Institute in Moscow. I also got mixed Benary zinnias from Seed Savers Exchange. I'm going to make sure I separate the same kinds of zinnia by vendor to see if there are any visible differences.

This is a nice hobby, because we can get so many kinds of seeds, and spend relatively little to be able to do a lot of different and interesting things.

JG

"The haageana species I have are Persian Carpet, Old Mexico, White Star, Chippendale, and Classic."

You have an interesting list of zinnias to work with. I had the impression that White Star and Classic are actually Zinnia angustifolia, although I saw them listed as Z. haageana in a seed catalog. I think that catalog listing may have been erroneous, however. I omitted the "Stars" (white, yellow, and orange) from my inventory on the presumption that they probably are Z. angustifolia with a chromosome number of 22, which would cause the hybrids with Z. violacea/elegans (24 chromosomes) to have an odd chromosome number of 23. However, I encourage you to ignore my inhibitions in that regard, because "impossible" things are an integral part of the history of zinnia breeding. And chromosome counts can be a bit "iffy".

Incidentally, I base my suspicion that "White Star" is Z. angustifolia on the quote on page 296 of High-Tech and Micropropagation VI (Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry edited by Y.P.S. Bajaj, where it says "An all-American selection of Z. angustifolia called Star White with a delicate, small white flower is typical of this species, called commonly the "classic zinnia" by growers and retailers." You can read that page by using Amazon's "Search Inside" feature and doing a Search for the keyword "zinnia". Page 296 will appear at the top of the resulting list. Incidentally, you can read much more interesting material by selecting other links in that list. You can make that process a bit less tedious by using the marginal left and right arrows to move a page or two to the left or right before hitting the red "Go" button again to rebuild the list. That article continues through page 309, and has a lot of interesting material about the micropropagation of zinnias. It's amazing how many books that are interesting to me cost more than $300, so I make use of Amazon's Search Inside! whenever it is available.

"I also got mixed Benary zinnias from Seed Savers Exchange."

I think that is an excellent idea, to get a particular zinnia strain from more than one vendor. I used to assume that the important thing was the name of the strain, and that it didn't matter who you bought it from. Now I realize that it is important what physical field the zinnia seeds came from, since bees pollinate within that field and you could very well get a specimen from one field that could be unique to that field. Of course, some seed growers may sell to more than on vendor, but different vendors can have seeds that came from different grower's fields. I have purchased scabiosa flowered zinnia seeds from several vendors based on that mindset.

"This is a nice hobby, because we can get so many kinds of seeds, and spend relatively little to be able to do a lot of different and interesting things."

I couldn't agree more. I will try to include a picture of an interesting zinnia seedling that appeared for me a few days ago in my next post.

MM

Are all the seedlings you have now descendents of the light pink flower you had grown earlier? It will be interesting to see how they turn out!

I am planting a number of shorter varieties this year to bring in extra genes, but I have to say I think I will always prefer the tall, nearly waist-high, plants I have in my "Heinz 59" patch every year. I hope I get some nice tall offspring from the short plants I am starting this spring!

Thanks for reminding me about Zinnia angustifolia. I had also read the article you are referring to in "Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry"; in fact, I was able to copy it earlier after an inter-library loan. I wasn't sure of the varieties they mentioned as being the same as those that I have. I had simply made a quick inventory of the seeds I had by quickly just reading what was on the packets--- which is not always the best thing to do! Zinnia angustifolia should be fairly easy to identify (whatever the name on the seed packet) because of the narrow leaves that it has. I'll see if there is any compatibility whatsoever between those plants and the others with the different chromosome number. The USDA has a helpful website that describes native species, including
Zinnia angustifolia.

At the bottom of that site are links to some nice photos including "View photographs from CalPhotos", as well as those from the Kemper Center.

JG

"Are all the seedlings you have now descendents of the light pink flower you had grown earlier?"

No, not just the pink flower. I am growing a variety of breeder seedlings and commercial strains, as a scaled down version of what I would do during the "regular" season. Here is a photo of some of my seedlings that I took a few hours ago:

It's time to begin re-potting some of them. Those 2½-inch pots are deceptively small.

Thanks for the links to those Z. angustifolia pictures. The Kemper Center photos stirred up memories. We visited the Missouri Botanical Garden frequently during the period we lived in the St. Louis area. Oh, I said I would show my unusual seedling, so here is a picture of it:

It apparently has three cotyledons, which technically would make it a tricot. This variation appears from time to time. This one is apparently going to develop its main leaves in pairs, but in the past I have had tricots that had their main leaves in threes. As a side project I hope to develop a strain of tricot zinnias, if I can just get the appearance of that mutation in several instances so that I can cross pollinate them. Tricot zinnias could potentially have bushier plants.

MM

Your seedlings look very healthy! The tricot zinnia would be an interesting one to follow. Biology education is a lot different now, but back in the "old days" when I studied botany, an interesting thing I remember is that particular classifications of flowering plants have floral formulas. That is, they have specific numbers of sepals, petals, stamens, and ovaries. Many are in multiples of fives, others in multiples of threes or fours. It would be interesting to see if those tricot-dicots translate that leaf alteration in some way to their flowers. From photos, I notice that the disc flowers of zinnia have five petals, and it appears that the female parts may be one ovary, or two fused ovaries, with two styles per single flower. I counted the sepals on two of the Uproar Roses that I have, and there are fifteen sepals. I don't know if that would be a consistent number from flower to flower, and as I have no fresh disc flowers, I don't know the count of stamens per flower. This is really the first time I've thought of composite flowers in this way.

Anyway it seems that environment can easily change the phenotype of zinnias, and whether we have hereditary (mutational) changes or not remains to be seen. Maybe if you have several generations of zinnias grown under lights, you may start seeing some changes in the plants that may be selected over generations, such that they can harvest more energy from sources that aren't quite up to par with sunshine. Could tricots be a favorable change? I don't know, and am kind of letting my imagination go here as I look outside and see a landscape that is not even letting my crocuses flower at this late date!

JG

"...an interesting thing I remember is that particular classifications of flowering plants have floral formulas."

I think those florals formulas still hold true from "the good old days (grin)."

"I notice that the disc flowers of zinnia have five petals, and it appears that the female parts may be one ovary, or two fused ovaries, with two styles per single flower."

I need to study zinnia floral anatomy closer. I notice that it is rather common for the disk florets to have six "arms" as well, and I have seen instances of four, seven, and occasionally more. I have also seen cases in which the stigmas had three or more arms. And I have seen four-armed style/stigmas. Once again, there is reason to doubt that those phenotypes are genotypes.

The "two styles" thing in disk florets is more interesting. I have seen cases in the scabiosa flowered zinnias, as well as hybrids with scabiosas, in which the two-style configuration was actually a hermaphroditic stigma and I have even split the florets and pollinated the concealed stigma as such, with occasional indications that the procedure may have worked. Even with conventional disk florets, you get a good yield of "floret seeds", so I suspect that the style/stigma actually functions to push the pollen off of the internal anthers into the outside world, and self pollinate itself in the process. But I have lots more to learn about zinnia anatomy, both with respect to the conventional zinnia flowers and the scabiosa flowered versions.

