Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 3 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Lucy, I notice that your favorite is the only one with some yellow in it. I have a long ways to go to get a complete color range into everything I am working on. I suppose "complete" for zinnias also includes green. I'll make a note to myself to plant some green zinnias this year. I intend to devote an entire separate bed to various white zinnias. White crossed with green might be good.

The drought last Summer caused me to use a lot of water watering my zinnias with an oscillatory lawn sprinkler. All that overhead watering prevented Powdery Mildew, but may have promoted some Alternaria. And, toward the end of the season, our well was starting to run dry if I left the sprinkler on for too many hours. Hopefully the water table has made some recovery.

Droughts are usually multi-year, so I anticipate an even worse problem this year. This year I may abandon the lawn sprinkler (it is awfully convenient to use, though) in favor of fabric soaker hose. It is more targeted, but is convenient only if you can leave it in place. It is a pain to have to move soaker hose around.

I am thinking of buying a 500-foot role of the fabric hose together with separate fittings so that I can custom make a soaker system. My plan is to have 4-foot wide beds with 4 rows in each bed and a soaker hose running in place down the middle of each bed to hopefully provide the needs for that bed. Then I will just move a feeder hose to connect to the stationary soaker hose in each bed and run it on a timer for that bed. That will help me "ration" our water resource in the coming drought.

I considered a drip system, and I may give that a second look. Maybe I will try out both methods this year. We just rent here, so drilling a second well into a deeper aquifer is not an option for me. Water is my biggest worry for this year. Heat itself is not a problem -- it just makes the zinnias grow faster. And use more water.

Incidentally, I hope to be making some significant progress with my tubular petaled project. A few of last year's tubulars are pictured. I am hoping for a lot more variation in them this year.

ZM