Veggieswirl,
Let me add my welcome. I've been an addicted Gardenwebber for 10+ years. I started on the Soil and Compost forum and have made my way through Vermicomposting, Wintersowing, and now Annuals, Perennials, Cottage Gardens, Butterfly Gardening, etc. It's like my version of Facebook. There are always interesting people ready to share their passion for growing things. I hope you find as much here as I have.

Martha

I've been breeding plants (not always successfully) on a small scale for some years. Was intiailly inspired by Carol Deppe's "You Can Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties". I was interested in trying zinnias this year. If I can keep the slugs away from the seedlings long enough to plant, I might have a chance.

I've been reading 'Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener' and in the section about zinnias it talks about removing the disk florets but the author doesn't descrbe how it's done (i.e. only breeding to the ray florets as the female parent). I would also be concerned removing that many florets would kill the flower. Does anybody do this? Was it described in a previous " It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part X?" If so can someone direct me to the appropiate one? I'd also be interested in knowing when to harvest the flowers as well.

TIA (Thanks in Advance)

Here is my first bud on the thumbilina! If you look at the bud you will notice part of it is brown, also, just below the bud the two leaves have closed up: I think there is a bug living there. I think I have some kind of fungus. I have tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, cantaloupe, sunflowers, marigolds, California poppies, and sunflowers. My grandfather on my father's side of the family, and my great grandfather on my mother's side, whom I knew quite well were both avid gardeners, almost to the point of being full blown farmers. My great grandfather was a dairyman, and he spoke English with a Dutch accent because although he was Mexican he learned English from the Dutch dairymen. My last name means farmer in Czech. I'm probably younger than a lot of you guys, at 26.

This post was edited by veggieswirl on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 19:44

Hi mauch1,

With respect to removing the disk florets, that is done by "picking" them with tweezers or forceps or twissors. Just grasp the neck of the floret and pull it out. Some zinnias have very few florets and, if it is a good zinnia, I take the floret I have removed and use it as a brush to apply pollen to another zinnia's stigmas to cross pollinate it.

If a zinnia had a whole lot of florets, I would consider that as a bad trait, so I wouldn't be trying to use it as a female or as a male. I would just discard the plant unless I wanted to keep it for the butterflies and hummingbirds.

I saw you message in the Hybridizing forum about deer destroying some of your hybrid peas. My sympathies. Zinnias are not a favorite of deer, so hopefully you won't have a recurrence of that tragedy with your zinnias.

ZM

*If a zinnia had a whole lot of florets, I would consider that as a bad trait, so I wouldn't be trying to use it as a female or as a male. I would just discard the plant unless I wanted to keep it for the butterflies and hummingbirds. *

So the zinnias I've seen in previous years that last a long time in garden but the disk keeps get taller with a ring of stamens progressing upward are the 'bad' ones?

Also when do you harvest the flowers?

(Thanks for the sympathy re the peas -- it wouldn't be quite as frustrating if they hadn't waited until almost the last moment (i.e. I could had the seeds)).

Hi mauch1,

"So the zinnias I've seen in previous years that last a long time in garden but the disk keeps get taller with a ring of stamens progressing upward are the 'bad' ones? "

Well, they are to me. Obviously that is a purely subjective opinion, and not shared by many. For example, the award winning zinnia "Zowie! Yellow Flame" has just such a tall cone of floret flowers, and it won the All America Selections in 2006. So, it's a matter of taste. Those tall cones of dead florets are not attractive to me. But obviously a lot of people don't mind them.

"Also when do you harvest the flowers?"

Hopefully, before the birds eat the seeds. I learned the trick of saving green zinnia seeds from JG (JackieR gardener). She is one of the experienced and resourceful zinnia growers and breeders who participate in this forum. Last year, as an alternative to planting green zinnia seeds, I extracted the embryos from green zinnia seeds and planted two flats of zinnia embryos. They came up in two or three days. Embryo culture can speed up a second generation of zinnias.

A lot of people save the dried brown zinnia heads and shuck the seeds from them. That can work, too. As the old saying goes, "There is more than one way to skin a cat."

ZM

This post was edited by zenman on Wed, Jun 12, 13 at 0:40

Hi everyone!

