Thanks for the clarification on Carrousel and Whirligig, ZM. You're right 1/4 oz would be a great deal for me. Plus, ordering from a "known" source is less risky than from an unknown. Yes, I have a "Monarch Waystation", which qualifies as such when you grow some milkweed species, the larval host plant for the Monarch butterfly. Their situation becomes worse and worse with each passing year due to habitat destruction. Monarch Watch, a non-profit group out of the University of Kansas, promotes the growing of their host plants by home gardeners in the hopes of replacing those lost to farming, commercial development, housing development, etc. Of particular concern is genetically modified crops such as corn and soybeans, which are herbicide resistant. Farmers can spray their crops now to rid the fields of unwanted weeds and flowers, such as milkweed, without harming these crops. The milkweed losses are astronomical. Monarchs are the only butterfly in North America that migrate thousands of miles between the Oyamel forests in Mexico and Canada each year in spring and fall. To add to tbe dilemma, illegal logging of the Oyamel trees in Mexico has destroyed many of the overwintering sites, thousands of acres, in Mexico. So, you can see our concern. Cudos go to Chip Taylor and the University of Kansas for their efforts to promote gardening for the Monarch butterflies. However, the huge populations of 10 years ago, are unlikely to ever be seen again. If you are interested, plant a few milkweeds, many of which are native to the USA, for the Monarch. Zinnias play into this as they are nectar rich flowers for the butterflies, beautiful and relatively easy to cultivate. Monarch butterflies love them! So do I. So it is a symbiotic relationship. Enough proselytizing. I'm sure you see lots of butterflies in your garden. Susan

Bob, "The Sun Zinnia is an F1; wouldn't that guarantee new and different plants from succeeding generations even if it self pollinated?" The F2 generation from an F1 will recombine the genes of the two parents in many ways. Many, if not all, commercial F1 zinnias make use of male-sterile female plants (sometimes called "feminas") and carefully inbred male pollen-bearing strains. Frequently the feminas are apetalous (have no petals). For F1 seed production, the feminas and male plants are grown close to each other so that normal bee pollination does the actual pollination. The F1 seed are harvested from the feminas. You will see considerable variation in the F2s from Sun, as recombination occurs in many ways between the genes of the two different parents. You might even see some femina traits. But, because the male line is so purified, the chances are that they will all be the same color as the F1. The variation will much less than what you would see in the progeny of a hybrid rose (or a home-hybridized zinnia). I breed my zinnias in much the same way as rose breeders breed their hybrid roses. I hand pollinate, rather than rely on bees, so I can cross any specimen with any other specimen that I please. And I don't hesitate to cross hybrids with hybrids, so I don't spend generations inbreeding the parent lines. As a result of that, I will see an order of magnitude more heterozygosity in my progeny than I would in the progeny of a commercial F1 hybrid zinnia. I wouldn't hesitate a moment to grow the seed from a commercial F1 hybrid zinnia. In fact, I will be doing that very thing next Spring. I have some old seed of the Japanese-bred Silver Sun F1 hybrid (one of the Sun series separates that seems to have become unavailable in current catalogs). It's not pure white, and that may be why it fell out of favor. I don't have many seeds (a packet contains nominally 25 seeds) but I will plant a few inside, probably next month. And I will save a few seeds from the better specimens (even F1 hybrids vary some) for planting in-ground next Spring. I intend to cross some of the F1 hybrid Silver Suns with other indoor zinnias. If you think about that, there are some interesting implications. When I take pollen grains from an F1 Silver Sun, those grains aren't actually Silver Sun pollen. They are F2 recombinations pollen grains. And the egg cells in the female plant aren't that plant either, but recombinations from the heterozygous female. So we don't know what any of those recombinations would look like if we grew them. They all represent virtual zinnias that we never see (unless we grow haploids and double their chromosomes to diploids, but that is another story). So rose breeders and hobbyist zinnia breeders are doing pretty much the same, crossing virtual recombined pollen grains with virtual recombined egg cells. Each pollen grain and each egg cell is a separate recombination, so there there could be tremendous variety in the pollen grains and tremendous variety in the egg cells. That is why there is so much suspense in watching a new hybrid rose bloom for the first time, or in watching a new hybrid zinnia bloom for the first time. They have "virtual" parents that we never see. "...Or are the subsequent generations mostly weaker plants?" I would say, mostly not as good. But "good" is subjective, and there might be some little "weaker" progeny that people would marvel over as "cute". Sturgeon's law says that, "Ninety percent of everything is crud." (The last word is frequently misquoted as "crap".) Actually, I think of it in that second form. I cull my zinnias with Sturgeon's Law in mind. Actually, if I get 5% "good" from a zinnia grow-out, I feel pretty good, because I am going to save seeds from them and discard the 95% and things get better faster that way. I think that Sturgeon's Law will definitely apply to the progeny from your F1 Sun zinnias. But think of it in a "glass is half empty/half full" way. That 10% or even 5% can make it all worthwhile. I discard a lot of zinnias at first bloom, and I think that rose breeders do the same thing with their rose crosses. "The difference is that roses are vegetatively propagated, so a breeder could lock in the new rose immediately and not worry about trying to achieve seeds that reproduced true consistently." Very true. I have had some success growing zinnias from cuttings, and I am experimenting with Tissue Culture now as a possible more effective asexual micropropagation method. I don't anticipate that zinnias will be commercially propagated asexually, but I understand that some femina zinnia strains are increased by tissue culture. My idea is that if I get a really good zinnia, that if I increased it asexually to a lot of plants, I could get a huge seed yield which would be a step toward getting a stable seed strain. That would be a sort of "brute force" approach, that would involve growing a lot of zinnias, and selecting seed from only a few. ZM

Sorry, I am so late posting. Was on a trip in the MH, and internet was so slow that I got behind in reading all the posts. I'll see what I can come up with for February. Still need to post my January one too--but it sure is not as pretty as before the flowers got hit with the freezing temps! Luvs

Thank you for sharing your design and updated ideas... I love, love, love it!!! This is exactly what I was looking for, to DIY my own hummingbird feeder(s.) I've bought so many of them, from Home Depot over the years and they never make it through the season without breaking &/or leaking. Perky Pet did make a tubular feeder (selling for $19.99) but their comments were terrible, mostly on its overall construction, and it looks cheap too. Happy 2022 Gardening, Bird and Hummer Watching Y'all