It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 47
zen_man
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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S I
6 years agozen_man
6 years agoRelated Discussions
It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 50
Comments (102)Hi Zen, I was just reading your comment. How can you tell that photos are posted from smart phones? Someone told me when they enlarge my photos they take up their whole screen. I use my phone. It's a lot more comfortable for me. It's a samsung galexy S9. Now my pictures are starting to look a little strange,, or could it be my imagination lol. I have a pic of my basement grow room setup. Not a stock photo lol. I felt bad about putting one on here, and by the time the light bulb went off to simply delete it, the statute of limitations had already ran out on it lol. I was hitting the superstores for some Zinnia seeds, and I found this years selection very depressing. Burpee has some nice cultivars in their catalog that aren't in the stores. I'm not a Burpee fan. I think I did order 2 packets of Gomphrena seeds from them. Theirs were the best deal all around. Hey, now that would be a great genus to experiment with! You could take those plants a lot of different directions. It's a shame some of your better hybrids aren't being sold! I have 5 packets of Zinnia seeds. They're not the ideal 5 that I wanted, but they'll have to do. Zowie Yellow Flame ,( for the hummers ), Pinwheel Mix, 'Forcast', Giant Flowered Mix, Dahlia Flowered Mix. Let me repeat myself once more; just to be perfectly clear! Not my 5 most desired varieties! I love them for their colors and because they're such great butterfly magnets. FYI, the 2 Gomphrena seeds I got are 'Carmine' and 'Fireworks'. Zen, I wanted to ask you, what's the product you use to control spider mights again? I had an issue in the past and really don't want it reoccurring.. It was because I had brought some plants in from outside and I didn't recognize they were infected, then I was detained and kept away from them for a while. By the time I got back to the plants.....yuck! Ninecrow, keep up the good work with those Poinsettias! I'd enjoy seeing pictures! The whole birthing process, everything. I think it's fascinating! I think the metal halide bulb drastically throws off the color. Plants that I'm starting down here. Gomphocarpus physocarpus, Gomphocarpus fruticosa, Gomphocarpus cancellatus, Dregea sinensis, Tweedia caerulea, Tweedia solanoides, Tithonia, Senna didymobata, Mimosa pudica, Salvia coccinea, and the middle tray has seedlings of Calotropis procera. Like I've talked about before; I'm very interested in all the plant species of the subfamily Asclepiadoideae. They are the most difficult to hand pollinate because they produce pollinaria. A lot of hand pollination and hybridization does occur with tropical members of the family that are more and more being grown as houseplants mainly. Well, maybe 50 inside 50 outside. If you are lucky enough too live in a hot arid climate or a hot wet climate you can grow a lot of the tropical ones. Here in Illinois, the best I can do is grow a few of the fast growing tropical ascleps as summer annuals....See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 51
Comments (146)OK this is good stuff ZM. I was at first blush ignoring features, instead focusing on learning mechanisms,,BUT as you wisely allude, they are one in the same, to wit: the cone IS the floret factory. And while I am aesthetically SO not a conehead fan (at least at this hour), it is so very helpful to understand that this despisable (to me) "tumor" on top of this delicate flower is indeed part of the whole operation. OK OK learning slow but sure. So now I can emesh some aesthetic thinking in my mechanical procedures. On that score, this very morning, my first breached green seed sprouted (seven days and nights I've been sweating), but doggone it I believe it is happening. I've got two rows of breach tests going on, one barely nicked, and two days ago a much more agressive scalping to see if I observe germination differernces. My first hybrid attemp is in day 17 of finished pollinating, will hold off another week to ten days to start pulling./breaching/planting seeds. Woo hoo, more fun than a barrel of politicians. John, appreciatively Low mountains Veracruz PS The colored petals in your foto are indeed gorgeous, undeniably. I also think that Zowie thing is particularly disgusting, but that's just me....See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 53
Comments (103)Hello four, " "Modified", that is. Do they have nectar? " Some of them have nectar, the ones I have observed with butterflies, skippers, bees, or day-flying moths feeding on them. I have no way of knowing whether my indoor specimens have nectar or not. I think they probably do have nectar. Just no butterflies to confirm that. " If the florets have a reasonable amount of nectar, then the volume of nectar in that one flower would be a butterflies' bonanza. " I have taken a few tubular zinnia petals apart, and the amount of nectar I find in each petal is relatively small. I would not describe it as a drop, but something more like a "micro-drop". Zinnias always attract a bunch of butterflies and such, but I think there are probably other flowers that have more volume of nectar. I am of the opinion that you have to be careful what you wish for. I still remember that freakish zinnia bloom that had so much nectar, and the tiny ants that were attracted to it in such scary numbers. ZM...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 57
Comments (129)So I've got two mysteries I'm trying to solve. Here's the story.... This winter we grew quite a few zinnias under CMH lighting. We had to battle powdery mildew, but the plants grew well and flowered profusely. I found a single plant that was producing very impressive blooms. Image is attached. This plant exhibited an iridescent peach color--quite spectacular. I definitely wanted to work more with this plant! But I ran into two mysteries which I'm now trying to solve. Mystery #1) This plant produced basically no pollen! When I went to collect pollen from it, I found almost nothing. I checked back numerous times throughout the blooming season (even checking numerous blooms) and even though nearby plants were producing pollen well, I was never able to utilize this specimen plant as a male in any cross! So, I decided to use it as a seed parent to receive pollen instead. Mystery #2) Since I had experienced irregular seed set on zinnias before, I decided to document my pollination activities more closely and correlate them to seed set. I chose one bloom on this specimen plant which I would observe very carefully. I pollinated each receptive stigma on this bloom with pollen from other plants. I came back in the next day or two and saw that nearly all of the stigmas I had pollinated were withered and shriveled up--a good sign of successful pollination. Then I carefully marked each stigma that had shriveled by snipping off half of the petal. By doing this I would know which achenes had been pollinated and apparently successfully been fertilized. Yesterday I saved seed on that bloom. In accordance with the irregularity I've seen over the winter, only about 15% of the shriveled stigmas actually set seed. I pollinated maybe 26 stigmas and they all shriveled down nicely (indicating successful pollination) but of all those "successful" pollinations I only got maybe 4 filled seeds. This is a mystery to me which I hope to solve. If anyone has pointers or tips, I'm all ears!...See MoreS I
6 years agozen_man
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