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

thanks all. I've decided that roses in the snow will go to my sisters house this fall instead of the daylily sale. :)

Spring fever this year was absolutely killing me, so seeing these was definitely a nice site!! I was very surprised to see these popping out so early in the year. They seem a little suicidal coming up in early April in Iowa. I don't think they were up until early May last year. Weird. Unfortunately, I have noticed a couple with some freeze/frost damage already though. At least the temp here isn't supposed to dip down below freezing for the next week or so. Of course, I heard that from a meteorologist, so who's to say? lol

Of course you think it's a waste of time, as a pool builder your are considering the odds. It's my money and I have plenty of time and don't believe in paying some outrageous price so a pool builder can make huge profits off of me. I guess the pool builders need to start asking how many bids one is getting prior to setting up an appointment. That will go over well but then again there are plenty of fools that like to waste money. It just makes some people feel better to spend an extra $20,00 for the same exact pool. Funny thing is every single pool builder told me they were the best. Fact is it's all sub contracted out and anyone can be a pool builder, no experience or license required. It's not that difficult to build a pool and the important parts of a pool are done by a few companies in Houston. I'm hardly cheap also, far from it, I just choose to spend my money wisely. I decided not to go with Southbeach though I really like the owner and have nothing negative to say about his company at all. Times are great right now for pool builders but that won't last forever. Poor customer service now will affect them later as always. One simple email would suffice if not interested as I could care less if someone takes my $80,000-$90,000 or not as pool builders are a dime a dozen. By the way, just because one tells a pool builder they are only getting 2-3 estimates doesn't make it so. There are only so many pool diggers and gunite companies and they all work for lots of pool builders. It's not like the so called "pool builder" is building one single portion of the pool. Being "busy" means giving lots of estimates and designs and playing the odds. Also, referring to your comment about getting the pool builders in a "bidding war", I never once mentioned the price of any of the other builders quotes. That would be pure ignorance on my part and I'm not that stupid. Obviously if I told them what the others were bidding some would come in a thousand or so less when maybe they would have been much less. Of course it could go the other way also. Personally, any homeowner who gets only 2-3 quotes is not very intelligent. I got several quotes for price comparison obviously, but also for design comparison. I had one bid for $97,000 which was the worst design and smallest pool by far. Actually, it was a complete joke to me but evidently there are people dumb enough to pay this much for much less of a pool. This post was edited by ktm250sx on Sun, May 11, 14 at 11:24