The zinnias that won the bud race here were the scabious zinnias...in a week or two, I hope to see my first few flowers. We are expecting a big storm tonight, and I'm hoping the plants aren't harmed by hail, wind, and/or flooding. With my micro-crop of zinnias, I feel a tiny bit of what each farmer goes through with respect to his crop every year..what a difficult (but important) job.

I don't particularly like a lot of disc florets in my zinnias, but those are the parts of zinnias that are associated with the nectar, and attract the bees and butterflies, so I let them go. Also, obviously, they are critical for seed production! Often the flowers that interest me most here, though, don't have a whole lot of disc florets, but a few so that I can do some manual crossing.

ZM, those globular, tubular flowers are both pretty and novel! It looks like you have an entire family of them! The last one with the deep rose coloring was nice!

JG

I remember reading in one of this threads something about the petal seeds being different than the seeds from the center. About the seeds almost having different fathers but being from the exact same flower. Can somebody clear this up?

Veggie,

A zinnia is a composite flower, so there are actually many little flowers bundled together on the same 'stem'. Each 'petal' of a zinnia is part of a little female, or ray, flower that has a ovary, stigma, and style ("pistil"). If you look toward the base of the petal, you will see those female parts. The central part of many zinnias have little yellow disc flowers. Those flowers have both pistils (female parts) and stamens (male parts). The yellow part of those disc flowers will be covered with pollen when mature. The female parts of all the small flowers of the composite zinnia can receive pollen from the disc flowers of the same plant, or from another plant. It's possible that each flower, whether a disc or ray flower, could be pollinated by the pollen of a different disc flower (although not probable). Insects are responsible for much of this pollination, but we can intervene! Each seed produced (developing either at the base of a ray flower or a disc flowers) may have a different male parent. If you get a chance, read through this thread from part one. ZM has done a really good job of providing photographs and descriptions of the flowers and how they can be crossed! The seeds produced by the disc flowers are smaller and more rounded while the seeds produced by the ray flowers are flattened and thinner.

JG

Hi everyone,

The first of my Winter Sown zinnias bloomed out a couple of days ago, and several are now in bloom. This is a sample.

{{gwi:5298}}
The parents of these zinnias were not tubular, but they had at least one grandparent that was tubular, so there is a chance that some tubular traits will reappear as the genes recombine. This is one of the WS blooms that exhibits some tubular influence.

{{gwi:5299}}
I am pleased with the results of my Winter Sowing experiment, and plan to expand on the WS operation next year, with at least one new low tunnel.

I am continuing to plant in-ground zinnias as fast as I can prepare beds for them (which is not very fast). I will be planting in a new bed this afternoon. We have thunderstorms and possible hail predicted for this evening. More later.

ZM

ZM,
You say you are still planting seeds in the ground. I've not grown zinnias enough to know how they do as the season progresses. Do they "wear out" toward the end of summer. I guess I'm asking if it would make sense to plant seeds among the plants already growing so there would be "fresh" plants later in the summer? I still have lots of seeds left.

Martha

Hi Martha,

"...if it would make sense to plant seeds among the plants already growing so there would be "fresh" plants later in the summer?"

I actually tried that last year, and it didn't work well. The tiny seedlings were shaded by the big older zinnias, and they grew into spindly weak plants. It does make sense to do succession plantings of zinnias in different spaces. Just don't put the new zinnias in direct competition with the older zinnias.

I plan to continue planting zinnias in-ground up until about the second week of July. The later zinnia crops look better in the Fall when the earlier zinnia crops are going to seed and looking decrepit and becoming susceptible to mildew. Young zinnias are resistant to mildew.

ZM

Hi everyone,

I am encouraged that a significant percentage of my Winter Sown zinnias are showing tubular characteristics, even though their parents were non-tubular. Also, I am seeing some variations in the tubular flower form, as I had hoped. This one exhibits rather thin tubes with a pointed flare at the end.

{{gwi:5300}}
I am curious how it will look as the flower matures. This one has well flared tubes with an intense red color.

{{gwi:5301}}
So far, well over ten percent of the recombinants from non-tubular zinnias with a tubular grandparent show tubular influences. And significant variations in the tubular flowerform are appearing. So I feel this approach to breeding tubular zinnias is validated. Now I hope to get something "really good" from my recombinants that are yet to bloom this year.

ZM

Zenman, they are pretty. I can't believe how tall your zinnia's. I'm still waiting for mine to sprout.

Hi Rose,

" I'm still waiting for mine to sprout."