"It would be interesting to see if those tricot-dicots translate that leaf alteration in some way to their flowers."

It will be interesting. From the standpoint of taxonomy, the monocot, dicot, tricot thing was(is) considered very fundamental, and there would be no hope of crossing a monocot (a grass, for example) with a dicot (a bean, for example). So there is a lot of basis for being skeptical about the idea of tricot zinnias.

Still, over the years, I have seen several occurrences of three-cotyledon zinnia seedlings, and I have seen frequent appearances of leaves-in-threes as well. I had leaves-in-threes on some of my scabiosa flowered hybrids, and on some of the cutting plants as well (as well as that leaves-in-fours cutting). On a couple of rare occasions (years ago in our Fort Worth garden) I have seen a combination of three cotyledons and leaves-in-threes, and that comes pretty close to the definition of a tricot.

I don't know if a tricot zinnia strain would be a good thing, but if I get a chance, I would like to find out first hand. Intuitively, it seems that 50 percent more branches from the main stem could be a good thing. But these speculations will be somewhat moot until I succeed in getting a "tricot strain" of zinnias. Since I expect to be germinating a lot of zinnia seeds in the foreseeable future, my chances of seeing some more tricot "mutations" seem pretty good to me.

More later.

MM

It looks like we were fairly close to what the "ideal" or consensus floral formula is for zinnias:

Floral Formula

And, in some ways, leaves have been found to have an influence on how the flowers develop:

Leaf-derived Signals

JG

That Leaf-derived Signals reference is fascinating. I am going to study that in depth. It may suggest some experiments to do with zinnias. Thanks much for the link.

Incidentally, another three-cotyledon zinnia seedling emerged yesterday. It's too early to tell whether its leaves will be in pairs or in threes. I expect pairs.

More later.

MM

Yes, I also think that some zinnia experiments might be carried out based on ideas from that paper. I can't help but wonder if it's a sort of survival response on the part of the plant to wounding/removal of its leaves. Many types of organisms react to what is perceived as a harsh environment by amplifying their ability to reproduce and ensure that the next generation is on its way.

This has nothing to do with zinnias, but I put in my first patch of poppies (Papaver somniferum) surrounded by lettuce, peas, and radishes. Spring is on its way! My snowdrops are blooming!

JG

"Yes, I also think that some zinnia experiments might be carried out based on ideas from that paper. I can't help but wonder if it's a sort of survival response on the part of the plant to wounding/removal of its leaves. Many types of organisms react to what is perceived as a harsh environment by amplifying their ability to reproduce and ensure that the next generation is on its way."

Wow! That's insightful. That kind of ties in with those odd variations I saw in my cutting-plant zinnias.

MM

The mildew resistance is unusual, and that alone would make it worthwhile to grow the seeds from that remarkable zinnia.

There are strains of zinnias (Whirligigs, Merry-Go-Rounds, Carousels, Zig Zags, etc.) with two or three colors on each petal and I like to grow them and cross them with other zinnias.

The mere fact that your zinnia was the only one like it in the seed packet sets it apart. It may have been a mutant, or it may have been a random hybrid created by a bee. A significant fraction of "open pollinated" zinnias actually are bee hybrids.

If you saved seeds from that plant, they definitely would be worth planting to see what you get. If you got quite a few seeds from it, it might be a good idea not to plant them all at once, but to save back some as "insurance". You never know when something odd might happen to wipe out a crop.

Keep us informed about this, regardless of how it turns out.

MM

I'm going to read all of your 4-part zinnia hybridizing information. Things like this intrigue me, but I've never anything into motion. You're an inspiration, and thank you for sharing.

And give Maine a big kiss for me, I used to live in Bangor. Maureen

Some of my indoor zinnias are coming into bloom now. This one has scabiosa flowered heritage, but is showing some desirable blending between the petals and the central florets.

What a pretty flower! The petals have such fancy form, and the combination of pink color with yellow trim is just outstanding. I hope you can get these plants to give rise to similar offspring! Then, you should look to market the seed. If you can do this indoors, can you imagine how these would look outdoors. Wow!

JG

I was encouraged by those ruffled petals and intend to make flower form an ongoing priority in my zinnia breeding program.

A recent medium purple "marigold flowered" specimen had some interesting quirks that called my attention to the reverse sides of zinnia petals. It appears to have whitish rather than the usual greenish backsides on the petals.

I will watch its development further and start paying more attention to the appearance of both sides of the petals, rather than just the "top sides".

MM

There's a cultivar of zinnia--I have grown it from seed in previous years--that has almost always all ray flowers, many, somewhat fine, petals, and a creamy underside to those petals. The center is also somewhat cream-colored or white. I don't see that type of zinnia in this year's Park catalog, I wish I could remember the name! The ones I remember in particular are lavender colored with the cream-colored underside to the petals and centers of the flower. Some of them come back every year in my garden. Unfortunately, I never took a picture of them for some reason. But they definitely have a classy look. That last zinnia reminded me of those, except they have many finer smaller petals.

JG

I would be interested in the identity of that cultivar of zinnias. From your description, it sounds rather un-zinnia-like. I would like to cross it with several things. I don't think I have seen those zinnias.

Parks seems to be reducing their inventory. I think they dropped the Pastel Scabious Zinnias. I'm glad I bought several packets to add to my inventory of zinnia seeds. I think they (Parks) have had internal problems of some sort.

MM

It may be that the type of zinnia I was referring to earlier was the "Blue Point" cultivar, which I think, in turn, is a special strain of Benary. Only thing is, I couldn't find an example of Blue Points online that would really support my suggestion, in terms of image. If anyone has an old seed catalog out there from maybe 5 or 6 years ago, it's possible those zinnias would be featured. I throw my seed catalogs away after each season, because I accumulate so many! I am coming to regret this sometimes, though.

Another interesting example of white on zinnias appeared when I was looking up Blue Point zinnias today, though, on the West Coast Seeds website. Look at the one California Giants flower! I've also seen this type of coloring on zinnias in my garden.

JG

Ah, yes. That California Giant magenta-pink bloom is showing white undersides on the new petals. I'll be paying more attention to the bottom sides of zinnias from now on. One thing that would be good would be to have the bottom side just as colored as the top side, since some petals seem to curl and show their bottom sides. A contrasting bottom-side color would also be good.

I had always sort of assumed that the Blue Point strain was just another name for the Benary's Giant strain, but now I am beginning to wonder. I am pretty sure that Parks Seeds simply renames the Benary's Giants as "Parks Picks". Sometimes that sort of renaming is referred to as "re-badging". But now I am wondering if Blue Point is simply re-badged Benary's Giants, or if they are separate strains, each with its good points.

