Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi IrisMA,

It is my objective to develop a strain of the toothy zinnias in a complete range of zinnia colors, as well as two-color and three-color versions. The bi-color toothy in the attached picture had Whirligig ancestry. Today I noticed several budding toothy specimens in pastel colors. As they develop, I will post pictures of some of the more interesting or significant specimens. I will be self-pollinating them and/or cross-pollinating them. And I will out-cross some of them to other colored zinnia specimens, in order to get a wider color range of toothies in the subsequent recombinants.

I hope to build up enough toothy zinnia seed supply to make a fairly big planting of them next year. This year I have been dividing my time between expanding and improving my garden and tending my zinnia breeding, but next year my garden infrastructure should be essentially complete, which will let me devote more time to my zinnias. I intend to cross some toothies with trumpet petaled tubular flower forms to combine the toothy effect and the tubular petal effect in the same flower form. I hope to do some of those toothy/tubular crosses later this Fall.

ZM