Zinnia Park's Cutting Blend looks good but description says flowers will be 2 1/2- 4 1/2 inches large. Kinda a big range. Hoping for something more toward the 2 1/2" side

Has anyone had experience with these? Do the flowers, for the most part, grow to 4 1/2 inches or do they stay on the smaller side?

Thanks so much!

Dale

I think the range of sizes is explained by the Parks blend being a mixture of smaller and larger flowered strains. Zinnia flower size is affected some by growing conditions, but not as much as the range in the Park's blend. My guess is that the 2 1/2 ones are Cut-and-Come-Again and that the 4 1/2 ones are dahlia flowered zinnias.

If your preference is toward the 2 1/2 side, you might want to get a strain or strains of zinnias that have that flower size. Some people would call that medium sized, and they would refer to the 4 1/2 ones as "large sized". Cut-and-Come-Again and Oklahoma are two cut-flower zinnias that have about that size.

I am wondering how many of these zinnias you will be growing. Will you be growing these just for your own use, or are you planning on selling them?

ZM

the description.. to me .. simply means anything within that range ....

and from experience.. i would suggest that the odds are.. whatever you get.. will not look like any pic they provided ...

as master zen says.. if you want to insure a certain size/type/color.. make your own blend.. of named varieties ...

in other words.. the bargain blend .. may be pennywise.. but pound foolish.. if you have a precise goal ...

on the other hand.. if you just want to cover ground.. and be mildly amused, and maybe even thrilled .. go for it ...

ken

"How accurate are these estimations?"

Reasonably accurate. The Burpee estimate is a bit conservative, because you might get first blooms in 7 to 8 weeks, depending on the variety and growing conditions. I have had my indoor-grown zinnias bloom in as soon as 5 weeks from insertion of the seed into the growing medium, under near optimal conditions under over-driven fluorescent lighting.

"...tried growing Burpeeana and they didn't look anything like the pic..."

Actually, I like the idea of the Burpeeanas, which are supposed to be large informal flowers on a good bushy plant that isn't excessively tall. Any zinnias will stretch and grow tall if you crowd them. But uncrowded Burpeeanas are supposed to make good two-foot "hedges" in a landscape. This is one of my "home-hybridized" zinnias, and it has some Burpeeana "blood" in it. Burpeeanas can get as large as 6 inches in diameter, but this home hybrid had very long petals that hung down. I referred to it as my "Pink Shaggy Dog". Even though it has some Burpeeana blood in it, it is not a Burpeeana. If those petals had stuck out in a more horizontal direction, that bloom would have been upwards of 8 inches or more in diameter. Although some of its offspring have had similar flowers, none in my opinion have quite lived up to it. I will grow more seed from it this year.

I enjoy growing and breeding zinnias as a hobby, because that way you can get some flowers that you would never get from a commercial seed packet. There are dozens of different commercial zinnia varieties, which give you a mind-boggling number of possible crosses that you could make. I am just scratching the surface myself. I have been meaning to grow some green zinnias, and cross them with everything, to see what I might get.

If you want to see some interesting variety, the Whirligig strain is a good one to grow. Most of the Whirligs have at least two colors in each bloom, and sometimes three. Probably half of my home-hybrid zinnias have at least some Whirligig in them. This is a picture taken in my Whirligig patch last year.

I'll have another Whirligig patch again this year, and I will be looking for unique specimens to use as "breeders". I prefer the Whirligigs from Stokes because they seem to have more doubles than the ones from Parks. Although, single Whirligigs can look quite good, with a "daisy" like look. Incidentally, you will probably see some "favorite" zinnias in your zinnia patch year. I highly recommend that you mark them in some way to save seeds from them. You could tie a little colored yarn on them or attach some sort of tag. Just anything to help you to know which ones you want to save seeds from. You can make a surprising amount of progress by simply saving seeds from your favorite zinnias each year. If you want to make the process more interesting, you can make crosses between your favorites. Crossing zinnias is not hard to do at all.

ZM

Hi Dale,

"...when you say you have 'over-driven fluorescent lighting' what do you mean?"

A fluorescent shoplight normally contains a single electronic ballast that is wired to drive both of the fluorescent tubes in the fixture. A fairly common practice among people who grow plants under lights, but can't afford the more expensive HID lights, is to modify the shoplight fixture for higher light output. This is done by rewiring the ballast that is already in the fixture to concentrate all of its power on one bulb. A second ballast is added to concentrate all of its power on the other bulb. This is a picture of a fixture that I rewired a few days ago.

The over-driving ballast runs cooler and its life is increased, because it can now "loaf" with a lower "load" than it originally had. The overdriven fluorescent bulb burns much brighter and the tube gets noticeably warmer to the touch. The life of the over-driven bulb is probably shorter because, as the saying goes, "its candle is being burnt at both ends". However, the rated lifetime of my fluorescent bulbs is 36,000 hours, so I am willing to cut that in half or more, if need be, for nearly double the light output. And I have several over-driven bulbs that have been burning brightly for several years.

The indoor growing strategy is, first, get as many conventionally driven fluorescent fixtures over your plants as you can. I can get three 2-tube shoplights over my 18-inch shelves and four 2-tube shoplights over my 24-inch shelves. So I do that first. Then, to get even more light on the plants, I start modifying my fixtures to overdrive them. I purchased a supply of ballasts to do that. The cheap SunPark SL15 ballast in the fixture shown in the picture burned out, so I refurbished the fixture to overdrive it with two SunPark No. 120-2/32IS HPF ballasts, which are higher quality ballasts. I will be using more of those ballasts to overdrive more of my fluorescent fixtures. About a third of my fixtures are now overdriven, with new conversions every week.

"I like the bright single colors."

I like those two. I also like "un-zinnia-like" flower forms, and my home hybridizing has produced a number of interesting new looks in zinnias. I hope to grow a larger zinnia garden this year, and I am looking forward to finding more interesting new zinnia specimens this Summer.

ZM