How long have you been waiting for your zinnias to sprout? The Winter Sown zinnias whose pictures I have been showing were planted on the 6th and 7th of April under a low tunnel covered with agricultural fabric. They were a little slow to germinate due to the cool soil that time of year, but the tunnel made them 6 to 8 degrees warmer, so the tunnel functioned somewhat like an unheated greenhouse. My zinnias came up in a little over a week in the low tunnel, which considering that they were planted inground over a month before the usual planting time, was pretty good.

At this stage in their breeding, my tubular zinnias might not be considered to be pretty because their petal structure is so different and un-zinnia-like. This is another of my Winter Sown tubular recombinants.

{{gwi:5302}}
I am not sure that one is even tubular, but its petals seem to be influenced by some tubular genes. As they develop, some of the tubular blooms can resemble conventional zinnias, like this one.

{{gwi:5303}}
Its tubular petals open out into almost conventional petals at the end. That isn't exactly what I am going for, but it does show that tubular petals can take many forms. I am hoping to get some tubular flowerforms that are truly as pretty as conventional zinnias, but I haven't achieved that yet. However, I do expect to get a lot more tubular zinnia blooms in my recombinants this year, so I am hoping to at least make some progress in that direction.

ZM

ZM,

You are doing so well with the tubular zinnias! I like them all...the ones with long, narrow tubes are so interesting! Now that you have an enriched gene pool, you are going to get all kinds of variations of that trait. I know that there are other composite flowers like gaillardia and chrysanthemums with that mutation along with the coneflower 'Henry Eilers.'

I've got lots of buds on my plants now, and I am doing my final weeding. After that, it will be strictly observation of flowers (my favorite part). I've got some scabious plants, the Select Seeds "Gumdrop Candy" ready to bloom. Wonder what percent will be scabious? I keep my fingers crossed on that one. Also have a number of buds on my Extreme Roll progeny. Wish that trait was as inherited as the tubular one!

JG

I'm a new one here- can anyone tell me some basics of this stuff? I know how to grow zinnias, but not to breed them!

JG,

"Now that you have an enriched gene pool, you are going to get all kinds of variations of that trait."

I am hoping that I will get lots of variations of the tubulars. For one thing, I need to get them in a complete color range. This specimen makes some progress in that direction.

{{gwi:5304}}
I have lots more recombinants budding out, so hopefully I can make some significant progress with the tubulars this year.

Goclon,

I see you registered just yesterday, so welcome to the party here on GardenWeb. I am sure that others, like JackieR, can offer more good advice on the basics of breeding zinnias as a hobby, but since you can grow zinnias, you are already part way there.

I would recommend growing several different kinds of zinnias of the types that you like, and first of all, just pick out your favorites. Zinnias have a lot of variations, and just deciding on the ones that have traits that you like can be a fun thing to do. You can either save seed from them and have a bunch of zinnias that you like better next year. Or, better still, you can make crosses between your favorites and have some great surprises from them. It's not hard to cross zinnias, so I recommend that you try that.

If you read backwards in these message threads (they are connected with links head-to-head and toe-to-head), you can find a lot of details on that. Or we can add some details here if you like.

Again, welcome to GardenWeb and to this potential fun hobby. I think that quote from Ancestry.com is applicable here to zinnias. "You don't even have to know what you're looking for...you just have to start looking."

ZM

This post was edited by zenman on Sat, Jun 22, 13 at 23:42

ZM,

That last tubular flower is great! I love the color, the contrasting veins, the long tubes, and the dark red center! That has got to be the wildest flower you've shown yet! Was that a result of planned crossing, or did that occur from a random cross? I wonder if all the flowers will be similar on that plant? Looking forward to the flowers you have coming up!

The flower I have that is furthest along is merely a scabious example,and not fully opened. You might say it has tubes..of the scabious variety, LOL...

{{gwi:5306}}

JG

Long time no post. I didn't feel up to the task of keeping zinnias alive during this previous winter, and so it sort of fell out of my interest until spring came. I took my small raised bed and tossed a few handfuls of zinnia seeds all over, allowing them to germinate wherever they could. A few days later I inspected the garden and noticed many seedlings came up, and I was very happy to think that all of those zinnias had germinated. To my dismay, their first leaves came in and they turned out to not be zinnias at all. I had a good laugh and was pretty surprised that this unidentified weed that sprouted at the expected time of my zinnias could look so similar. I went to work plucking all of those out, and a week later the real zinnias came in - I was very happy. I'm still not sure what that unidentified weed was, but I may still have a couple growing in the garden that I can try to identify sometime.