MM

As you know, I have been using a lot of scabiosa flowered zinnias in my breeding program because their pollen florets (disk florets) are not yellow star-shaped "brushes", but have pretty much the color of the ray petals. I now suspect that more than one gene is involved in determining the form of the disk florets. This pictured specimen has "scabi" heritage, but its disk florets are more like "petaloids".

I have seen this before in some of the F2s from my echinacea flowered zinnias, and occasionally in commercial seed packet scabiosa flowered specimens. I intend to back-cross these "petaloid types" with scabiosa flowered phenotypes in an attempt to modify the petaloid florets to something more attractive.

MM

I'm pretty sure Park's Pick zinnias are Benarys, too, but those seeds I had earlier were a separate offering. If I ever figure out the name for sure, I'll let you know!

I think you're right, it's almost as if there are multiple alleles for the disc flower petals, and maybe you are seeing co- or incomplete dominance of petal shape on your hybrid flower, with a varying penetrance of expression of alleles coming in from different parents. That's just a guess, though...

I like the sorts of results you are getting with the scabiosa crosses, and am anxious to try some myself this year!

Just surfing some zinnia sites, I noticed that Rich Farm Garden has some interesting zinnias of the Whirlygig type, but much fuller than the ones I've seen.

JG

Yes, that Rich Farm Garden offering is called Zig Zag. It seems to be better than the single and semi-double Whirligig strain offered by Parks and the Carrousel strain offered by Johnny's. Stoke's paper catalog picture of their Whirligigs shows a nice doubleness comparable to the Zig Zag pictures, but their website has no picture. Burpee seems to have dropped this type of zinnia from their online catalog.

I raised some Zig Zags from Vesey's last year and one of them achieved "breeder" status. I'll be raising more Zig Zags this year.

MM

We discussed tricot zinnias back in March. I have had more tricot seedlings appear this year than usual. For many of them, it doesn't come to anything and the main stem develops normally, with true leaves appearing in pairs. However, this year I have had a few in which the true leaves appeared on the main stem in threes as well. This is one example under my fluorescent lights right now. It gets "breeder" status despite a rather "ordinary" flower. I plan to inter-cross all of my "threezies" in an attempt to get a strain.

MM

I continue to be encouraged by the results of my "scabi" crosses. This is another one that gets "breeder status" by virtue of its ruffled petals.

MM

We discussed the merits of coloring on the reverse sides of the petals a few messages back. This current specimen shows quite a bit of petal "backside", and "gets away with it" because the reverse side harmonizes rather well with the light lemony color of the topside.

MM

You keep coming up with some very pretty and unique-looking zinnias! The yellow flower is so nice. The mix of white and yellow makes it look so bright, definitely lemon shades, with some meringue mixed in ;-).. The tricot look could be an interesting feature. I'm surprised when you say the flowers of the tricots look normal. I can't help but wonder if you looked at them very carefully, you might see some differences.

Well, we've had 70+ degree weather in Indiana. I've plowed up my main garden. It's so warm, I'm tempted to put in some zinnia seeds beginning of May. Spring is definitely here, finally!

JG

It is warming up here too, but since our "safe" no-frost date is the last of May, I think I will delay any significant amount of in-ground planting. I have transplanted a few "reject" zinnias outside to see what happens to them.

I'm pleased with the success of my Winter zinnia breeding project. Several specimens have been good enough to earn "breeder status" for subsequent crossing and selfing. A recent bicolor with white at the base of the petals pleased me, because that was one of my objectives. I think it has a lot of possibilities in further crosses. I am also selfing it, because I don't have any "help" from the bees inside. I continue to think there are a lot of surprises hidden in the zinnia DNA just waiting to be coaxed out.

I'm not sure it is a good thing being able to work late on my zinnias, but I am pretty much surrounded by them here in my "office/study", and sometimes I stay up later than I should to work on them.

MM

The plant label trial has gone well. Here is a photo of the one that has been outside for over three months. It's a little ragged from the wind but there is no sign of fading.

The Pipe Pot trials have gone better than I could have imagined and stand to be the most significant new thing for my garden this year ( see the Pipe Pot thread).

I set out to get some zinnias started 3 weeks ago. I knew I had a problem real quick, about 5% germination of the seeds saved from last year. Remember that I was stupid and saved all my seed in a single container. I then did the paper towel trick and got the same results. Hoping that the seed only had a surface pathogen that was killing the plants, I used a fungicide drench and tried again. No luck.

I don't guess it's a great tragedy since the seed was not selected from any particularly good plant. But to go forward with a serious breeding project I need to be assured that I can be successful with the seed.

The heads were collected after they were mature and brown during the dry weather of late August. The seed was separated and allowed to dry inside for another week before being stored.

I don't think of zinnia seed as one that is difficult and I've had good luck in the past. Perhaps I should be taking some additional precautions for a breeding program. Are there some secrets I don't know?

"Are there some secrets I don't know?"

Yes, and there are many secrets about breeding zinnias that I don't know yet either. It's an ever-learning experience.

The low germination of your saved seeds doesn't reflect on you. Commercial seed companies have special equipment to remove "light" seeds and sometimes they winnow the seeds, test the germination and, if it is below 80%, re-winnow the seeds with a more aggressive setting. And they may blend a high germination batch with a lower germination batch to upgrade the lower batch to a mix that exceeds the 80% figure that is usually considered a target for commercial seeds.

I started off the 2007 season with a planting of 40 4¼" pots (made from the bottom part of 2-liter soft drink bottles), one seed per pot. I got a grand total of one plant from that. A very inauspicious start. I checked my seeds and, indeed, many of them just looked liked zinnia seeds, but were in fact just empty husks. I learned that you have to "pinch" a zinnia seed to verify that it contains a mature embryo. You don't need to pinch it so hard as to crush it. Also, gently try to bend the seed. An empty husk will bend easily, but a mature embryo won't bend. That technique takes a little practice, because you can break an embryo with too much force. And you can sort of heft it and drop it on a sheet of paper to verify that it has an appreciable mass. And even those precautions only verify that there is a mature embryo in the seed, but they don't tell you whether the embryo is alive or not.

If seeds have been water damaged in the garden while still in the seed head, you frequently will see roots that have emerged from the seeds. I've never had one of those germinate.

If you are concerned about seed-borne fungi, bacteria, viruses, nematodes, or whatever, you can treat the seeds. Seed companies use something like Thiram for that, but I have used a 5-minute "swim" in 3% hydrogen peroxide or diluted (1½ tsp/gal) Physan 20. I haven't had trouble with my untreated seeds, so I now skip the seed treatment.

When I have a breeder that I want to get a good seed yield from, I hand pollinate it, either with its own pollen (as with the bicolor above) or with pollen from a chosen breeder donor. If the pollen takes, the stigma will wither and die in a day or two. If it doesn't, the stigma will remain yellow and alive for a week or two and will remain receptive and "open" for many days until it gets successfully re-pollinated. Zinnia pollen dies within 24 hours (which, unfortunately, prevents us from exchanging zinnia pollen by mail), so the pollen needs to be same-day pollen for good success.

