OF never makes good carpals at my house, so the method I used was to use OF as a pollen parent. Which means knowing a friend who lives somewhere where the season is much earlier than in my (quite late) area where I can get pollen, and then use it on earlier varieties.

You are right though; strong stems are the goal here, and in the long run I believe will be the ultimate goal of all work with the herbaceous hybrids, even if not all of our wonderful new varieties have them yet.

Bob