Hi Alex, "I didn't know that about State Fair being triploid." State Fair is tetraploid. If you cross a tetraploid with a diploid, you get a triploid. Triploids are sterile. A good example of triploids is bananas. All of the bananas in the store are triploids and in effect seedless. Those tiny brown dots would have been seed embryos if one parent had not been a tetraploid while the other was diploid. Banana breeders breed a lot of different diploid bananas and a lot of different tetraploid bananas, and their bananas have fertile seeds. So they grow bananas from seeds in order to get new varieties of bananas. They produce many amazing forms of bananas that never get grown commercially for one reason or another. Many years ago a banana company (I think it was Dole) ran a full page magazine add showing an assortment of their experimental bananas. One of them was round like a grapefruit. But I digress. "I now have Kaspersky for my security system. He promises to keep me safe - eh, comrade?" Let us know how Kapersky works. I have never tried that one. "And the good news... I have gathered some nice plump seeds from Alpha - yay! So, all is going well." Are you going to dry them for planting next Spring? I have a few green seeds that are nearly ready to pull, but I will be putting mine in a pre-germ Ziploc. I hope to have a second generation growing by Christmas. "... Bummer. I do still have the RAW files, I think, saved elsewhere, ..." I know you are not a fan of the user interface, but DxO Optics Pro 10 is now available for a free 30-day fully functional trial, and it could convert those raw files to a form that your Photoshop Elements 12 could process. Incidentally, DxO Optic's user interface has "improved" (changed) a little, and you might hate it less. It does allow you to create your own Presets, which makes it easy to repeat a previous choice of settings. DxO Optic's Prime option for Denoising is computation intensive, but very possibly the best available. Topaz's DeNoise plug-in is nearly as capable. I have both, but primarily use DxO's Prime Denoising, because it is spooky good. (Topaz's DeNoise is also spooky good.) "Other pics I can pick up from here and Photobucket. But it's going to take time." But the pics here and in Photobucket don't have nearly as much detail as your original Raw files. Incidentally, do you have a Nikon program called ViewNX 2? It can show you thumbnail pictures of NEF (RAW) files and you can double-click those thumbnails to get a full screen view of your RAW file. More later. More indoor gardening to do. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Hi Alex, " I'm going to limit my crosses to something more manageable and mark the petals so that the smaller amount will have a greater likelihood of being my crosses. " OK, king's X. I concede that your petal marking makes a lot of sense for your situation. And I admire that you have evolved a workable technique for doing that. " I'm not going to go crazy and try to cross everything in sight. " That's a good plan. So you are going to develop a targeted strategy, and that involves some thinking and policy making. That can be a good thing. I have to admit that sometimes if I am carrying a loaded pollen floret, I do sometimes just apply it to an unlikely female zinnia on an impulse. "Your pollination technique is no doubt honed to an art, or at least enough to where you feel you have fairly successfully hit most of the petals of a bloom." I have evolved some techniques for making the most of high-value pollen. That involves using all the pollen readily available in the pollen floret, and then extracting the internal anther bundle from the floret, and using the pollen within it. I don't recommend using anther bundles to beginner breeders, because it isn't easy, like wiping florets on stigmas or using brush pollen transfers. But using anther bundles does make it possible to extract pollen from scabious florets. And using anther bundles lets you find pollen in other sources, like petaloids or tubular flower parts or unopened pollen florets. Pollen is where you find it. But using anther bundles is kind of tricky. You need forceps or tweezers with some fairly small or even sharp points. It could be a frustrating technique for beginning breeders. Changing the subject, this is a current recombinant that has some fantasy-like flower characteristics. There were once Fantasy Flowered commercial zinnia strains, and some were even award winners, but they have long since been discontinued. When I find recombinant fantasy flowered specimens. I will use them as breeders. I find it appalling that seed companies would discontinue AAS winning zinnias, and not even save seed stock from them for later re-introduction. When Burpee discontinued their bush-forming Burpeeanas, they didn't even save seed stock, so that later when they tried to re-introduce Burpeeanas, they had to try to re-invent them, with somewhat limited success. More later. ZM