Seed companies grow their zinnias in fields with very busy and numerous bee activity, so pollination approaches 100% for them. A home garden has less thorough bee pollination, so better germination can be obtained by hand pollination, even when it is selfing. Since I prefer to do my own pollination, I frequently use mesh bags to protect the pollen of my breeders from the bees.

Even with the precautions I take, my home-saved seeds probably don't average much more than 50% germination. Occasionally I will get over 90%, but that is still unusual.

I would suggest planting your seed extra thick, if in a tray of starting mix, or several seeds per pot, if in pots. I have discontinued using the soda pop pots for initial sowing and I now use little 2½" square plastic pots, because I get 32 of them per 11 x 22 tray versus 10 per tray for the soda pop pots. And it takes very much less growing mix for the little pots. For the 2½ pots that germinate seedlings, I repot them (eventually) into the soda pop pots. The soda pop pots tend to tip over with tall zinnias, so I plan to purchase some 5-inch commercial square pots to "phase out" the soda pop pots. I will still use them for rooting large cuttings, because they are transparent and you can monitor the extent of the root growth.

To get started with your zinnia project you could use some good commercial zinnia seed, chosen to support your breeding objectives. Don't hesitate to use F1 hybrid zinnia seed if you like to use them. You'll probably soon be crossing chosen F1 hybrids with other chosen F1 hybrids anyway. And a fraction of commercial field-grown zinnia seeds are actually F1 hybrids pollinated by bees.

Your pipe pots and tools are very clever. I wonder if that idea might even be patentable. Your iron-on transfer plant label looks very legible and plant-friendly. I am still on the lookout for a "zinnia-leaf-green" plant label material. There is a Velcro material that I might use, but it isn't so easy to write on. I think I saw a non-woven fabric craft material somewhere that might fill the bill.

MM

The scabiosa flowered zinnia genes continue to display various novel expressions of themselves, such as this rather odd specimen that just came into bloom. The guard petals are spaced widely apart, almost like the teeth on a gear.

MM

This is a different expression of the scabiosa flowered genes, in which the central florets appear as modified petals. This is the first time I have seen this variant, and I am using it as a breeder.

MM

MM

I especially like the white-centered red flower and the bright red scabiosa zinnia with the longer petals in the center! You are getting some very interesting variations! Every time I see your flowers, I think of building a small greenhouse when I retire. Well, two fairly good sized gardens are plowed up here, at least. If it is dry this weekend, I am going to sow some seeds outdoors.

I have some cherry and ivory swizzles that have just germinated indoors.

Pls8xx, do try some seeds from Park Seed! You will be amazed at the speed with which they germinate!

With respect to your germination problems, I can't help but wonder if you might be running into some trouble in getting viable seeds because some of your zinnias were polyploids, and some weren't. This might add up to low fertilization and seed-setting. I've never really taken the trouble to observe this--for example, in looking at the number of offspring from a cultivar like 'State Fair,' which is a tetraploid, I think....I don't know how well it would self, and also, how it would cross with the diploid cultivars.

JG

I concluded the winnowing process by scattering the seed a few at a time on a paper plate. Using a motion like that of panning for gold I separated the heavier seed from the fluff. I then used a finger tip to rake the seed to be saved off the plate. As MM mentions, good seed has a hard plump feel compared to bad seed and I think the ones I kept should have had a good rate of germination. The seed still looks and feels good.

This led me to consider the genetics problem that JG mentions. The plants were Burpeenas in one location, giant cactus in another, and a few Dashers in another. I can't see a problem here, though there have been no honey bees here for several years, so pollination might be a problem.

MM's observation of germination while still in the seed head may be a more likely cause of my problem. As I said, I collected the seed after the blooms had completely browned in a generally dry August. But there were a couple of rains. Most of the seed was collected from the plants' center "first bloom". Now that I think about it these blooms tend to stay upright on the plant and the upward angle of petals may have caused rain to settle around the seed. If the seed broke dormancy and then immediately dried out I might have seed that looks good but with a dead embryo.

Maybe I should collect the seed sooner. It might also be helpful to kink the stem over before the seeds mature so that the bloom does not hold extra moisture.

In gardening, I have learned more from my failures than I have from my successes.

There are places in California that are ideal for zinnia seed production, because a dry season coincides with the seed ripening phase.

It rains frequently here in this part of Maine, during the Spring, Summer, and Fall. I think that is generally true for most of the state, with the possible exception of some of the mountainous areas. It feels like a sort of cool rain forest here, and the majority of this property is wooded, as is 90 percent of the surrounding area. Mushrooms and fungi thrive in these cool moist conditions. This climate is about as near to the opposite of good zinnia seed growing conditions as you can get.

For that reason I watch my breeder seed heads and, as soon as the bottom rows and middle rows of seeds swell with big embryos, I pick the head and bring it in to dry. I don't try to get anything from the top third of petal rows. The head is far from dead at that stage, and the petals are still alive and with color, albeit somewhat "faded". Because the seed jackets are still alive at this point, they are waterproof and, even if the seedhead is soaked with rain, the embryos are protected from premature germination. Occasionally I will "miss" a seedhead, let it go brown, and I get a lot of premature germination in the seedhead. When I am "shucking" a seedhead, it is dry and cured and if I see tiny dried roots protruding from the sharp end of the seeds, I know that I goofed and lost that seedhead.

I also take advantage of the fact that green seeds have well developed embryos by individually harvesting "green seeds" in late Spring or early Summer to get an early start on a second generation. That can trim nearly a month off of the normal wait time for second generation seedlings. Sometimes, since the green seeds have a live seed coat, I use an X-Acto blade to trim off a little of the seed coat to expose at least a little of the embryo so that it can germinate before the live seed coat has to die in the soil to become pervious to water. I have even had success removing the embryo altogether and germinating the naked embryos indoors under lights in a sterile medium. However, the naked embryos don't seem to speed up the process any more than just exposing a little of the embryo through the live seed coat.

"This led me to consider the genetics problem that JG mentions. The plants were Burpeeanas in one location, giant cactus in another, and a few Dashers in another. I can't see a problem here..."

Me either. None of those are tetraploids, so you probably don't have any "accidental" triploid seeds. Triploid seeds almost never germinate because triploid embryos don't even develop to a mature state. Seedless watermelons are triploids, as are bananas.

"...though there have been no honey bees here for several years, so pollination might be a problem."

If you don't see bees "working" your zinnia patch, you can bet that natural pollination is a problem. Gravity dropping the pollen dumped by the disk florets onto stigmas below won't give you more than a 5 or 10 percent seed set, although the pollen bearing florets may set a naturally selfed seed of their own.