My first zinnia of the year is about to open up today or tomorrow, and I'll be able to tell the color. I'm very excited to find out what this mystery zinnia will look like... I'm guessing purple or pink, as that's what my seeds have been dominated with historically. I'm still leaving all crossing up to nature, and I have saved seed from everything that I could. There's a major anticipation factor when you go in "blind," waiting to see what pops up. It may be the most generic zinnia you've ever seen in your life, or it could be a complete oddball. This particular one and all of them in my small garden are hybrids of a hybrid of a hybrid... etc. I don't actually know how far back I've personally planted these, at this point.
{{gwi:5308}}

After reading everything that I've missed, I particularly enjoy the flower that ZM posted on June 5th. And JG, your most recent picture reminds me of candy hearts for some reason. I guess the color, and the almost heart-shaped petals. Looks "sweet."

Hi TC,

Welcome back. It has been a long time. You may have noticed that I am using the "flower mode" on my camera to throw the backgrounds out of focus, at the expense of limited depth of field in the bloom itself. Actually I wish I had gotten the background more out-of-focus in this recent picture of a new tubular recombinant. Its stem had an odd angle from a recent wind storm, and the ground appears as the background in the picture. That is not good from an artistic standpoint.

{{gwi:5309}}
The lighting was bad when I snapped that and I think the picture suffered because of that. But the zinnia itself is a bit unusual. Maybe I'll get a better picture of it in a few days.

I agree with your opinion of the June 5th picture. I really like that nearly spherical flower form, and I will be giving it preference during my selection processes.

There is always suspense and anticipation when waiting for a new zinnia bud to open into a flower. So we will be awaiting a picture of your new zinnia bloom, whatever it is.

ZM

Fabulous!
I am new to growing zinnias this year and am amazed at the diversity of this beautiful little flower.

Mine are outdoors and experiencing wet-weather fungus and Japanese beetle de-foliation but we are doing our best to have them last a bit longer. Here is a recent pic of a new bloom:

Tell me, if you cut the stems does the plant keep producing? And I assume disease is non-existent when growing indoors, yes?

Here's the garden:

Hi LKZZ,

Nice close-up pic. Did you use a special lens to get that close?

Yes, a zinnia plant will continue growing and expanding if you harvest cut flowers from it. Just be careful to take just the stems and whatever stem leaves are attached to the stem, and to leave the nodes (branching points) on the plant so that it can put out new branches. And try to make a clean cut. Scissors or pruners will do.

"And I assume disease is non-existent when growing indoors, yes?"

Infrequent, but not non-existent. In the Fall, I usually take a few cuttings from my favorite "breeder" zinnias, and bring them indoors. Sometimes a disease or pest will come in on a cutting. Last fall I transplanted a whole plant into a pot to grow under fluorescent lights, and it apparently had some spider mites on it. Spider mites on outdoor zinnias are usually kept in check by natural enemies, but they had a population explosion on my indoor zinnia and killed it before I could kill them.

When you are growing zinnias indoors there are three formidable enemies: aphids, thrips, and spider mites. Outdoors, there are natural enemies and conditions that keep them in check. But indoors their populations can explode in less than a week.

A systemic drench of a product containing imidacloprid will control the aphids and thrips by entering the internal system of the zinnia to protect it from within, but the spider mites can problematic. Imidacloprid doesn't kill them. The only systemic control that I know of for spider mites on zinnias is prohibitively expensive.

You can apply a systemic drench inside, but spraying inside could be a bad thing, and taking your plants outside to spray them isn't always feasible, especially in sub-freezing weather.

Bottom line: growing zinnias outside is relatively easy, but inside, not so much. As a hobbyist, I enjoy the challenge and grow zinnias year round. But growing zinnias inside can be "interesting".

ZM

PS. I am glad we don't have Japanese Beetles here in Kansas.

JG,

"That has got to be the wildest flower you've shown yet! Was that a result of planned crossing, or did that occur from a random cross?"

I'm glad you like it. That was not from a random cross. It was an F2 progeny from an F1 cross whose female zinnia was one of my aster flowered zinnias designated as E20. I applied a lot of pollen from my original tubular "mutant" (E2) to E20 and grew a couple of rows of those hybrids last year.

