By now you might have seen that last year we introduced breeder packs on the site. What they are are seeds from breeding patches that are new to our program. The colors are not guaranteed since the next generation is a cross or hybrid. Though we can’t tell exactly what the outcome will be we do have an idea based on the colors and we do provide photos of some of the mother plants in the listing. Once the previous year’s seeds have sold out we will update the photos for the current year’s patch since our selections from that patch will change every year as we try to save from the best plants. So hopefully you will see the program progress every single year.
Sometimes we do some really weird crosses and the next generation will look completely different from the mother plant. For example our z39 zinnia, this plant was open pollinated with both violet and coral colored zinnias and the outcome was somewhat of a surprise and we still haven’t seen all of the different colors that this mix created since we only grew a limited quantity and offered up the rest last year. Of course some of these bred true to the mother plant because zinnias do self pollinate. The first three photos are what was in this patch and the last few photos are some of the plants from the next generation. (Just the ones we know crossed) Clearly looks like these particular seedlings crossed but kept the shape of the yellow mother plant. We did have mostly yellow, violet, and coral but these are the ones that obviously crossed and were the most unique. Another interesting observation is that almost all the seedlings that were obvious crosses were small in size like the yellow mother plant indicating that there is a dominant gene for size in the mother plant. The violet sire plant was similar in size to the yellow mother while the coral plant was considered a large sized zinnia. Also almost all of the seedlings were full doubles.
The Mother Plant z39
The possible sire plants
The next generation
This one obviously crossed with the violet but seems the violet gene was very dominant as is expected.
As you can see sometimes the outcome is predictable but sometimes it’s not. As I mention above you’re bound to get something that looks identical to the mother plant as well since zinnias do self pollinate. So in one flower head you can potentially get many different new hybrids. This particular program we won’t be continuing next year but we have banked a few seeds. This year we grew these in a test patch with one of our moody zinnias and giant pastel pink so we expect the next generation to be funky. We do plan to offer up a few packs of seed from these specific plants in case anyone wants to continue the project so make sure to check back this fall as we add new breeder’s packs to the site.
I hope you found this post interesting, and I especially hope you’re having fun experimenting with our breeder’s packs.
2 comments
HI! Do you have Breeder’s Packs for sale now? Do you have odd lots of seeds from crosses or gene bank type plots? I’m starting an open pollenated plot next spring that will have a dozen or so varieties of Zinnias. I’ld be interested in any such crosses you may have available to grow in my “gene bank” zinnia bed. Thanks.
This is such a cool idea!