Honey bees, bumble bees, and carpenter bees are very numerous here and actually are a nuisance for me because I have to bag my pollen donors to keep the bees from "stealing" my breeder pollen. This year, I am probably going to bag some of my choicer female flower heads to prevent the bees from accidentally pollinating them. Even though a zinnia flower doesn't happen to have any pollen florets, a bee will frequently land on it and spend a few seconds looking for pollen before flying off. During that time some pollen can drop off of the bee onto stigmas of the female breeder. Apparently bees don't rely on their eyes to see the pollen florets before landing on the flower.

With no bees, you probably are going to have to do your own pollination to get a good seed yield. We have an annoying abundance of bees here.

Some well chosen commercial seeds can get you started this year. But you had just as well plant all of your saved seeds in case any of them do germinate.

"In gardening, I have learned more from my failures than I have from my successes."

That is a very wise observation. It has certainly been true for me.

MM

The second zinnia shown in this thread, the rose pink one marbled with white, was the mother of several of my recent blooms, including the rose-based-white specimen above on Wed, May 7, 08 at 4:44 and this scabiosa-based hybrid, in which the rose and white influence can be seen in the guard petals.

MM

This scabiosa flowered hybrid appeals to me because the guard petals are more like "regular" petals that smoothly transition into more floret-like petals. I have had that flower form a few times before, and hope to have lots more of them, in larger flower sizes.

MM

Another nice one, MM! Your office complete with all the different kinds of blooms must be a sight to behold!

The genetics of these crossings has to be unbelievably complex. I hope that once any of us get flowers that are just what we want, we can get them so that they are true-breeding (homozygous) for most of the multiple characters that we see. Trying to reproduce desirable flowers that require different alleles for each of the characters or traits that we want would make things very difficult.....
hybridization with predictable results can be tough! And then the parent plants that we use would have to be totally reliable (true-breeding) in terms of alleles passed on.

I got some zinnias seeds just lately from Rich Farm Garden Supply--Whirlygig. It looks like this group has been playing around with hybridization, too, as their Whirlygigs claim to be semi-cactus flowered. Should be interesting to see how the plants turn out. I have never had a a pack of Whirlygigs or Zigzags that gave rise to 100% bi-colored flowers. Has anyone reading this thread gotten all plants with flowers of several colors from a pack of Whirlygig or Zigzag seed? Also, what are Dasher zinnias like?

JG

"I hope that once any of us get flowers that are just what we want, we can get them so that they are true-breeding (homozygous) for most of the multiple characters that we see."

I have thought about that from the start, because I can't keep myself from crossing hybrids with hybrids. Making crosses between crosses over and over again leads to very complex ancestry. Commercial F1 hybrid production is essentially repeatable, but crossing and re-crossing, which is fun for hobbyists, involves a lot of randomness that isn't repeatable.

Most commercial F1 hybrid seeds are crosses between special proprietary inbred strains, but commercial tomato growers (and some hobbyists) do a process called "de-hybridization" in which they save seed from an F1, grow of lot of F2s, pick a few of those F2s that most resemble the F1 parent for their next seed crop. Occasionally they will make crosses between "the chosen few". With repeated large plant-outs and stringent re-selection, an F1 hybrid can eventually be converted to an equivalent open-pollinated variety. That takes several years and a lot of stringent re-selection.

My plan to stabilize a really "keeper" zinnia is a form of de-hybridization. I will grow a lot of selfed seed from it and select only those few that best resemble the "keeper" from the large number of highly variable offspring. I will self those and repeat that process of stringent re-selection from large grow-outs.

The key to this is to obtain a large number of seed initially from the "keeper" zinnia. I plan to use asexual propagation (cuttings) to produce quite few clones of the keeper. The clones will let me multiply the seed set, as if the chosen plant had hundreds of seedheads, instead of only the limited number of seedheads that a single zinnia plant produces.

"I have never had a a pack of Whirligigs or Zigzags that gave rise to 100% bi-colored flowers."

I have always found some off-type zinnias in a pack, but that doesn't surprise me. Field-grown zinnia seeds are bee-pollinated.

My original (2006) package of Whirligigs from Stokes Seeds was over 80% bicolored. Maybe more, counting those that had two slightly different shades of a color, like a dark red tipped with a somewhat lighter red. From a distance those don't appear to be bicolored, but up close you can see that technically they are. The Stokes Whirligigs had various amounts of cactus flowered influence, with about a quarter of them being truly cactus flowered. But nothing I would call "spider flowered".

For bicolors to be effective, they need a flower form that shows off the two colors. I have a red based purple zinnia right now that appears red at normal distances, because the petals are fairly closely packed and each row of petals conceals the purple bases of the row of petals beneath it. That's one reason why I prefer the more "open" flower forms.

Incidentally, my experience with commercial scabiosa flowered zinnias is that only 5 or 10 percent of them come true to type from the packet.

I hope to increase the size of my garden in the next year or two, so that I can grow a larger number of zinnias to give me a larger number of specimens to select from. That should help with upcoming de-hybridization projects.

I expect that a side benefit of a de-hybridization project (other than compost piles full of discarded zinnias) will be that some of the off-type rejects will be interesting new forms themselves, and candidates for further use in new breeding projects.

MM

One of my breeding objectives is "toothy petals" and this specimen qualifies as a breeder on that basis.

The funny thing is that this came from that one-pound packet of Burpeeana zinnia seeds from Tanzania that I bought from Stokes Seeds. I don't have a lot of room to grow zinnias indoors, so I didn't plant very many seeds from that packet, but the red-based-purple modified dahlia flowered zinnia also came from that same packet. That makes me optimistic that I may grow some other good zinnias from that packet.

MM

Yes, I guess the trick is in maintaining the desired characteristics against a somewhat constant (possibly new)genetic background. It is a lot of fun to see what we can get through these crosses. I'm fascinated with the results you have been seeing!

Yesterday I planted about 400 feet of zinnias, and am not nearly halfway through! The pattern is, plow up on sunny days. Wait through the rainy days. On the next sunny day, replow and plant. It is a rainy day now, so I placed some Park 'Big Red' zinnias into an indoor flat for germination.
Outdoor planting always ends up in some loss of possible germinating plants for me, so the most expensive seeds are started indoors if possible. I don't have so many lights as you do, so I have to rotate my flats on a 12 hour basis.

JG

Rain is imminent here too, so I finished tilling the garden today while the soil isn't too wet.

I like the big disk florets on this hybrid, because they are significantly larger than regular scabiosa flowered zinnias. I also like the longer guard petals, which are almost like "regular" zinnia petals. The open informal form of the flower also pleases me. Eventually I hope to get really large disk florets, so that each floret is rather like a flower all by itself.

MM

That red flower is interesting--both in form and color! The disc flowers are two-toned and that gives some nice contrast to the flower. I can see that there are scabiosa zinnias in the ancestry. What zinnia contributed the red color?

The seeds I planted back on the 13th are coming up outside. I always worry about those outside plants because of the wild swings we have in temperatures, and also sometimes the rain makes a little layer of hard-pan on the soil in the big garden that some small plants can't penetrate. I guess I just should rely on "survival of the fittest," and know that ultimately the plants (and their seeds) I have should be able to overcome such obstacles in the spring! It's been cool here for this time in spring--60's in the days and 40's in the nights.

