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Michigan,up North

why do my two pumpkins look diffent? from the same seed .colar and shape.one was growen in my drive way ,who needs a garge. the other in good dirt out back .could it bee the dirt?now that i crossed the 1723 with the 1103 will it bee more oronge or do you have to cross it 2 years in a row.

8/26/2012 6:31:04 PM

Germany

Robert, these two plants are two individuals with their individual genetics. If you had grown clones, you could attribute different colors etc. to environmental conditions, but two individual plants are dominated by their individual genetics. Just imagine two sisters or two brothers (not talking about twins), they might look completely different, even though the cross (mom x dad) is the same (...as far as theory of an ideal family goes).

8/26/2012 6:52:12 PM

Germany

To the "orange question", it depends on genetics again...each feature of a plant or fruit is hidden in at least one gene which appears on two corresponding chromosomes. Let´s say one plant has (orange/white) and the other one also has (orange/white), hence both might produce light orange fruit, as long as the "orange" info of the gene dominates. In a cross one of each (the "orange" or the "white" info) of the female will combine with one of the male, thus you could create the combinations (orange/orange), (orange/white), (white/orange) and (white/white) and only the next generation will tell you what´s going on. You would have to plant many of your seeds, and then to self all of the females...because you want to select those which are rich in "orange" but you can´t tell which plant is until the fruit has grown for a couple of weeks. (Just have a look at some pumpkins grown off 1161 Rodonis seeds...they vary from white to deep orange.) Selection, selection and selection, and resulting therefrom a refinement of some traits of the plants...just crossing it two years in a row could produce any random thing if you don´t know what´s behind (and that´s what´s currently going on, and some people have great luck and a good feeling of what might be behind, thus giving it a go and then ending up with a load of seeds which produce at least a good amount of pumpkins which show the expected traits...in case of the 1161 Rodonis it is the large fraction of really big pumpkins grown off that cross). If it was too easy to refine genetics, many people would already have done the cross for aggresssive plant with big and heavy beautifully deep-red-orange colored pumpkin. This might be the case with the 1421 Stelts, but some of those seeds could still come up with a surprise.

8/26/2012 6:52:16 PM

morristown, Tn email [email protected]

here is my 580 whitacre 2011 look at it then look at my other pumpkin growing from my 580 2011 here the link for 580 whitacre https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=406170046109047&set=a.103525196373535.5176.100001481654567&type=1 and the pumpkin growing off the 580 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=400361623356556&set=a.263614250364628.62193.100001481654567&type=1

8/26/2012 8:38:28 PM