Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 6, 5 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi Brenda,

I think you may have zinnias a little larger than mine. That number 5 is a great looking specimen. I like it that you have 4 zinnia gardens. I have just 2, and my South garden is rather small.

Thumbelinas are very small. They can start blooming when they are only 3 inches tall, and eventually get about 6 inches tall. I grew them many years ago, and crossed them with tall zinnias to get some low growing compact zinnias that I called "midgets". My "midgets" were rather similar to the present day Magellans and Dreamlands. However, I no longer prefer to work with shorter zinnias because, as a senior citizen, I don't like to stoop or kneel to work with them.

I am giving priority to my I29 progeny, because I hope that their recombinants will yield some more examples of the uprolled petals. I designate my individual breeder zinnias with a letter-number code, with each code occupying a page in my looseleaf garden journal. That lets me record as much information as I wish about each designated breeder.

Photo #1 is a bloom of I39, which came from I29, my up-rolled specimen that I pictured in Photo #5 in my last message. I39 has noticeable two-toning, which suggests it has one or more Whirligig ancestors.

Photo #2 is a bloom of I42, which also had I29 as a "mother". Photos #3 and #4 are blooms that were on I29. I have several other progeny of I29 that I am selfing and intercrossing. I hope that my upcoming indoor project will produce a good supply of recombinant seed to plant outdoors early next Spring.

Photo #5 is one of my Benary's Giant specimens that I am using as a female to accept pollen from some of my unusual zinnias. Some of your zinnias that you showed last year inspired me to grow some Benary's Giants and California Giants to add some "new blood" to my zinnia gene pool. I will continue growing those next year to add new possibilities.

I have recently noticed a lot of immature plant bugs in my zinnias as I pollinate them. One of them even got on my arm and started to draw blood like a mosquito. Those bugs have piercing sucking mouth parts to extract sap from plants. That bug that was trying to get sap from my arm probably would have quit when he got blood instead, but I wasn't going to wait around for that to happen, because his attempt was painful. I have heard that thrips will sometimes attack people in the same way, because they aren't smart enough to distinguish people from plants. Actually, I think I have experienced some minor attacks by thrips. Thrips are weird little creatures. More later.

ZM