Hi all,

Welcome to this ongoing message thread. Once again, the previous part of this continuing series, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 21, has become rather long and slow to load or read, so we are continuing the series here for yet another fresh start.

The same guidelines apply here. Anything remotely related to zinnias is fine. As always, you are invited to post your pictures, and I don't have any size recommendations for your pictures because the forum now automatically re-sizes larger pictures to 550 pixels wide. I took this picture today of my main outdoor zinnia work area.

There have been a few changes since the last picture. Of course, the zinnias have grown some and I have culled quite a few of them. I also removed the horizontal pieces from the low tunnel frameworks, because they were somewhat in the way of me getting in there to weed or cull or pollinate.

I left the hoops because there wasn't any pressing reason to remove them. They could help cover the zinnias in case there is an early frost in the Fall. And I have found the hoops handy to use as hand rails when stooping to access a zinnia or to stand up again.

It's hot and we need rain. I have been watering my zinnias some. There is some hope of rain in the next few days. I hope to hear from you all soon about your zinnia activities, and see your pictures.

ZM

Martha

"I have been spitting on the ends of the brushes to make the pollen stick. Does anybody know if that might make the pollen sterile?"

I have never done that, because the pollen sticks nicely to my brushes. However, you can tell if your pollinations are being successful by watching the stigmas that you are pollinating. If successful, the stigmas will darken and wither within a day or two. If unsuccessful, the stigma will remain yellow and fresh for up to a week, perhaps a few days more.

Normally you have about a week to get a freshly opened zinnia stigma fertilized. The old saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" applies to pollinating zinnia stigmas.

ZM

Those are great pictures, very clear and well composed. You are doing a great job of arranging your zinnia plantings in pleasing formations in your landscape. Your zinnias aren't crowded, and yet they are in attractive associations with other flowers. And they look very healthy, well nourished, and happy. Good job.

ZM

Just got back from Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI, and the flowers, conservatory, and sculptures were wonderful. Saw a few zinnias--mostly Profusions and what looked to me like white Magellans.

We've gotten a little more rain which is an immense help. I am going to have to place more nets over my flowers as the finches are taking zinnia seeds very seriously now.

Goclon, I got cactus zinnias from a number of different sources. The ones that gave the most "Madusa" type flowers to date were Burpeeana Giants and Burpee Hybrid Mix. But other nice cactus types came from Ferrymorse Giant Mixed Cactus, American Seed Giant Cactus, Seeds of Change Peggy's Delight, and Parks Giant Cactus Mix--and I have some from other companies that will flower in the future.

SouthCountry, the mix you have of zinnia, lavatera and white marigold is very nice. Maybe other zinnias from the same plant will rise above the other flowers!

Telescody, those pictures I took were taken under cloudy skies--I think that is the best time to get pictures of the flowers, although I don't always do that! It looks like your own patch is coming on strong. Hope you got that yellow flower!

Veggie, I don't know if saliva will hurt pollen or not, but to be on the safe side, probably I'd use water instead if you want to add liquid.. Saliva does have some enzymes on it that might harm the pollen grains.

Martha, your border is really taking off! You've got a good mix of flowers. Those zinnias with the yellow disc florets are very attractive to the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Not only can you save seeds from the zinnias, but also from the Black-eyed Susans. It won't long until you have a solid mass of flowers out there!

ZM, your hoop set-up has lots of functions I see. I guess it will help you extend your season possibly after the first frost. I hope you get rain, although I must say in our drought last summer which was a historic one, the zinnias hung in there pretty well. I gave them very little water as there were too many of them to water well. They are probably the closest to drought-resistant of many annual flowers!

JG

Hi all,

The same F2 recombinants that are producing a decent percentage of the tubular petal forms are also having many other forms, many of which are culls. However, I am also getting some reincarnations of the aster flowered flower forms, like this one:

That one obviously had some Whirligig genes. This is a tubular bloom whose petals seem tipped with lipstick painted lips.

We got a few drops of rain today -- not enough to make any difference. I did water my zinnias some more.

ZM

Martha

"Why is the center purple?"

Apparently there are separate genes for the color of the zinnia center. In this case, it isn't so noticeable, because the purple harmonizes with the magenta of the petal color. Sometimes it can be very noticeable when, for example, a white zinnia has a yellow center or a pale pastel has a very dark center. To me, that just adds to the interest of breeding zinnias. I currently have a patch of commercial white cactus zinnias that I hope to select a few decent white specimens from, and I am looking for good white centers as well as good white petals.

