Since open center seedlings are the most common defect here, you would think after growing many thousands of them, I would be able to answer your question. We traditionally never used an open center for breeding until a year or so ago, An open center flower was near perfect in every other way and since it was a rare color and rare good form, we decided to grow some seedlings of it. Yes, it gave us a good closed center seedling when hand crossed with a fully double flower. Perhaps your seedlings could have fully double seedlings. The key here is that Margaret hand crossed it with a fully double really good seed parent. The fully double genes counteracted the open center genes. Would we do this again? Not likely, as there are enough full double flowers with good traits to cross with each other and there is great disappointment when you get those open centers.
