Hi jmsieglaff,

Based on my last several years of breeding zinnias, I do have some thoughts. The power of F2 recombination is impressive, but the more plants you can grow, the greater is that power. It is a little bit like playing a slot machine, the more tries, the better your chance of a jackpot.

I don't know your zone or growing season, so I don't know whether you have your Tatumes and Lemons growing yet. I would try to accelerate things by trying to get more than one generation in a year. One technique that has helped immensely with my zinnia growing is planting green seeds or even naked embryos. I can pluck green seeds from a still blooming zinnia flower, and breach the living seed coat so the embryo can absorb some water. A living seed coat is impermeable to water, so if you plant a green seed without breaching the coat the seed won't germinate until the seed coat dies and becomes water permeable. That can take weeks. The fastest way is to harvest some green seeds and use an X-Acto knife to remove the seed coat and just plant the embryos. That lets you get seedlings in a very few days. I got four generations of zinnias this last year by planting the green seed/embryos and growing two generations indoors under fluorescent lights.

I recommend that you try to get green seeds from your crosses, and grow your F1 hybrids this year and save F2 seeds from them this Fall. You can also save those F2 seeds as green seeds, only to store them you will need to spread them out on a newspaper and dry them for a couple of weeks. With my zinnias, dried green seeds work as well as waiting an extra month or two for the seed heads to turn brown and dry in the field.

I don't know how much ground you have available for your project. If you are area limited, you might try going vertical, and grow your squash rather like they grow grape vines. There are advantages to growing squash vertically, besides being able to grow more vines in a limited area. Weed control is easier, and access to the blooms and squashes is more convenient. And it's easier to watch for pests and control them.

I grew some Costata Romanesco squash in a tall wide tomato cage instead of on a fence and got three large plants in only a few square feet that way. It was easy to harvest the squash and the squash blossoms. Squash blossoms can be tasty battered and deep fat fried, and the Costata Romanesco produced a lot of big squash blossoms. If you are space limited, vertical growing could be a solution. The more F2 plants you can grow, the more recombinant variations you can get.

It would be an interesting challenge to try to grow a few squash indoors under fluorescent lights or HID lights. There are plant growth regulators that could keep the inter-nodal length of your vines under your control. And you might try vertical growth indoors as well. One indoor F1 squash vine could supply an abundance of F2 seeds for planting next Spring. Zinnia growing indoors has its problems, but I am a big fan of surmounting those problems for extra generations. Last Fall, rather than bringing in cuttings as I usually did, I brought in green seeds and planted them and/or embryos to have a new generation of zinnias blooming by Christmas, and green seeds from them produced a second generation whose seeds and seedlings are going in the garden now. This last year accomplished four years worth of breeding for me. Two generations outdoors and two generations indoors. I am not suggesting a factor of four for your squash, but a factor of two is probably feasible outdoors. And indoor or greenhouse culture could make a factor of three or four possible.

ZM