" Do they chemically treated bedding zinnias to be shorter?"

Yes, growers of bedding plants for sale in flats do routinely use Plant Growth Regulators to keep the plants short so they can have blooms in the flat without getting gangly. It "wears off" so it shouldn't affect the ultimate performance of the plants in the garden. The PGR should not affect pollen production, so I don't know what is going on there. I routinely use the PGRs Topflor and A-Rest to help control the height of my indoor Winter zinnias.

It will be interesting to see if you do get a trailing zinnia. I had a trailing zinnia a couple of seasons ago and I saved seeds from it. I didn't plant any this year, but I probably will next year. I am not certain the trailing trait is genetic. It could be an odd environmental effect caused by a strange substance in the soil. And I am not sure I like the effect, because one trailing zinnia can take up an awful lot of space, and the zinnia stems lying on the ground tend to strike roots. I am not going for a groundcover zinnia, because I think there are lots of better groundcovers available.

ZM

veggieswirl,
"My zinnia stigmas are drying up and new florets are opening! I guess that means pollination is totally successful!"
Woo-hoo! Just imagine the next generation that will come from your crosses. Maybe you'll see a clear representation of what you did with the new flowers. Very exciting.

ZM, I have a couple zinnias that fell over and I was thinking about the trailing part the other day. Although most of the stem is on the ground, I didn't see any roots growing from the nodes. I suppose it's possible, but it doesn't look very good either. I could maybe see trying to encourage trailing to cut down vertical space, like under lights. I don't think it's genetic, either. Probably just a response to conditions.

Here's a picture I captured the other day. My only non-pink flower of the year so far with a butterfly [Pearl Crescent] included.

And a closeup of the Pearl Crescent:

Hi Telescody,

Those are good pictures. You did a good job of capturing the butterfly, especially on that last picture.

I can't imagine the trailing zinnias being a good thing. It puts the foliage near the ground, which tends to contaminate it with various foliage diseases. But various things, including wind, can knock a zinnia down.

That white zinnia you have looks really good. Nice pure color on the big petals and in the center. I definitely would keep it. Don't be afraid to cross it with non-whites. Although the F1s will be non-white, the F2s will most likely have some re-combined whites and they might be somewhat different in form.

This is a picture of a portion of one of my current zinnia beds. It has several whites that have "reappeared" from non-white crosses.

When the zinnias are crowded like that they tend to support each other, but as I cull out a lot of less desirable specimens, the remaining "keepers" will be somewhat tall and need support. Sometimes I use zinnia cages to support them in our Kansas winds.

ZM

Hi Veggie,

" I hope to get zinnia haagena and zinnia violecea hybrids. Has anybody here succeeded with that?"

I have made a couple of half-hearted attempts, with no viable seeds set. It is definitely possible, because several zinnia strains have resulted from that interspecific hybridization, including the Whirligigs. I hope you are successful. You might just be the first one of us to succeed with that cross.

If you are successful, you could very well see some recombinations that we have never seen, because the Whirligigs are many generations removed from the original interspecific crosses. You could be seeing true F2 recombinations from the cross, which might have some new traits that none of us have seen.

Some of my recombinations with tubulars produce blooms with "invisible" tubular traits. This bloom is an example of that.

The petals at the bottom of the bloom in this picture actually have little "necks" at their bases, but because the bloom is full, you can't see them. The extreme "fullness" of that bloom is a trait that the tubular genes sometimes impart.

You are right that your green zinnia still has some definite petal uproll. Those petals look a bit like spoons, in that they have enough uproll to "hold water". And that is a nice light green color, too. Actually, it looks a bit like what might result from crossing an Envy with a white zinnia.

Is it just the lighting, or does the foliage on your "whitest zinnia" have some mildew? If so, there are several ways you can prevent and treat that. The safest, and possibly the best way is to spray with Green Cure. It is popular with rose growers, but I have found that it is also very good on zinnias. It is completely non-toxic -- in fact its active ingredient, potassium bicarbonate, is also an ingredient in some baking powders. Of course, it also has a proprietary wetting agent, so you wouldn't actually want to use it in the kitchen.

Green Cure, like potassium bicarbonate, is completely water soluble, so rains or even heavy dews can wash it off. So you should be prepared to spray your zinnias with it fairly often. It comes as a white powder that you mix with water.

