Sinn. Gautier's Seedling
1. Own enough candidates
You should have enough options whenever you would like to make a cross. Mini Sinningia is a stamen's plant, it doesn't require faithful marriage like human being. It's a pity when one plant is ready but the other is in preparation. The best thing is that you can get some characteristic/featured hybrids from the hybridizers no matter it's named variety or not. By using their achievement is a shortcut of creating new variety. And we should be humble and never forget to say thanks to the hybridizers when we do create something by taking advantage of theirs.
2. Target "Beautiful" or "Creative" or both ?
Obviously "Beautiful" is not same as "Creative" and "Creative" doesn't equal to "Beautiful". Some people say they just want a "Beautiful" seedling with whatever color or pattern, it seems not difficult to do because there are many "Beautiful" varieties, get some that you prefer, try to keep the color or pattern of the parents and usually you can get decent offsprings. The enthusiast may think a little bit more and set a "Creative" target of making something new. But if we go the right way and keep working, we may luckily get a "Beautiful" and "Creative" hybrid.
Seed pod of Mini Sinningia
3. Sow all seed pods ?
A seed pod of Mini Sinningia could produce hundreds of seedlings, it can be exhausting work to take care of all at once. After you pay full attention to all but you just find ... geeeee ... the payoff is not what you are looking for ... Orz ... it's a real disaster. Therefore, no matter you are absolutely sure that your cross is 100% pretty or you are afraid of what you will see from the seedlings, give yourself a break, no need to sow all seeds for the first time. You can make a lot of different crosses, sow each cross about 10-20 seeds as test and have a look of the result first, then you decide if need to sow the rest seeds. Don't worry, seeds can be saved over years under proper storage conditions.
4. Selection criteria
This should not be a right or wrong question, let's objectively say it depends on personal experience or purpose when making selection of seedlings. If you think yours are special or beautiful and also get the presentable specimen, you can select it. Fairly speaking, it's weak to select a seedling from 1 or 2 blooms or a young plant. Hybridizers don't need to be a criteria freak when making their selection but I believe the hybridizers have strong sense of self-esteem that will lead the way to the interesting creation.
Sinn. Windsor's Seedlings
5. Growing skill
The good growing skill is required to support the plant with its full potential. People are easily impressed by the good demonstration of a specimen as the human being is a vision animal. So I assume it's important to fully develop the new seedling because all the features can be easily evaluated from a mature plant. Fortunately, it's simple to grow the Mini Sinningia into bloom. But try to learn new growing tricks, we always need these and even someday you can send your plants to win convention awards. :-)
6. Cross with different Sinningia clades
In order to get new looks of Sinningia, some people try to cross Mini Sinningia with other Sinningia species or hybrid of different clades. Because the fertile Mini Sinningia is apparently a tetraploid form, when crossing with other Sinningia clades (usually they are diploid), it appears that 99.9% seeds are not able to germinate. But the theory is theory, there is still 0.1% chance that we get few seedlings from such cross. People in Taiwan had successfully combined Mini Sinningia with Sinn. speciosa , tubiflora, conspicua ... and these diversified Mini Sinningia with interesting looks.
Sinn. KJ's MTCARA (Mark Twin x speciosa "Caragonla")
Sinn. Pirate's Wild Bunny X Sinn. conspicua (scented seedling)
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