Hi Trapper, They also have pH paper, which is reliable, reasonably accurate, and inexpensive. The pH meters can get out of calibration -- otherwise they are the most convenient to use. " Need to check out this RO thing " I got an under-the-counter Reverse Osmosis unit from The Perfect Water I actually purchased it from among the Reverse Osmosis units at Amazon There is a wide variety of units to pick from. When we first rented this farmhouse, we inspected the well and looked down there and you could see a bloated possum floating in the water. It was an old fashioned kind of well, consisting of a hole about 6 feet in diameter, maybe a little more. We had them put a secure wooden cover over the hole, because a child could fall in there and drown. And obviously the water was not pure, with a drowned rotting possum floating in it. So we referred to our tap water as "possum juice" and set the hot water tank temperature to near its maximum, so the hot water was near scalding. That much heat would at least kill any thing that was living in the hot water that we were washing our dishes and clothes with. We knew the well water was very hard, and my first indoor plant project ended in a heavy fatal salt accumulation in the pots after 5 or 6 weeks. We had the same problem with the well water killing our plants when we lived in Maine, only it had a modern pipe-in-the ground configuration, so creatures drowning in the water was not an issue. But its salts would accumulate and kill plants. However, in Maine we had an endless supply of snow, so I simply melted snow in big plastic tubs and the melted snow was nearly like distilled water and worked fine all Winter for our plants. But here in Kansas we didn't have a dependable supply of snow, so I settled on a Reverse Osmosis unit. I considered an electrical water home distillation unit, but the cost of our electricity was going to make the price per gallon of home distilled water too high. Our Reverse Osmosis unit works on our water pressure. It does use a small amount of electricity in its ultraviolet sterilization cell, but it costs a negligible amount to sterilize a gallon with intense UV. Since we are drinking and cooking with Walmart bottled water, we didn't need the re-mineralization feature that is an available option. The unit we wound up getting was the Home Master TMULTRA Ultra Undersink Reverse Osmosis Water Filter System We are pleased with the system. The RO water is very close to distilled water, or the equivalent of very clean rain water. The plants love it. However, if your plants are doing OK with your Topeka water, save yourself the expense and hassle of installing a Reverse Osmosis unit. As they say, if its not broke, don't fix it. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

My seed source for the zinderellas was Swallowtail seeds. Many of the first blooms were singles and initially I thought it might be a problem with the seed source. However I doubt that is the case now with what I have read online. I planted a whole bunch more July 7 when I thought I wouldn't have enough good ones but those are just starting to bloom now. I have found many misshapen flowers, often on the same plant as perfect blossoms, any reason why that might be?This plant had perfect blooms earlier though may also have had misshapen blooms initially. Your scabiosa zinnias are stunning but since I can't grow those I will try more zinderellas next year as well as another type or two of scabiosa zinnias, maybe a mix. Plus, I will likely some of the seeds I save. The camera does not do the labyrinth dahlia justice. Some flowers have more yellow.labyrinth dahlia -horizontal version I suggest for true inspiration you grow one. The color just about glows and is truly luscious. I wouldn't have grown it except my husband brought it home one day because the photo on the package looked "pink." If you get anywhere remotely close to it with a zinnia you will have a winner for sure. Of course you have many winners already and I, along with many others I'm sure, look forward to seeing the results of your new goals. I agree with you on the skimpy pots. My wedding flower project got a bit out of hand in regards to scale. Without enough ground prepared and concerns about protection from deer and bad weather I planted a lot in pots. After running out of my second huge batch of soil mix, not all plants got equal opportunity as far as pot size. I hadn't grown many dahlias before and many of the tubers were very very small so I made do and hoped something would turn out. Everything seemed to do ok even though they might have done even better in bigger pots. Next year the dahlias will get bigger pots and more garden space maybe too. Here is a pretty weird OK salmon. It basically grew a second flower out the top of the center of the first flower. Helene