It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 56
zen_man
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sharon2079
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It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 3
Comments (40)Pls8xx, "One thing that has been on my mind the last few weeks is how important it is to me that a zinnia have a short compact plant form. I grow in a sand/clay mix rather than topsoil. It will hold plants upright fine when dry, but when wet the soil looses its strength and the tall plants become vulnerable to wind knocking them over." You have made a good case that you do need zinnias with a more compact plant habit. Last year, we had a very violent storm with high winds of 50mph and it blew down literally dozens of my zinnias. I had concrete re-bar tomato cages around a few of my more critical "breeders" and they were protected. But many of my big zinnia plants snapped off at the ground and many more lost their basal branches and some lateral branches. Interestingly, some of my big bushy scabiosa flowered zinnias and most of those F1s with a "scabi" parent came through just fine, with amazing resistance to the high winds. As is usual in a high wind storm here, for a period of hours we lost our electrical power, our telephone land line, and our cable connection. I studied the wreckage in my zinnia patch to see "what went wrong" structurally with my zinnias. As is usual for me, there were some surprises. I plan to apply what I learned from my "crash investigation" to make better decisions about plant structure this year. For one thing, I had planted a lot of Burpeeanas, from both Burpee and from Stokes. I had a lot of "out of the seed packet" Burpeeanas and some F1 hybrids from crosses that I made between Burpeeanas. (Incidentally, your picture of the "original" red Burpeeanas shows just how nice that Burpeeana bushy look can be.) To my amazement, some of the most disastrous structural failures were in my Burpeeanas. They have what I refer to as a "candelabra" stem structure, with basal branches coming out from the main stem at a 90 degree angle. Even though the stems look thick and strong, there is a kind of "joint" at the attachment point. Some of the basal branches that were in contact with the soil had actually sprouted roots and were apparently in the process of becoming independent plants. It's almost as if the stem joint was "willing" to detach from the main stem. But even higher up, those branches that cantilevered out from the main stem at a 90-degree angle seemed inherently weak. In almost all cases, the branches broke at their attachment points to the main stem. The plants that seemed resistant to branches breaking off had their branches leaving the main stem at a much more acute angle, like 45 or even 30°. So their branches were headed upward at the attachment point. For whatever reason, those branches seemed much better attached, even if the plant habit was more generally upward than outward. Despite the fragility of the Burpeeana plants in high winds, I plan to continue growing them and selecting the best flowers and plants. I will just be looking for stronger attachment points for their branches. If you want to emphasize compactness in your zinnia breeding, you can start with some strains that are already compact and cross some other zinnias with them. I personally have quit crossing the lower growing zinnias because I don't like kneeling and bending over to do my cross pollinating. I've always had a tendency toward lower back pain from my gardening, and a lot of bending over just aggravates it. However, short zinnias are interesting looking and fascinating in crosses, so I am thinking about constructing some really high raised beds that might bring those short zinnias up to a more comfortable working distance. There are some short zinnias that you can cross with tall zinnias that will produce some intermediate compact F1 hybrids, and the F2s from them should sort out into a wide range of plants that you could pick from for further breeding. Three of the shortest are the Thumbelina zinnia, the Zinnita zinnia, and Zinnia Short Stuff. Here is another view of Short Stuff and here is another seed source: Short Stuff at New England seed. Some taller but still very compact zinnias are Zinnia Swizzle cherry and ivory, Zinnia Swizzle scarlet and yellow, Zinnia Dreamland hybrids, Zinnia Magellan mix, and I just found that Zinnia Peter Pan mix is apparently still available. By crossing some of those compact zinnias with other zinnias you should have the basis for creating several new strains of compact zinnias, with various degrees of compactness. MM...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 10
Comments (93)Hi! Let me show you what happened when I allowed the below flower, a red scabious zinnia, cross randomly with other zinnias in the garden (we will presume pollination carried out by insects). The mother flower, or at least, one similar example from the same plant, shown below: The offspring (shown at different scale): This one above has full, orange scabious flowers, about 1 1/2 inches across. This one above not a good flower at all, but it may be damaged by the weather conditions we've had, too. Not like it's mother.... This flower above looks like it may have had a whirligig dad...has a good supply of disc flowers. This above flower seems to me to be most like the mother flower, but the florets are a shorter red, and there are guard petals (damaged, I think) of a shade of fuscia. This is the only plant that has inherited the relatively narrower leaves of its maternal parent, too. The above flower seems uncertain of what to do--funny florets in the center, somewhat curly petals here and there, but keeping the red color for the most part. Last, but not least: This might be an interesting one. Daisy-like, some of the central florets turning brown due to too much rain, and more to come! I couldn't believe what sorts of flowers came from that red scabious mother! It's kind as if anything goes when there are random crosses. I have four or five plants that resulted from planned crosses with the red scabious and a red cactus. Will see what happens.... But I sure would like to get another red scabious like the one I had last summer.... ZM, when you said "recombinant" flower I thought you probably meant home-bred, but I asked anyway. I think what you're doing is the right thing. I am going to eliminate those plants that produce mediocre flowers to get better lines going here. For now, though, I am nipping off the undesirable first flowers without destroying the plants. I think some ugly flowers may be resulting from poor environmental conditions! I wonder if we should move to Part 11? ZM? JG...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 47
Comments (115)Hi Four, This is an older message thread (Part 47, while Part 51 is current) but I will respond anyway. Yes, in your B photo, the pollen florets are maturing and setting seeds and they probably no longer have nectar for butterflies, so you could could remove that bloom if feeding butterflies is your primary motivation. In your C photo it isn't crucial where on the stem you make the cut.. I would cut down lower on the stem because there isn't any significant advantage to leaving a lot of bare stem on your plant. If you want to make further comments, it would be better to add them to Part 51, which has only 21 comments, while this Part 47 now has well over 100 comments. ZM...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 54
Comments (112)Hello Fred, " ...is there a good way to separate out viable seeds to keep and discard those that look like they won't germinate? I'm just yanking out a dozen petals and pinching them, discarding the thinnest ones. And the florets seeds look quite different, thinner, and many look like they can't possibly germinate. " Good question. There is a learning curve here, but you can gently squeeze a green zinnia seed between your thumb and forefinger to "feel" the embryo inside the seed. Seeds with undeveloped embryos will feel flat and empty. The embryo is not really a seed within a seed, but it feels a little like that. The embryo is actually just the baby plant with a pair of tiny cotyledons (seed leaves) and a tap root stub. As an experiment, you can remove the embryo from a green seed and plant just the embryo. I once planted a whole flat of embryos. This is a photo of some viable green seeds that have been dried, which turns them brown. This is a photo of some chaff with mostly floret seeds. This is a photo of some fairly freshly picked green seeds. The green seed technique has been invaluable to me in my zinnia project. I learned it from Jackie_R in a much earlier part of this "It can be fun" message series. ZM...See Morezen_man
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