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

Martha

Hi all,

It has been sprinkling here on and off all day. I have a few more pictures of tubular specimens, like this one.

Despite its regular arrangement of petals, there is quite a bit of variation between the individual petals themselves.

The "toothy" tubular that I pictured previously has put out some more flowers. It seems to have developed a little brighter color. Perhaps that is because it has been cloudy most of the time for several days. And it was cloudy when I took the picture this morning.

Its flowers are rather small. I hope to "reinvent" the toothy tubulars next year into something a bit more spectacular.

I notice that this large flowered zinnia has a sort of recurve to its petals that give it a somewhat different shape.

It reminds me a little bit of a pagoda. I plan to put more emphasis on large zinnia flowers next year. I notice that Burpee's Giant Hybrids seem to have been dropped from their catalog and their website. I wonder if that strain got discontinued. More later.

ZM

Hi all,

I took this picture of a cactus flowered recombinant yesterday during a non-rainy period. It was still very overcast and cloudy, so the lighting is subdued.

It is not at all unusual for me to take a picture of a zinnia bloom, not noticing an insect in or on the bloom. This one was a good example of that. You probably didn't notice the little ant in that picture. I didn't either, until I was down-sizing the picture for use on the Internet. Moving in close on the photo, we can see the ant.

Those little ants are presumably drinking some of the zinnia nectar. They may very well be responsible for the mystery pollination of some of my tubular zinnias last year, in which case I got good seed yields from tubular petals whose stigmas were inaccessible within the tube of the petal.

I am not sure it is wise to breed a strain of zinnias that is ant-pollinated, but I may be doing that very thing.

ZM

Martha

Just got back from another out of state trip to see a riot of color in my zinnia patches. Daylilies are gone, but the zinnias are making up for that. I have a massive amount of seed collecting to do, as well as deadheading some of the blooms to help keep up the display.

ZM, that first flower you showed on July 29 is a tubular fantastico! I hope you get that line going, then I will buy some seeds! The dark pink toothy tubular is a beauty, too.

Telescody, your blooms are so flawless with nice pure colors. Do you pick them or leave them in the garden for seeds?

I have a lot of scabious recombinants, grown up from past years' seeds. Here is one from a plant that has quite a few flowers:

Here is a typical Benary zinnia:

This flower is one of my extreme roll flowers, giving a nice amount of pollen for crossing:

Here is a Benary-cactus recombinant...see the features of each?

Time to go out and get seeds....

JG

"That yellow is so deep and rich. I have a paler, banana-flesh yellow that is light and fresh, but fades in the heat a bit. "
Thanks, Martha! I particularly enjoy the yellow zinnias. If you recall one of my previous posts, I explained that my first zinnia was yellow. I saved a ton of seed from that, and I like to believe the genes are still flowing around even now. I may game the system a little bit and try to germinate more of those yellow zinnias from that very first seed batch, to try and promote a yellow color in my garden.

Your strategy of collecting seeds sounds like a good one. Surprisingly, some of the best flowers may come from your "junk" seeds, so a plan to check them one generation later doesn't hurt. And often those flowers are the ones that produce the most nectar and pollen for the birds and insects.

I like yellow flowers, too. As I have collected seeds and followed generations after, I often have flowers drift to shades of pink and purple. I end up periodically enriching my garden with seeds of white and yellow flowers to try and keep a more even distribution of colors.

While collecting seeds, I notice that many of my extreme roll flowers have many layers of petals. I hope that means I will have more seeds. These flowers don't produce much pollen.

I envy ZM's collection of tubular flowers. I found another one in my garden today...it looks like the birds have already taken some of the seeds, but I put a net over it, and noticed also, that the plant has many more buds, so I will keep an eye on it.

The weird Cat's Toes flower that I had turned out to be an anomaly..the plant's other flowers were very average! Zinnia flowers can and do have appearances that aren't inherited or even shared among flowers on the same plant!

JG

Martha

Hi Diana,

"I wish the wildlife would pollinate even more. The butterflies are very partial to the pink zinnias I think. I am happy with all the help I am getting. I am also mixing sunflowers and am very happy that bees are helping me!"

I don't know how much, if any, zinnia pollination is done by ants. I still have a lot to learn about zinnias. The bees are probably the main pollinators of zinnias, because they are going after pollen to gather it as food. The butterflies and hummingbirds are going for zinnia nectar, and they probably do a much smaller amount of pollinating, and that would be purely accidental.