None of those hybrids were tubular, but I was reasonably sure they had tubular "blood", so I planted the seeds from those rows of F1s with a reasonable expectation of getting some tubulars, which I am getting. Actually, I showed a picture of E20 year-before-last in the then-allowable 986-pixel-wide format. Just so you don't have to dig for it, here is a picture of E20, the grandmother of that "wild" tubular.

{{gwi:5311}}
I am hoping for some more tubular recombinants from that cross. E20 was one of my better aster flowered specimens. It should have several ways of modifying the tubular petal flowerform.

ZM

Can the old mexico zinnias or the zinnia marylandica hybridize with the zinnia elegans?

Hello:
Earlier on in the thread, the tubular petaled zinnias seemed particularly interesting! Are they derived from cactus-form zinnias. Also, is it too late to put out zinnias for seeds that I can plant in the fall or winter indoors? I live in New York, if that matters

It is likely too late for your to grow anything outdoors in your zone. I've been thinking about that lately a lot! Yesterday I planted my last seeds of the year for warm weather crops! It's pretty late to plant tomatoes, but what the heck I decided to give it a go! Zinnias as well, I planted my last zinnia seeds of the season! I still have plenty of commercial seeds but I'm done planting for the season! My zinnias have been slow to bloom, AS NONE HAVE BLOOMED YET! I'm in a much different and much warmer climate zone, Zone 10, coastal orange county, California, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, and most of the year stuff can grow almost year round, but my warm season growing is usually done by Halloween and everything is harvested! Indoor growing is challenging as apparently pests can go wild! Luckily, I can start planting stuff outside in February. That's when volunteer seedlings start to emerge!

Hi Veggie,

"Can the old mexico zinnias or the zinnia marylandica hybridize with the zinnia elegans?"

The short answer is no. Old Mexico is a tetraploid version of Z. haageana and so it has 48 chromosomes. Zinnia marylandicas (a man-made species) are allotetraploids of Z. angustifolila (22 chromosomes) and Z. violacea (elegans) (24 chromosomes) so the Zinnia marylandicas have 46 chromosomes.

You might actually get a few seeds from the crosses you mentioned, but they almost certainly would be sterile, or possibly produce plants that would be sterile. To avoid sterility in your hybrids, you should cross between specimens that have the same number of chromosomes.

I have stuck with just Zinnia violacea (elegans) and the Whirligig cultivar, which was derived from a cross between Z. violacea and Z. haageana.

The Whirligigs are recombinants from that interspecific cross, and for that reason they have some remarkable variations that aren't pictured in the catalogs or on the seed packets. I heartily recommend that you include Whirligigs in almost any zinnia breeding program.

And there are at least two strains of Whirligigs, one that is primarily double (from Stokes, for example), and one that is primarily single (from Parks, for example). I prefer the double strain, but for maximum variability you might want to try both strains. Both strains cross easily with Zinnia elegans to produce some interesting results.

ZM

Hi goclon,

"Earlier on in the thread, the tubular petaled zinnias seemed particularly interesting! Are they derived from cactus-form zinnias?

Mine were not derived from the cactus strain. It appeared as a single mutant in a patch of two-tone zinnias that were probably derived from Whirligigs. I aggressively crossed that mutant with most of my breeder class zinnias. Recombinants from those crosses are now producing a variety of tubular type zinnias.

"Also, is it too late to put out zinnias for seeds that I can plant in the fall or winter indoors?".

I'm not sure I understand your question, but zinnias bloom in 6 to 8 weeks from seed. I am still planting zinnias here in zone 5b (possibly now 6a with climate change). You could still plant zinnias, get blooms, cross them or self them, and save viable seeds this Fall. I do not recommend growing zinnias indoors for anyone other than advanced hobbyists.

The exception to that is starting zinnias indoors a few weeks early prior to setting them out in the garden in the Spring. That should be doable if you have a good fluorescent light setup. I was surprised by your zone 7b in New York.