By the way, I've seen that I, too, have gotten some tricot seedlings this past week.

JG

"What zinnia contributed the red color?"

It was most probably from a red Burpeeana or a red Burpee Hybrid. I have used pollen from a few red pollen-donor "breeder-class" large Burpee zinnias.

" I always worry about those outside plants because of the wild swings we have in temperatures, and also sometimes the rain makes a little layer of hard-pan on the soil in the big garden that some small plants can't penetrate."

I also worry about those things. My soil is fairly sandy, so hard pan isn't so much of a problem.

"I guess I just should rely on "survival of the fittest," and know that ultimately the plants (and their seeds) I have should be able to overcome such obstacles in the spring!"

My thoughts exactly.

"It's been cool here for this time in spring--60's in the days and 40's in the nights."

It has been that way here, too. Although that isn't considered to be a cool Spring here. It has been warm enough for black flies. I hate black flies. They force me to wear a head net and spray repellent all over. If you don't have black flies, count yourself lucky. I haven't planted any seeds in-ground yet, although I guess I should do that as an experiment. I guess I could think of it as "late" Winter Sowing.

"By the way, I've seen that I, too, have gotten some tricot seedlings this past week."

I hope at least some of them will continue to bear their main-stem leaves and branches in threes. I think plan-of-three plants could lead to better plant forms for zinnias.

MM

This is another big gardening day for me. Besides clearing out the iris patch so that the pretty flowers aren't obscured by grass, I am busy putting in the rest of my zinnia seeds and planting the seedlings that I have been hardening off the last few days. There are cleared out spaces in the perennial aress where some zinnias will go, as well as some newly made patches. I have found that shims from Lowe's make nice row markers. I snap off the narrow end if necessary, and after writing on each with back Sharpie, pound it into the ground with a hammer. They're cheap--about 30 for under $3.00. Once you get rid of the weak end, they are stronger than the usual long wooden markers made for gardens.

JG

I have used the wooden shims from Home Depot for a couple of years now, and they work great. The only downside is that my soil "eats" the bottoms off of them so that I usually get only one season of use. But they are eco-friendly and the "eaten" ones go into a compost pile where the digestion process goes to completion.

I have been transplanting blooming zinnias into my garden for several days now, and will continue that today. Bumble bees are busily pollinating them. I also have been doing pollination of selected specimens here in my little office/laboratory/study/growing room. A scabiosa hybrid bloom is actually in front of my little computer tower right now. I kind of like the symbolic intimacy of the zinnia with the computer.

There are two 2'x4'x6' chrome wire plant stands on rollers in this little room. Chrome wire shelves make a very efficient use of my very limited floor space. My chrome-wire computer stand occupies the south-east corner of the room, and fits very efficiently into the corner with pentagonal-shaped chrome-wire shelves. It has a chrome-wire slide-out keyboard shelf. With all the fluorescent lights, the light is very good in here. No Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for me.

Some people would say that this room is seriously crowded, but I like to think of it as cozy and efficient. My Mother used to say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." and, like many other things, she was right about that too.

Have a good Memorial Day. More later,

MM

I have been planting some "green seeds" from some of the hybrids that I planted earlier this year under fluorescent lights and hand hybridized here next to my computer. Here is a magnified photo of a sample of the green seeds:

Sometimes, to speed up the germination, I perform minor surgery on the green seeds, using an X-Acto knife, to expose the embryo a bit. Using green seeds speeds up the bloom-to-bloom time by several weeks.

MM

Your office lab sounds like a retreat of sorts, maybe even better described as a workshop. You have been getting some great results in there! It's interesting how you rush the growth cycle through use of green seeds. I often harvest seeds when green, but dry them down to store over the winter. It's crossed my mind more than once that this practice may be setting up future generations for vivipary, but I've yet to see it in my plants!

Somehow I can't get quite as excited about indoor gardening as I can outdoor gardening. My main garden I consider as my "kingdom"--sounds funny, but to me, there is nothing more satisfying than going out there and seeing all the diversity of plant life in that plot! And, of course, the small animals and insects and spiders that visit make it fascinating too. As I've been clearing various areas of weeds, I've already run into some recently vacated rabbits' nests.

Anyway, with perfect weather, I am hoping this is the final sowing day. Big Reds and Swizzles have been transplanted, will transplant some Whirlygigs today, and then sow some of the smaller varieties that I had hoped to start indoors--the Profusions, Peruvians, etc.

JG

"I often harvest seeds when green, but dry them down to store over the winter. It's crossed my mind more than once that this practice may be setting up future generations for vivipary, but I've yet to see it in my plants!"

OK, I have to admit that I don't know what 'vivipary' is, so I would be interested in a more detailed explanation of that.

A few of my scabiosa hybrids are showing traits from Whirligig parents. This is one recent bloom.

Now, if I could just get some pink color on the tips of those petals, I would have pink-on-white-on-pink, which would give a kind of white halo effect. Maybe I should cross this one with one of the pink-based-white specimens to see what I get.

MM

It would be interesting if you could get the "halo" effect on your flowers. I don't know if I have ever seen any zinnias with a distinct red or pink layer of color on the tips of the petals, when other colors were present. The closest I believe I have ever gotten is on a flower I pictured earlier:

There, I had a magenta center, then a red layer, then a very small band of yellow. The below was also close, although not such a great photo:

Vivipary is when the seeds while still in the flower, or on the stem of the flower, germinate. This happens under humid, moist conditions and I think pls8xx mentioned something like this earlier. An example around here that is very undesirable is to see corn with kernels sprouting while still on the stalk. It can happen to any plant with a particular genetic background, and is something to select against.

JG

"Vivipary is when the seeds while still in the flower, or on the stem of the flower, germinate. This happens under humid, moist conditions and I think pls8xx mentioned something like this earlier."

Omigosh! Maybe it was me. Back in my Fort Worth days I used to pull petals from the flowers and drop them into little opened furrows and some of them would be up the next day. I attributed the fast germination to the Texas heat. But I also noticed extensive pre-germination in some of my mature seedheads that I saved in the Fall. I attributed that to a wet Fall. I may very well have developed viviparous zinnia strains. Which alerts me to the danger that I might repeat that problem if I continue to use green seeds.

I think I will press on though. The time savings of planting green seeds are tempting. And your technique of gathering the seedheads a bit green and drying them inside is at least a way of successfully culturing viviparous strains. And it has the advantage of being a defense against ordinary water damage from a wet climate.

Incidentally, your second picture above has apparently been "moved or deleted." If you still see it, it may still be in your Temporary Internet cache. The first tricolor does come very close to a halo effect.

MM

The only thing about vivipary is that if you want lots of seeds, and want to store them, these quickly germinating strains will start in the garden from the flower possibly before you are ready to use their seeds. And what if you develop a really nice strain that you might want to sell to a seed company or on your own because you know lots of people might want to buy them? You have some particularly pretty flowers.

