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Old February 21, 2014   #5
jmsieglaff
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Southern WI
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I really appreciate the feedback......I've read through it and will chew on it some more this weekend. It seems like there are some good reasons pointing me toward selfing the F1 and growing out the F2. Probably most important getting to a stable yellow color faster.

From the information I've found, and it sounds like there are some unknowns that remain, but generally bush habit tends to be dominate over vining and yellow fruit dominate to green (http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cgc/cgcgenes/gene09squash.pdf)

When planting out the F2 seeds, I'm going to try a tip from Carol Deppe's Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties and plant out about 5 seeds in each spot and when ~4" tall select to the tallest plant--she found this is a good, not perfect, short cut to getting the vining habit without having more mature plants. Then later in the year I can select seed to save from yellow fruited plants (manually pollinating those of course).

I like the idea of growing out the F2 just to see what I end up with and the bonus of finding something that maybe I didn't exactly expect, but turns out to be something really good.

I'm starting with two varieties I like and do want certain genetics from both--not just one from one of the varieties--so again I think I've been convinced to not backcross. And I'll always want to strive for my end goal--but who knows maybe the F1 will be great!
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