ZM

This post was edited by zenman on Tue, Jun 25, 13 at 21:06

I ordered some carrousel/whirligigs from the internet and got 150 seeds. I will be planting some of those next season, but planted quite a few recently. I do have some brushes and stuff to pollinate on my own, but I do enjoy seeing the bees at work! Bees pollinate zinnias right? Some of my sunflowers have bloomed and bees really love those! I also have a bunch of caterpillars on my zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, poppies, and sunflowers. Those are all the flower species I am growing. Next season I may plant some of my jazzy zinnias, which are an improved version of old mexico zinnias. I will post pictures of the flowers that I get, but they are not home bred, next season, they will be. I will also post some caterpillar pictures tomorrow. Yes I know caterpillars eat plants, but they also turn into butterflies. There are two particular species of caterpillar I keep seeing! I wonder what they become!

I forgot to add I have some zowie zinnias in addition. I guess I'll let the Jazzy Mix, which is a version of Old Mexico, zinnias grow and harvest the seeds. I believe the pinwheel zinnias are zinnia marylandica, which is why I intentionally withheld on planting them, because I wanted my plants to breed. I've got white wedding zinnias, candy cane zinnias, cut and come again zinnias, and my thumbilina has petals peaking through.

repeat post sorry

This post was edited by veggieswirl on Tue, Jun 25, 13 at 23:23

Hi Veggie,

I could be wrong about this, but I don't think that Jazzy is tetraploid, which means it is just a selected and perfected version of Z. haageana. Which means you could have a shot at crossing it with your Violacea/Elegans to get your very own interspecific crosses.

With regard to your 150 seeds of Whirligig/Carrousel from the Internet, that isn't the most cost effective way to buy them. If you want to grow a lot of Whirligigs, you can get a much lower per-seed cost by buying in quantity. Stokes Seeds sells a quarter pound for $14.60 and Hazzard Seeds sells 2000 seeds for $10.89. Both are good deals, and give you enough for an extensive planting, which is likely to produce some interesting results.

Not all caterpillars hatch out into butterflies. Some become moths. Right off hand, I don't know of any butterfly that uses zinnia as its food plant. But I don't know the situation in California. Any caterpillar that chooses to munch on my breeder zinnias is a goner.

I am looking forward to pictures from your zinnia garden. I have been meaning to grow White Wedding, and just haven't gotten around to it yet.

ZM
(not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Here is the caterpillar. I have a suspicion it may become a moth. This particular caterpillar camouflages, and becomes a beautiful lilac on my cosmos. There is one other species I notice. This is one of my container zinnias. Sadly I have no blooms yet, but this plant might beat my thumblinas to blooming.

I don't need extensive, large, amounts of zinnia seeds. I have a 7,000 square foot lot at my parent's house that is my garden canvas. We have a detached garage, but behind it and between it is a weed filled waste land. I have a lot of containers that are great for zinnias. Additionally, I'm going to see what blooms and how many seeds I yield before I buy, but I will likely buy the stokes seeds as they looked quite lovely!

Hello!

I'm loving all the photos everyone is submitting! LKZZ, your zinnia patch is so bright and cheery! And you can save lots of seeds from it, too, for next year. Veggie, if you want to identify that little caterpillar, get a good close-up shot of it and submit it to bugguide.net, and you most likely will get it identified within hours.

ZM, the deep pink/red flower you showed is gorgeous. You are getting such good colors! I almost forgot about those aster-flowered zinnias you had...they were classics. Wouldn't have imagined you would have crossed them with a tubular, but what a good idea!

Well, many of the plants from the scabious seeds that I planted are starting to bloom, and I can safely say that I will be lucky to get 5% true scabious form. I saw the one pictured below, and thought it would develop into a nice example...but wouldn't you know?-- it has a "twin" very closely adjoined on the same stem, and of a paler color! Zinnias can do funny things. There are buds on most of my plants in two of my earlier-started beds...so am hoping to get more flowers soon. Thankfully, we had some rain in the last day. I was afraid we were headed for a dry spell. I'm hoping that the moisture will encourage the flowers.

{{gwi:5313}}

JG

"Mine were not derived from the cactus strain. It appeared as a single mutant in a patch of two-tone zinnias that were probably derived from Whirligigs."
Okay, then. What strain should I grow then to get the tubular? Is there a commercial tubular strain? If not, which one is the most likely to mutate the tubular-type zinnias?

Thanks!

(a copied message)

This post was edited by Goclon on Thu, Jun 27, 13 at 9:31

Hi Goclon,

There is no commercial strain of tubular zinnias that I know of. I have no idea which available strain is most likely to mutate to tubular. If I had to make a wild guess, it would be the scabiosa flowered cultivars and the Whirligig based cultivars.