Almost all my seeds sown before May 29 have germinated because now we have warm and wet weather. Slow to come with little germination are the Ruffles from Jung and the Giant Cactus from Thompson and Morgan. We'll see about those!

Usually I have all kinds of potted flowers on my patio--annuals I buy from a nursery. I think I will thin my short zinnias when they come up and transplant some to the pots on the patio. By mid-July, it should look nice. I have to also cultivate patience here!

JG

I am certainly glad you raised the issue of vivipary, because it is a hazard that I needed to know about. In hindsight, I think that I probably had several strains of viviparous (if that is a word) zinnias in my Fort Worth garden, because for years I had been following the practice of planting green seeds in order to get quick turnaround. My goal in Fort Worth's long growing season was to get three generations a year out in the garden, and with green seeding I was able to achieve that.

Our growing season here in Maine is months too short to make three generations outside possible (unless I discover some technique for speeding up the growth of zinnias significantly). However, by using cuttings from my Fall crop last year, I got three generations in 2007. And now in 2008, by starting some zinnias inside under fluorescent lights in March, the possibility of four generations this year exists, particularly if I am able to bring my little lean-to greenhouse into use by this Fall. Seedlings from crosses that I made with this year's early generation are now emerging, much to my delight.

Yes, they were green seeds, with their seed-coats opened up a little with an X-Acto knife. Apparently that technique will work with "any zinnia" so I am hoping that this practice will not lead to viviparous strains. The Fort Worth experience was entirely different because many, perhaps most, of the green seeds that I pulled from flower heads actually had the tip of the emerging root showing. That is definitely not the case with my current practice. Even "regular" zinnia seedheads will pre-germinate in the garden in a warm rainy spell. That is why I follow your practice of gathering the seedheads before the petals have completely died and bring them in to dry.

Many green seeds will take two or three weeks to germinate because apparently the living seed coat is waterproof and it must take time to die and partially decay to become permeable to water so that the embryo can get a signal to grow. My techniques with the X-Acto knife apparently solve that delay by making the seed coat instantly permeable. I say that, because I have seedlings from green seeds growing now that emerged in only five days. That is only two or three days slower than with seed packet seeds.

Anyway, I am very pleased and encouraged that I am nearly one full generation ahead of where I was last year at this time. But, thanks to you, I will keep a watchful eye out for the signs of vivipary.

MM

Temperature-wise, here in central Indiana, it is great for the zinnias. We have had daytime temperatures at 80 to 90 degrees. But, rainwise, it is terrible! In the last week, we have already had about 8 inches of rain, and I'm sure we've already picked up 3-4 inches more today and it still pours. There is flooding everywhere. I've lost my special yellow zinnias from Park due to flooding and it looks like some of my Benarys will be lost, too. I'm thinking to ask my husband to quickly build an ark and we, along with our animals and two zinnia plants, will do our best to survive.

JG

Sorry to hear about your flooding problems. We have had rain showers off and on for the last several days, but the total accumulation hasn't been a lot and we have no flooding problems. Mosquitoes have been bad, though.

Would raised beds be a solution to your flooding, or is it worse than that?

MM

My main garden was in about 3 inches of water for several hours yasterday, but the zinnias there were able to peek above the water as they are getting taller, and that at least is good. They seem to be alright today, and that water is gone. And, I have several raised gardens within that garden that I have converted for small zinnias. But, I had a newer patch near our field, that I've never seen flooded, and most of it was submerged for 24 hours several days ago by about 5 inches of water, and today, about half of it is still under water. I think I will lose about 3/4 of my Benarys, and all my green zinnias, the Ruffles, and some special yellow zinnias from Park. I will hastily reorder a few packs of seeds and place some of these somewhere else.

Yesterday was a record-setter for rain in Indiana, with whole communities under water. Since we are not near a river or dam we were OK in that we had no damage to the house. But, with flat land, there is nowhere for the water to go so it sits until absorbed by the soil!
Tornados have also come very close in the past week as well. And, of course, we had our earthquake about two months ago! I think we've had our share of natural disasters!

JG

Despite the huge amount of rain and associated damage we have received, the majority of zinnias here have survived and are thriving. The Big Reds, I think, will live up to their name. They are already 7-8 inches tall! I would show a picture here, but the weeds are thriving, too. It is going to be a major effort to clear the garden and other patches of weeds with the mosquitoes, mud, and high temperatures and humidity.

All plants in the last weeks have shown more flowers than ever. The black locusts had so many blooms, they appeared entirely white; our Japanese lilac has the largest and most flowers ever. Right now, columbines, roses, coreopsis, astilbe, campanula, the first of the daylilies, and wild geraniums are at their best.

I received my new seeds and will probably sow some this weekend, behind a row of daylilies. I suspect they will bloom several weeks after the last of the daylilies!

JG

Despite the floods, your outdoor activities are way ahead of mine. I have just a few zinnias up that I planted out last Sunday (some of those in the one-pound bag from Tanzania). I can afford to expose them to cutworms.

I have been transplanting out my big zinnias that I started inside last March, and have some more of that to do. I have been crossing them here in my little "study", planting green seeds from the crosses, and some of those are far enough along to apply plant growth regulator to.

I could transplant them out, but last year about this time I had serious cutworm problems and I hesitate to expose these little hand-pollinated hybrids to such a fate. And, besides, I need to learn the techniques of plant growth regulation better. In April I was two weeks or more too late in applying the PGR to keep the plants low enough for culture on three-shelf plant stands. (I had to take a shelf out of three plant stands.) Several of my current seedlings are now at the stage when re-potting and PGR applications are probably in order.

The red zinnias whose picture I showed on Thu, May 8, 08 at 16:31 was designated breeder status and coded "B2" and it has produced a fairly good crop of green seeds, many of which are growing as seedlings now. I also plant to take some cuttings from it while the plant is still healthy.

My heart goes out to all the folks in the Midwest who have suffered losses from the recent floods.

More later. This is a very busy time indoors and outdoors for me.

MM

I'm amazed at how quickly you are getting your zinnia generations to move along. It will be interesting to see how the red zinnia's offspring look!

I'm glad we don't have the cutworms that you are seeing. As of yet, we have no insect pests, and I am hoping the strange weather we've had this year may play a role in reducing the number of Japanese beetles we have been seeing in the past years. Usually just as the zinnias begin to flower, the beetles start to chew at their leaves.

Below is how my main garden looks this morning. I've used my little Honda tiller (tills about 10" wide) to clean the spaces out between the rows, and I've started to weed the actual rows. The most prevalent weed is the Peruvian daisy (as described in my plant ID manual). Some sedge and grass try to invade, too.

Included here are lots of cactus, scabiosa, tetraploid, and my mixed zinnias (from previous years).

Below is what a neighbor about a mile up our road has to deal with, as does almost every farmer in our immediate area. It has turned into " a land of 10000 recent lakes."
Please keep all the folks who have been affected by this disaster in your prayers.

