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

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi Brenda,

I echo Sharon's comment about envying how healthy and disease free your zinnias seem to be. Have you sprayed them with something, like a fungicide of some kind. My zinnias now almost all have at least some powdery mildew by now, I did spray some with a fungicide, which kept the new growth clean, but didn't do anything about the mildew that was already on my zinnias. This has been the worst year for powdery mildew on my zinnias in the last 20 years.

Your first zinnia, the one on the left, is your best breeder in those three. It has those "true dahlia" shaped petals.

The middle one, the two-headed one, is not my cup of tea. I have zinnias like that from time to time. At first I saved seeds from one, and even crossed it with some other zinnias, because of the novelty. Sure enough, the broken-headed trait showed up in some of the progeny. To me, the two-headed, three-headed zinnias just look defective. So now I cull them.

Your third zinnia has petals somewhat like those on the first zinnia, only not quite as well formed.

Your first zinnia is my favorite, and since it has some pollen, I would use that to self any still receptive stigmas on the flower, with the idea of getting as many selfs of it as possible. I am including pictures of some current specimens. Some were used as females with crosses involving tubular toothy zinnias and Razzle Dazzle specimens.

We had a recent frost warning (turned out to be a false alarm), so I threw some remay ag-fabric over some of my low hoops to protect some of the breeders. Also a few pics of "normal" zinnias.

ZM