I am not even sure that the mutation occurred in my zinnia patch. Based on its odd ways of propagating itself in the absence of bee pollination, I think it is very possible that the tubular strain may be a very old strain that has been "flying under the radar" in some commercial zinnia fields. And it just shows up occasionally in a seed packet.

But I have seen one only once in my lifetime, so I think that getting a tubular is extremely rare. I was just very lucky to get one. (Or unlucky, if this tubular project turns out to be a waste of time.) If you should get a tubular, consider yourself also very lucky. But don't devote your whole zinnia breeding project to a quest for a tubular.

I was aware of the rare existence of the tubular flower form in zinnias from a fuzzy picture posted years earlier in another garden forum (Dave's garden). I asked the poster to save seeds from it and send me a few and he agreed, but I never heard any more about it or received any seed. My guess is that it either didn't have any seed, or the poster didn't know how to save zinnia seed, or decided to keep them for himself (I wouldn't blame him for that.)

My guess is that in those rare cases when someone gets a tubular, they just pull it up as a "defective" specimen or just leave it to grow out its life cycle. Only a small percentage of people who grow zinnias save seeds from them.

In my opinion, the original tubular strain has limited ornamental value. I am just messing with it because I think it has the potential to evolve into a more ornamental form through hybridization, recombination, and selection. I am posting pictures as a progress report, and not as a tease to get other people to look for tubulars.

"How much space do you need to have to breed zinnias?"

I have worked with as few as 120 square feet, but I felt very limited by that and actually accomplished more with my indoor zinnia growing during the Winter that year. You will have more fun if you can grow several hundred zinnias. Breeding zinnias is a little like playing a slot machine -- the more times you pull the handle the better are your chances of hitting the jackpot.

"How long does it take to go from (green) seed to flowering for the average zinnia?"

It takes 6 to 8 weeks to first flower from green seeds, provided you breach the green seed coat (which is impervious to water because it is still alive). If you just plant the green seed without doing that, you can add 2 weeks to allow for the seed coat to die and become pervious.

Occasionally, for special specimens, I remove the embryos from the green seeds and plant embryos instead of seeds. That was discussed in a previous Part of this message series. It's not as hard to do as you might think, provided you have X-Acto knives.

The forum participant and fellow zinnia breeder, JackieR, taught me that I could save green seeds in the Fall instead of waiting for the seedheads to become brown. It is important that the green seeds be mature enough to have fully developed embryos inside, and that you spread them out to dry thoroughly before you package them. That tip has been a big help to me, because it helps me avoid seed loss to seed eating birds, and seed loss to pregermination in the seed heads in a rainy period.

ZM

Hello again..

One of the first zinnias to bloom in my biggest patch was an extreme rolled flower...not an impressive one..but it gives me hope that I may see better examples as the summer goes on.

{{gwi:5315}}.

JG

I have been growing zinnias for a number of years. I'm 26 and have been growing zinnias half of my life! However, I didn't save seeds! I would get volunteers, but that's it! I'm going to be excited to see what I get next year! The rolled up petals and tubulars are pretty cool. I'm growing seashell cosmos. I'm hybridizing almost everything I'm growing. I'm hoping for disease resistance as well and am hopeful that my Jazzys breed with my other zinnias. So far no blooms! I've had marigolds, cosmos and sunflowers flower this season, but no zinnias!

Hi JG,

That twin-headed scabious specimen might be worth saving seeds from, just to see what you get. One head seems to have white-on-the-outside florets, while the other one apparently doesn't. For commercial scabiosa flowered cultivars, 5 percent on-type is about what I usually get. Some of the early Candy Mix yielded about 10 percent on type. But I have some Candy Mix seeds that yield considerably less than 5%, maybe in the one-percent range. I won't be planting them again any time soon. I can live with 5-percent, because I normally cull in the 90-percent range anyway.

"The flower I have that is furthest along is merely a scabious example, and not fully opened. You might say it has tubes ... of the scabious variety..." You might, indeed. I probably should put more emphasis on adding scabious genes to my gene pool, because getting away from the "fuzzy yellow starfish" look in pollen florets appeals to me. And I really need to try harder to get interactions between scabious and tubular flower forms. This recombinant hints at the advantages of scabious genes.

{{gwi:5317}}
This closeup shows the details of the florets a little better. It is just a crop from the original large image that comes from my camera.

