When transplanting Cucs, don't bury them any deeper than the root ball. I found if you plant them deeper & cover any of the exposed stem, the stem rots at, or just below the soil interface. As the plant grows tougher & the stalk touches the ground, it may send out a new root where it touches the ground but don't cover it. The surface of the seedling plant soil should be the surface of the soil in the larger pot. I learned that one year when I lost 6 nice plants when I put them in the greenhouse & buried them like I do tomatoes. Good thing is cuc seeds sprout pretty quick if you soak them in water before planting.

Essie, I feel your pain. Gardening is a learning experience. Last year, I lost 90% of my WS to the drought, so frustrated. This year, things were actually going well when we got hit with a rainstorm yesterday. We got so much rain in such a short time that it wash all the dirt along with seedlings out of most of my WS containers. I was able to save some but now I have lots of columbine and no idea from which containers they came from. Seedlings that I don't know what they are, have been put in a pot label mystery plants. One thing that made feel better was the astrantia major that I've been trying to grow for 3 years finally sprouted. All the dirt was gone but they were still in the container. Its not too late to sow some annuals, I sowed some nigella last week. This post was edited by mori1 on Tue, May 28, 13 at 17:53

Hey Steve, You might recall that I was born and raised in NW Indiana, Benton County. Yea, the cool front came through this morning and it is now 79°. . .don't laugh! Actually, I was supposed to attend my nephew's wedding in Fowler, Indiana last Saturday. My hubby and I were going to drive up in our RV and stay at my parents' house on the Tippecanoe River. Then we were going to take our time and drive back home stopping at the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. But due to health issues, I'm still here in south Texas scheduled to have my gallbladder removed next week at the Houston Medical Center. In the meantime, I watching my cute little hummers!

I want to say that Alan Kapuler of Oregon and Peace Seeds was one of the first people to do such a thing. I haven't had a project where i deliberately aimed to hybridize a particular hybrid variety. I think in most cases i would just save the seed. Sure a little bit of segregation and or changes could occur over time, but in most cases i really doubt its a big deal. Seed companies try to make you think what they offer is one of a kind and that it you save seed that it will never grow the same again. In some cases that might be true for one or two generations after, but after that they start to stabilize again. I bought some seeds for Polar Bear hybrid white pumpkin. I have no problems saving seed from it were i to grow it. Joseph Lofthouse has several landrace projects he is working on which are amazing. His attempts have inspired me to work on my own and even a few collaboration projects like our watermelon landraces that grow and thrive in Colorado and Utah where traditional watermelon genetics fail miserably. (it is starting to show some good success). Joseph however knows a great deal about hybrid crops like sunflowers and carrots where ALL commercial hybrids of these crops contain male-sterile genes!!! What that means that it is very difficult to dehybridize carrots and sunflowers without male sterility to show up again each generation. But he knows how to do it and has done it. Amazing stuff. The only major projects i'm working with and making my own hybrids right now are with peas. Peas are great because they are naturally inbreeding. Which means that once you make a cross all you need to do is grow them out several generations and the genes separate back. The hard part is making the cross in the first place. One pea i'd like to cross is the marrofat type pea named Biskopens that has red seeds. It has excellent heat tolerance and grows into late july. But it takes a very long time to flower and grow. Therefore i am hoping to cross it to any dwarf or faster growing variety of pea.