JG

I guess you are lucky your garden isn't a lake like that second picture.

This little zinnia shows influences from both Whirligig and Scabiosa parentage.

I hope to have much better versions of Whirligig/Scabiosa combinations this summer.

MM

That last flower (scabious x whirlygig) is nice. There is a lot of white on the tips of the petals and the contrasting colors make it look quite bright. Can't wait to see the results of your other crosees!

I put in a row of Ruffles, Sun Gold, and Benary zinnias today--hope they can catch up with the others. I've noticed some already have flower buds!

JG

You should get some good plant habit genes from Ruffles and Sun Gold and the Benarys should contribute strong stems. I've noticed that some of my scabiosa flowered zinnias have rather thin stems and that some have strong thick stems, so that is something I will be watching for as a selection criterion.

Years ago I read in an art book that head mounted magnifiers were useful for painting fine details, so I finally decided to get a pair for my plant breeding activities. There are several brands and models available, but I decided to try the Bausch and Lomb Magna Visor based on user reviews of the product. I'm glad I did. I find the 12-inch lens to be very suitable for my plant breeding. I started using it for pollination, but now I find that it is also useful for finding good green seeds in the flower heads as well. I am now using my Magna Visor just about daily and, like one of the reviewers said, I wouldn't want to be without it and if something happened to mine I would immediately order another one.

With gas prices being what they are, I guess we will skip our annual trip to the Johnny's Selected Seeds home store. I had been delaying sending them an order in case we did go, but now I think I will send them an order, primarily to get some of their Oklahoma zinnia seeds. Their strain presumably has extra colors. I think Oklahoma might contribute some good plant habit genes. I don't like their flower form, but hopefully some hybridization with other flower forms can solve that.

MM

The visor you have really sounds like a good idea. I have a huge magnifying glass here at home, but your visor is great because you don't need to use a hand to manipulate it.
I may get one, too--thanks for the tip.

The zinnias here are starting to take off, but no flowers yet, just buds. So, I have started to look at the leaves for any unusual characteristics. Here are some plants I observed this morning, both having leaves in sets of three coming out from the stem. Both, however, did not have three cotyledons, only two. The first is a Jung's Oklahoma Mix zinnia; the second is Gift zinnia (orig. from Russia) from SSE.

Below is an unusual set of leaves found in a Gurney's State Fair plant.

Some of the plants look a little unhealthy after being exposed to flooding conditions, now dry, hot sunny conditions. Guess they will adapt, but some of the early leaves look pretty bad.

JG

Some of my 3-leaf specimens had 2 cotyledons and some of my 3-cotyledon specimens had 2-leaf pairs. A very few have both 3 cotyledons and leaves in threes. So far none of the seedlings from 3-leaf versions inherited the characteristic. Maybe it isn't genetic. But they keep appearing, so I will keep trying. I even had one specimen with "threesie" side branches. That is the first time I have seen that. It really whets my appetite to get a plan-of-three strain. I think the "threesie" plant habit could be really nice.

I have seen those odd cotyledons on State Fairs before. I think it may have something to do with their tetraploidy.

I've put my tetraploid/triploid/hexaploid experiments on the back burner for a while. The tetraploids that I grew in 2006 had a petal form that was sort of spoon-shaped that I didn't like. I don't like the idea of producing sterile triploids, and doubling their chromosome number to hexaploids might be just too many chromosomes for good plant characteristics. Some of the tetraploid characteristics seem a little undesirable to me. For the time being I will stick with diploids.

MM

I have planted a number of tetraploids this year, but will be crossing some of them among themselves, and see what I get. I've purchased these from several different sources.

We've had a lot of heat and rain lately, so yesterday, I replanted one part of a patch that was flooded earlier(I don't think we will have another big flood like we had in the past weeks).

Buds are starting to open here. I think in the next two weeks, I will see the first of the flowers. My major concern now is that any plants I would like to cross are ready at the same time! I guess it is a good thing each plant has a fairly long flowering season. I see that bugs are also starting to put holes in some of the leaves. I haven't caught them doing it, it's just "a here and there" sort of thing. I was going to put some flowers in the county fair, but wanting to forego the insecticide because of the bees, I think I will not do that this year.

JG

Finally! My first outdoor zinnia of 2008 has arrived. He's a little skimpy, and I bet a descendent of Zowie, but none-the-less, a bright spot in the garden.

I wonder if we should start Part 5?

JG

Wow! I see yellow, orange, scarlet, red, and rose-purple in that one. That's at least five colors in one zinnia. Since it is "throwing pollen" already, it probably is a child of Zowie.

A agree that we should start a new thread. I'll set it up tomorrow.

MM

I've been following all four parts and finally decided that I need to log in and ask some questions.

Using what I've "learned" here, I cross pollinated zinnias for the first time today. We'll see. I used pollen from a purple dahlia type on a red/ivory swizzle and then on a red/yellow.

My question: Last year I grew dahlia flowered zinnias in purple and yellow. Each packet was true to color for the percentage that I planted. I let the bees pollinate them. I did not seperate the seed from the two colors. Flowers from their saved seed began to bloom last week. No yellows have bloomed so far. (I had more purple blooms than yellow last year.) I have a number of purples and I also have pinks. Did these pinks come from the purple x yellow? or are they from the purple x purple?

Welcome to the GardenWeb and to zinnia experimentation. It sounds like you are off to a good start. I intend to grow some Swizzles and cross various things with them, but haven't gotten around to that yet. I even have some un-planted Swizzle seed. I'll be planting them soon.

I still haven't "decoded" the principles of zinnia color mixing. I did get some surprises with a good purple cactus flowered specimen that I pollinated last year. It had essentially no pollen (possibly none at all) so it made a good "natural" female. I crossed several good zinnias onto it, mostly breeder-class cactus flowered zinnias, and got a good seed yield of F1 hybrids from it.

Since it was purple and I sort of expected purple to be pretty dominant, I expected mostly purple shades in the F1s. Instead I got colors like pink, yellow, and orange. The yellows and oranges probably did have some purple pigment in them, because the yellows were sort of an "old gold" and the orange was a sort of burnt orange. So far I haven't seen a purple bloom from that cross. I guess it is like they say on the TV reality shows -- expect the unexpected.

Incidentally, the real excitement starts when you grow the F2s. There you get an almost infinite number of recombinations of characteristics from the original parents.

"Did these pinks come from the purple x yellow? or are they from the purple x purple?"

Based on my limited experience, I think it is possible that the pinks came from the purple x yellow. I think it is less probable that they came from purple x purple, although that isn't impossible, because one or more of your purples may have been a hybrid itself.

I think it is likely that you will get some interesting things from your crosses this year. You might even get some interesting plant habits, intermediate between the low bushy form of Swizzle and the taller zinnias.

MM

Well, as we discussed above, we are continuing this over in a new message thread, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5. See you over there.

MM