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

Thank you Ann! very good information :) I will try with two of the smaller rosebonsai tree's, they can take all the time they want, and if no fusing happens maybe atleast the roots will get all tangled up over time. So then when i replant it, i will raise the plants a couple of inches every time and expose more and more of the roots, this way the roots will become the stem of the tree and get bark, and belive me it looks very impresive only with one plant, i cant imagaine how it would look with 2 or even more plants tangelt up. I have many rosebushes that i done this with (raised the roots), and they have some amazing shapes, and as Ann said the bark is very impresive looking, and over time even some deadwood have aperd, witch looks great in contrast to the flowers, leafs and reddish bark. I have another question someone maybe can help me with, i collected 5 rosebushes in my mother's garden lite over a year ago, they all died back to the stock after the transplant to pots, new growth came after a few weeks, but this time it was not the big leafs and the big white/pink roses, but instead small very dark green leafs and very small blood red roses (the classic rose, but in miniature) First i was thinking that they where the original wild roses from the stock, but i have never seen classic blood red roses in miniature as wild roses, they are often pink and more flower looking i belive? Any idea of what genetics these roses can be? I am offcourse very very happy this happend, it gave more scale to the tree's as bonsai's.

This is a great thread! I've learned SO much this year as it was my first true "gardening year". There definitely were a few bumps in the road but overall I think it was a great first year considering I had very little to no experience, and a sad, naked patch of grass when I started. I must credit the many experienced, helpful and friendly people on this forum for all the invaluable information you have shared on this forum over the years, as I have picked it apart this year and it has been a priceless source of knowledge and inspiration. Here are a few lessons that stick out to me right now. 1- Give roses SPACE... apparently more than you think they need. As someone that is brand new to roses, I made what I assume to be the most common error made by a new rose grower & planted my roses way too close together. And a few of them too close to my house. This has caused me all kinds of trouble, most of all it has encourage blackspot to spread from one plant to the next, down the line, eventually reaching the other side of the boarder, I'm still not entirely sure what to do about certain layout problems that I've got, but several things will be moved/removed this fall, so I'll just have to sit down and plan it out... which leads me to ... 2- PLAN PLAN PLAN where to put big things like roses, trees, and other shrubs. Most of my most frustrating gardening errors revolve about my placement of something, be it a rosebush or another large plant. 3- I need to pay more attention to the shrub sizes given in online reviews and forums and less attention to the shrub size the nursery lists in the description. 4- Rose slugs are jerks. They really are the worst, and now that I know what they look like and where to find them hopefully they won't cause as much devastation as they did this past spring. 5- Plant everything immediately or ASAP. From my experience in trying to care for plants that are still in their nursery provided pots I have gained a whole new respect for nursery gardeners & the magic they must use to keep these masses of fledgeling plants alive. These baby plants (mostly talking about perennials, but tiny bands fall into this too) in their poor quality soil and flimsy nursery containers are the equivalent of a ticking time bomb when left in my care, even on a mostly shady porch and watered regularly. I have lost so many plants that were waiting on me to plant them, for no apparent reason at all other than they were tired of waiting on my unrelenting schedule. 5- Cut back the rose more severely after big blooms. So many of my roses are looking scraggly and overgrown right now and it is driving me crazy, but I know cutting them now could put them in danger of suffering more winter dieback, so I guess I just have to live with it. Next year they will be getting more regular haircuts. 6- Sweet potato vine, my newfound love this year, was both a blessing and a curse. I think someone above mentioned putting sweet potato vine in with their roses for container interest, but I would have to recommend against it. These things form a thick, chaotic network of roots like I have never seen before! Every planter that they were in they choked out all the other plants that went in with them. They completely killed all their companion annuals, and just plain sucked the life out of their companion roses. Just for an example, I bought the famously free-flowering Easy Going and Living Easy as bands, put them in GIANT containers with a small sweet potato vine in each, great soil, full sun, consistent water and they haven't done anything all season. I think easy going had maybe 2 tiny flowers and Living Easy had zero. Neither has grown any taller or wider than when I got them, meanwhile the fragrant cloud (not the most free flowering plant) which I got at the same time, in the same shipment is in a tiny pot off to the side on my porch with only afternoon sun & is already 2 feet tall and blooming regularly. It has to be the sweet potato vine, it is one hungry, fast growing beast. I love the bright green foliage and draping nature of this vine so much next year I might just put it in its own pot on a tall plant stand behind the shorter pots so that it may drape down behind them all, but it will never be a companion plant for me again. there is so much more but I don't have enough time to write it all! Jessica

Fact is, the original question is "why do you SAVE seeds," not why you don't trade seeds. If you don't want to trade, don't. Who cares? Just don't talk down to those of us who enjoy trading and growing traded seed. ***** Bill, since I was the first here to say I don't trade seeds I'm going to attempt to answer you. First, I was in no way talking down to anyone, and you know me well enough to know that. The question indeed was why do you save seeds. And I discussed the various reasons as to why I did save seeds, and I saw nothing at all wrong in saying that I didn't trade seeds other than with three other SSE members. And yes, all the reasons you gave for dealing with wrong varieties are absolutely true. I think perhaps you've forgotten that there are many here, usually lurkers trying to learn, that really don't know how to ID wrong varieties. Over the years, and I started posting at AOL back in about 1989, long before you or Keith or Trudi or others did, I've seen post after post about that and it's primarily b'c they grow varieties without knowing what to expect as to plant habit, leaf form, fruit shape, size and color. So trading seeds for them I think introduces an additional risk factor that they may not be aware of. The other issue I've spoken to before and will here again, is that I like to see folks buy at least some of their seeds, b'c the sources with the most varieties to offer are also those small companies that are so very dependent on tomato seed sales. Finally, I may not trade seeds with lots of folks but what I have done is to offer seeds for close to 350 varieties here and elsewhere. And you'll remember that each time I make a point of saying that I cannot vouch for absolute seed purity. I say the same thing for my SSE listings. If I process 20 fruits of variety X for seed and only one of them has been X pollinated, those F1 hybrid seeds may take a very long time to show up in someones garden. There are varieties that I thought were pure that subsequently were shown to have a few F1 seeds. So I am not talking down to anyone who trades seeds, but I do feel that there's nothing wrong with pointing out the possible pitfalls of doing so, especially for folks new to the game. Several who have posted in this thread will often look forward to wrong stuff b'c sometimes the wrong stuff turns out to be good stuff, but not all who read and post here would feel at all comfortable doing that, Carolyn