Videos about Flowers from Johnny's

Introducing Flowers Developed by Johnny's

Meet our Breeding Team and learn more about our cut-flower breeding program. We discuss our breeding goals, explain how we use recurrent selection to breed new open pollinated flower varieties, and give you a glimpse into our breeding and seed production plots.


My name is Lindsay Wyatt and I am the squash and pumpkin and flower breeder here at Johnny's. I develop with my team new winter squash, summer squash, jack o'lantern, and cut flower varieties.

I'm Emily, and I've been working with Lindsay since 2016. And when I started at Johnny's, I worked primarily just with winter squash and pumpkins. And as our breeding team kind of developed, and our illustrious product manager Hillary had an idea to start breeding flowers at Johnny's, I've worked more and more in the flower breeding program since 2018, and pretty much primarily work in flowers at this point.

We started talking about breeding flowers a tiny bit in 2017, I think. And then in 2018, Hillary had started dabbling in a little bit of seed saving. And, around the same time, Em told me that she needed a new challenge and suggested flower breeding, and it kind of went from there.

Breeding Goals

We started with our first big field season in 2019 and learned a lot that year and have continued learning ever since. Our focus is breeding for cut flowers, so we look for things like long stem length, a uniform variety so growers will get what they expect. We are working to bring new material with new colors into the marketplace that doesn't exist. We're breeding for gaps where we don't see a lot of other breeding work happening. We want local cut flower growers to have more options for things that they can grow efficiently and cost effectively for their farms to make a profit and also make people happy. That might mean the blush color in zinnia; I think that should be a really great product for people.

Recurrent Selection of Open Pollinated Varieties

When we do our cut flower breeding, we’re breeding open-pollinated varieties; we mostly use a process called recurrent selection. How that works, big picture, is we grow a field of flowers that are all for the same project. If we were growing for 'Ballerina' zinnia, they're all in the 'Ballerina' color palette—or are trying to be, we intend them to be. We grow those in an isolation; that means they're a mile or so away from any other zinnia fields or zinnias that are growing. So that way, when they get pollinated by the bees and all of the other wonderful pollinators that are on the Johnny's Farm, they're only pollinated amongst each other.

Then what we do is we go through that field, starting usually at first bloom and we go through probably six or more times all the way up until seed harvest, basically. What we do is a process called roguing. We will pull out any plants that are not what we want. The goal is that we are left with the best of the best. Then we let just the selected plants open new flowers and get cross-pollinated, again, by bees and all the other insects that are on the farm. Then that seed that sets from that cross pollination is what we then harvest. Then, we basically glean that seed and do it all again the next year. You keep doing that again and again until it's stable enough and good enough to be a new variety. And of course, there's some nuances and some strategies, but big picture, that's what we do: grow flowers, pick our favorites, let them cross-pollinate, and keep doing it again year after year until we're done.

When you're trying to breed something, you're looking at each petal of the flower, you're looking at these details, all these things that I never really noticed before when I was just a production farmer. At moments you forget how pretty your job is – you're just walking around a field of beautiful flowers in bloom and picking the best, prettiest ones. Which I think deep down is what everyone likes doing!

The farm crew at Johnny's is a really important part of our team. They take care of the fields, do all of the field preparation, take care of the plants, help with harvest, help with seed cleaning, all sorts of great stuff. A lot of good systems that the farm and the farm crew have implemented to ensure that we do have good quality seed here, but it does take a lot of effort. There's a reason why there isn't a lot of dry seed production on the East Coast—but it's doable!

We really always have all of the Johnny's customers in our mind when we're doing our selection work. We're hoping that our flower breeding and new product development will help small farmers, large farmers, gardeners, and anyone who wants to grow something new that isn't already available. It's hard enough to be a farmer. It's hard enough to be a farmer in the state of climate change. If there's something that would make their farm more profitable, or their customers more happy, or their lives easier, let us know and maybe we can work on it.

I would love growers to know how excited we are to be doing this. I want them to know how much we care—about the flowers, about our team here, and about them and their success.

Top ˆ