{{gwi:5318}}
Those aren't true scabious florets, but they differ some from the usual "fuzzy yellow starfish", and make it easier for me to like what is actually a single zinnia. I know that my prejudice against single zinnias is unjustified, and someone is going to breed some stunning single zinnias, perhaps starting with the Parks strain of Whirligigs. I can't wait to see more of your extreme rolled zinnias. And other interesting zinnias that appear from your gene pool. A lot of your zinnias have "the right stuff".

ZM

Hi Veggie,

"So far no blooms! I've had marigolds, cosmos and sunflowers flower this season, but no zinnias!"

Just out of curiosity, when did you plant your zinnias? It seems a bit odd that we in Kansas and the Midwest should be ahead of you in California. The W. Atlee Burpee seed company used to grow their zinnias preferentially in California, because of the favorable climate there. They probably still do.

ZM

Zenman,
How big is your indoor area? Do I need a soil heater or a humidifier? Or can they grow like normal houseplants w/ supplementary light? I'm not sure if I have the space for a few hundred zinnias out of doors! Inside is a different matter.
How much dwarf zinnias can you grow in 80 sq ft?

This post was edited by Goclon on Fri, Jun 28, 13 at 10:13

ZM,
The disc florets on the last flower you showed are attractive because the petals on them are so deeply indented (I guess you would call them toothy). That flower is going to be really interesting to see when all of the florets are open..hope you show that flower then as well!

Talking about scabious and tubular petals...I was surprised to see a scabious flower today with half of its guard petals tubular in form. Will know if that is possibly genetic or environmentally caused when other flowers on that plant bloom.

{{gwi:5319}}

JG

ZM, I planted my zinnias very late. Probably in mid-April and early May. I just finished planting. I've had buds, but they are no good! They die or get eaten by bugs! At very least, I had them planted by May 1st. Many are newer, I'm just really behind. Still, I should have had blooms! I have about 60 plants that are beyond the early seedling stage, hopefully I'll have 75 to 90 bloom, but so far none! I planted my last ones today, and sowed through May, but... they should have bloomed already!

Hi Goclon,

"I'm not sure if I have the space for a few hundred zinnias out of doors!"

Growing zinnias inside is not a practical alternative to growing them outside, regardless of space considerations. Grow as many zinnias outside as you can, even if it is only a few.

"Or can they grow like normal houseplants w/ supplementary light?"

No, they cannot grow like normal houseplants because zinnias are not houseplants. No book on houseplants that I know of mentions zinnias.

"How much dwarf zinnias can you grow in 80 sq ft?"

A dwarf zinnia can be happy in about one square foot, so the answer would be 80. But once again, that would be outside, and not inside.

ZM

Hi Veggie,

"I planted my zinnias very late. Probably in mid-April and early May."

They should be in full bloom by now. Zinnias that I planted on May 18th are now in full bloom.

"I've had buds, but they are no good! They die or get eaten by bugs!"

Bugs might destroy the occasional zinnia bud, but not your whole crop. I think you have a nutritional problem with the bed where you are growing your zinnias. Once we solve that, you will be "covered up" with zinnia blooms.

In the absence of photographs of your zinnias, I can guess that your zinnias are suffering from specific nutrient deficiencies. What have you been feeding them? The two most likely deficiencies that come to mind are calcium and boron. Zinnias need about twice as much boron as most flowers.

Boron can be tricky, because too much boron can be toxic. That is pretty much true of everything, but in the case of boron the "window" between too little and too much is much narrower than with most nutrients.

All complete soluble nutrient formulas (like, for example, Miracle-Gro) contain some trace elements, including boron. But it is a "safe" lower level, that isn't enough for zinnias until you adopt a program of regular foliar feeding with it. I routinely add a little extra boron in my foliar feeds of zinnias.

Calcium is another nutrient whose deficiency can cause bud problems. I have sprinkled my garden with pelleted gypsum (calcium sulfate), so calcium deficiencies are less of a problem for me, but if the buds look a little weak, I add some calcium nitrate to my foliar feed.

Your current lack of zinnia blooms is a symptom of a problem that needs to be fixed. If you can, please post pictures.

ZM

Hi all,

This thread has gone well beyond the 100 mark (that used to be a limit imposed by GardenWeb) so we are starting a new part to the thread, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 21. See you all over there.

ZM