gardenweed, if they are splitting (and you aren't pinching them, impatiently ;)), chances are they are ripe. A bit of green at the bottom of the pod doesn't always mean they aren't ready yet, especially if the seeds you can see are tan to brown, not beige/white. My own are still blooming hard, no seeds yet but our summers are so cool mine are very late every year. I will end up bagging a couple (nylon stocking square and twist tie) to insure I will get some, even if an early Fall storm knocks them down. While they don't need a prolonged moist chill, they do winter sow reliably, easily in my mild Z8 at least. My clump is pink, I bought some seeds for white and winter sowed those last year....they came up nicely and are still in pots! Thanks for the reminder, gotta get those in the ground Here is a link that might be useful: Chelone, profile pods, seeds

"Lets say a yellow flower is pollinated by a pink flower....Would it be safe to say that the resulting seeds will produce a pink and yellow flower that is in between the size of the 2 parent plants? What if pollen from more than one flower from different dahlias pollinates a single flower of another flower.... Will there be traits of 3 or more flower combined? " A yellow flower pollinated by a pink flower will produce several color possibilities. Probably there will be a very few solid yellow, very few solid pink, many blends of the two and orange which in dahlias is a blend of yellow and pink pigments. There is possibility of solid red also. As the previous post said they are octoploid and the with extra genes, you get lots of possible color combinations. I would rule out getting any purple flowers and white would also be very rare. But all could happen. The same is true for size. Many will be the same size as one of the parents. Some could be smaller than both parents and some could be larger than both parents. Most will fall into what you say about half way. It would be very unlikely that any flower would be two sizes bigger or two sizes smaller. A dahlia flower when pollinated by a bee can get pollen from any flower the bee visited that day. If the bee visited all of the flowers in your garden that had pollen, the flower could have seeds pollinated by numerous different flowers. Having said that, the flower visited by the bee just before visiting your flower is the most likely candidate. Each seed can only have one pollen parent and by the way most dahlias are not self pollinated but some can be. Most seedlings look terrible. about 2% look good and 1% look very good.

I plant that many in each container so that i get at least one per container. I decided to skip the small peat starter kit method. I went straight to the 3" starter pots. Then after a while (probably another week or so or when they start getting true leaves) I will decide which is the strongest looking in each container and I will cull the rest. I will end up with one per container and I will keep 20-30% more containers of plants than I plan to end up with in case a couple die along the way. I can always give away the the extras. I built in "unpreventable loss" all along the growing process. But I am not going to have much loss at the sprouting stage this year. Last year I planted 4 or 5 bhut seeds in a single 4" container and didn't have the heart to just keep one so when three popped up, I carefully dug out two and moved them to seperate containers. I would suggest doing this early like around the time they are getting their first true leaves. If you wait, the roots get too big and inter-twined. But this year, I wont be transferring any. I planted at least three containers of each variety I want to grow. Of those, I will probably wind up with just one or maybe two. The others I will give away if they make it. I basically planted three times the number of containers that I want to wind up with for each variety. For example, I want about 4 Sweet Banana pepper plants so I planted 12. Bruce

I'm not squeamish at all and have no problem picking them off. I just wanted to make sure they weren't a good guy before doing anything. The one columbine they are on shows no sign of leaf miners. The others they are on do. So not sure. I will cut the stalks off that they are on as some are small still and inside the pods. I'm glad I noticed them in time to still be able to harvest some seeds.