Hi Highlander, " I didn't bother saving seeds from the zinnias with only single layers of petals, only the thick doubles." We think alike on that. I don't like the single zinnias, either. In fact, since I breed zinnias as a hobby, I usually pull up single zinnias, because I don't want bees crossing them with my better zinnias. If a cull is growing too close to a zinnia that I like, I use a hand pruner to cut the cull off at ground level, so as not to disturb the nearby zinnia. "I want to grow seeds from last year's flowers so I can hopefully ensure I end up with a good assortment of colors..." I mentioned culling. One thing you can do is to plant your zinnias closer together than you normally would, and then at first bloom, remove (cull) those that aren't to your liking. Zinnias are somewhat of a numbers game, and the more of them you grow, the better are your chances of finding ones that you like. "I just can't seem to beat Murphy's law and have all of the colors from that pack represented in the same season!" One sure way to have all of the colors from that pack represented in the same season is to plant all of the seeds in the pack. If you don't have room to do that, and I assume you don't or you would have, my tip about planting them thick and thinning them out at first bloom could help you get better color diversity. "...instead of a bunch of plants that only produce a few colors because simple dumb luck resulted in growing 12 seeds that didn't include all of the 6-7 colors in the seed pack." That "6-7 colors" thing caught my eye. Zinnias come in well over a hundred different colors. There are more than 7 different pinks. Most packets of "mixed colors" are not formula mixed from fields of separate colors, but are grown in a field of mixed colors. Zinnias are pollinated by bees, which accidentally cross pollinate a significant percentage of the blooms they visit. So a lot of color mixing goes on. And even though your zinnia seed packet doesn't say anything about F1 hybrid seeds, chances are that some of them actually are F1 hybrids, courtesy of the busy bees. But bees keep poor records, so you don't know what got crossed with what. And then, when you save seeds from one of your zinnias, you actually may be saving seeds from an unlabeled F1 hybrid, so that you will get significant variation in those F2 generation hybrids that you grow next year. Adding to the variety of colors that zinnias can have, zinnias, like dahlias, can combine two or more colors in a bloom. So the number of different color combinations can be huge. You can even get green and white. Some zinnias can look somewhat like dahlias. By saving your own seeds, you can develop zinnia strains that you like, and the more zinnias you can grow, the more you will have to pick from. I grow zinnias as a hobby, and my breeding efforts look for new zinnia flower forms and plant habits. Zinnias tend to be full of surprises, so predicting the results from just a few seeds can be, as you say, subject to Murphy's Law. ZM This post was edited by zenman on Tue, Nov 18, 14 at 13:48

I put the raccoon into the shed Wednesday evening because rain was in the forecast. Saturday morning was dry and a squirrel had dug where my Sweet Treat carrots were planted. The raccoon came back out and today (Sunday) I heard a squirrel making a racket in the far corner of the yard. He seemed upset about the raccoon being there. I think I will leave him out even in the rain from now on. On a side note it looks like a pair of hawks has moved into an abandoned rooftop across the street from me. I think they're Cooper's hawks but they seem rather large. It will be interesting if they nest up there.

You can always try saving hybrid seed. It may not come true to the parent, but in some cases it may. After all that is how breeding new varieties is/was done. Cross breeding and then selecting for desired characteristics over several generations. There also are some varieties which are labeled as hybrid but are not. I've always suspected that it was done to keep people from saving seed. Anyway if you have the watermelons growing now, might as well save some seed and give them a try next year. It may or may not work out, but you have little to loose other than some wasted space in next years garden.

Dale, I am truly sorry to hear that man's best friend sort of went nuts and failed to mind his manners. I hope you get some more melons and tomatoes from those plants. There must be something about canines and melons, because here in the boondocks, coyotes devour melons like mad and don't even wait for the melons to get close to being ripe. Fred has lost practically all his melons at the old home place to coyotes the last few years, and he used to plant dozens and dozens of plants. I think he's given up on raising melons out there any more, and it is a shame because the old home place has great sandy soil along the Red River. Most of my dogs don't eat tomatoes, but they're fenced out of the garden anyway. Since we have hard clay soil, they can't dig under the fence although they certainly have run amok in the garden when I have forgotten and left the gate open. (A mistake you only make a couple of times before you learn that your garden pays the price for a gate left open.) Do you think your dog was playing or was thirsty? Maybe he or she had knocked over the water dish and sought out the fruit for the water content? Maybe the dog wanted to play ball? My dogs grow their own gourds and pumpkins on the dogyard fence and randomly pull them and play with them whenever the mood strikes, so they don't necessarily get a lot of gourds or pumpkins to full maturity, but they have fun. The stink bugs are atrocious this year. Between them and the grasshoppers, it is a wonder I have a garden left. I haven't had SVBs this year, but have squash bugs, the aforementioned stink bugs (they arrived in May again which is abnormally early), and leaf-footed bugs. You know, pelting the dog with tomatoes might not be a bad idea. Here in our area, when a country dog kills a family chicken, some people tie the dead chicken carcass to the dog's collar and leave it there a couple of days so the dog has to smell that decaying corpse. They claim it teaches the dog a lesson, but uggh, I don't think I could do it. Luckily, our dogs aren't bird killers. Every year we have different gardening challenges, and some years are more challenging than others. You still have plenty of time to get lots more tomatoes and other veggies since the average frost date for your area is....what....about early November? Every winter, I start out the year with such high hopes for the garden, and then it is always a struggle all spring and summer to try to make the dream a reality. If it isn't the weather, it is the pests, or the deer or the rabbits or.....whatever disease is most active that year. What keeps us all going? Probably that old saying "there's always next year". Since we've lived here, every animal known to mankind has attempted to destroy my garden, though thankfully not all in the same year. As soon as I figure out how to exclude one type of wildlife, another one figures out how to get into the garden. I've seen animals in/around my garden that I never knew existed....until we moved here, I didn't know that there was such a thing as a ring-tailed cat. (That particular wild critter likes to eat our young poultry.) I'd never expected to have a beaver killing our trees, or a cougar hanging out at the edge of the garden, or skunks digging up sunflowers or turtles eating tomatoes. It is always something......and I didn't know that deer ignore those lists of "plants that deer won't eat" and eat them anyway. Recently, I noticed 1 lone pigweed plant in the corner of the potato bed. I kept meaning to dig it up or cut it down---seems like it zoomed from 6" tall to 5' tall in about a week.....but before I got around to it, a deer ate it. Ha! At least the deer are good for something. I think I grew okra here for 5 years before I ever got a pod because the deer would jump the then-three-foot-tall garden fence and eat every plant down to the ground at some point during the season. All that's ever worked for me is the 7' tall fence we have now, and it only works if I remember to always close both gates. One reason I haven't expanded the garden more and more every year is because it means moving the 7' tall fence or errecting another one. I have friends who garden in towns, both large cities and small towns, and they often find fruit missing from their plants, or sometimes entire plants gone, and believe it is two-legged critters stealing their fruit and veggies, flowers and herbs. So, I guess a garden is never truly 'safe'. Hopefully the second half of this gardening year will turn out better than the first. Or, as I always say, there's always next year..... Dawn