Hello again Kristen,
Your photo shows an impressive layout of things for your zinnia seed saving project. Your organza drawstring gift bags show you have done considerable research on this. I haven't tried those myself, and I think I will order some of those bags from Amazon to try them out. I currently package my zinnia seeds in Ziploc Snack bags with an enclosed 3x5 card for labeling.
" I am interested in selecting the fully double blooms in one my favorite varieties for cut flowers, Queen Red Lime. I put organza bags on them and waited for them to mature. I noticed that very few, if any, florets appeared on most of these flowers. Is that because they are mostly doubles and the chances of self-pollination are lower because the petals are so crowded? "
Yes, unfortunately, those desirable bloom features--lots of petals and very few pollen florets--tend to reduce the pollination of the stigmas on the petals and produce a bloom with a lot of unfertilized seeds. In the future, make maximum use of the few pollen florets that do appear. By picking a pollen floret and rubbing it on a lot of stigmas, a single pollen floret can fertilize a lot of petal seeds. It takes
just a single grain of pollen to fertilize a petal stigma. Of course, more than one grain of pollen doesn't hurt.
Just out of curiosity, did you have that killing frost? Or what is your current zinnia situation? You might still have time to pollinate some stigmas on some remaining blooms. If you had the killing frost, it is time to start tearing some of those blooms apart looking for good green seeds. If you need to, reread this message string from the first to refresh yourself on the appearance of green floret seeds and green petal seeds. There are a lot of uploaded photos of various kinds of zinnia seeds back there.
I am actually planting some indoors zinnias today. By growing two generations indoors and two generations outdoors, I get four generations of zinnias a year. Which quadruples my "zinnia breeding speed". And makes Winter one of my most interesting zinnia breeding seasons.
ZM