It is not unusual when I go out into my zinnia garden in the early morning to find a bee asleep on one of my zinnia blooms, like this one. I guess they are gathering pollen late in the day, and nightime catches them unawares and they just sack out until morning.

They can look dead, but they aren't, and they wake up and continue gathering zinnia pollen. Since that picture was originally 6016 x 4000 pixels, I had to down-size it a lot to make it fit in the 550 pixels wide allowed by this forum. That meant I had the opportunity to crop out a detailed picture of the bee, like this.

I actually had to downsize that picture a little to make it fit. My Nikon D3200 takes 24-megapixel pictures. I thought that was a lot when I bought it last year. I saw an ad on TV a while ago for a smartphone with a 40-someodd megapixel camera on the back of it. That boggles my mind. And makes me wonder what kind of pictures you could take with it.

ZM

veggieswirl, there is some documentation on the web about what crosses may be possible or seemingly not, but I believe the short answer is "try it" and find out. I do zero manual crossing, allowing nature to take over for me. Too much trouble, in my opinion. Your potted zinnias look very healthy and nice.

Hi Telescody,

" If you compared the Lumia 1020 to your D3200, you would be very disappointed in the Lumia."

That seems reasonable. Still, for a phone, that has to be a killer picture taker. Especially if that lens on it is very sharp. And if it has a good shutter. When I got my D3200, soon after they came out, I thought the 24 megapixels was overkill. Now I kind of like it that I am taking 6016 x 4000 pixel images. They give some latitude to crop, and I can get the effect of an extreme closeup by cropping a lot.

"I believe some close observation is in order, if we really wanna find out. When there's some better weather, I may just pull a chair up and watch the ants for a while to see what exactly they're doing. I'm very curious as well."

I like the way you think. That pulling up a chair and watching, and thinking about what you are seeing, that is putting some Zen into gardening. There is a lot to be learned and enjoyed by closer observation of the natural world. Including the natural world in the zinnias.

A few days ago I was gathering several pollen florets to hold in the palm of my hand, to take them to a different part of the garden, and a tiny little insect flew out of one of the florets. It may have been a thrips, or some other "micro" insect. I instantly wondered, what was that little guy doing in that zinnia floret? Was he eating pollen grains, or drinking zinnia nectar, or what?

It seems that there is a whole world of very tiny insects that are getting ignored because they are so tiny. I felt a little embarrassed that I didn't even know what Order that little insect belonged to. Maybe Diptera or maybe Thysanoptera or maybe what???

There are a lot of tiny creatures that are getting ignored because they are so small. And some of them may be interacting with zinnias in significant ways. I hope that next year I can work some kind of microscope into my budget. In the meantime, I can use my head-mounted magnifier.

ZM

JG,

"...collection of tubular flowers. I found another one in my garden today...it looks like the birds have already taken some of the seeds, but I put a net over it, and noticed also, that the plant has many more buds, so I will keep an eye on it."

Possibly the birds have not already taken some of its seeds. It may be that those vacant areas on the central cone contain floret seeds from florets that emerged, self-pollinated, and the spent floret shriveled and dropped off.

I recently had a semi-tubular in a bed of commercial white cactus zinnias. Its seed came directly from a commercial packet, so I know it was not a result of crossing with any of my tubulars. This is its picture.

Once again, a small insect appeared in the picture that I did not notice when I took the picture, but noticed when I was down-sizing the picture for use here on the Internet.

I'm not sure, but my best guess would be that it is a leafhopper. They don't seem to do a lot of damage, but I think they were mentioned as a way the Aster Yellows virus could spread. I am way too busy to take any measures against the leafhoppers, or any other insects for that matter. If a Fall invasion by wooly worms occurs, I will hand pick them. A wooly worm can eat a surprising amount of zinnia in a day.

"The weird Cat's Toes flower that I had turned out to be an anomaly..."

I'm disappointed -- I thought that cats-toes petal variation had potential. But you are right about zinnias being able to vary considerably from one branch to another. Sometimes I wonder if some of those variations couldn't be genetic, and that zinnias, like roses, can have "bud sports".

" I notice that many of my extreme roll flowers have many layers of petals. I hope that means I will have more seeds. These flowers don't produce much pollen."

That last extreme roll you pictured has a huge number of petals. If all of those were fertilized, I think you could get more than 200 seeds from a single bloom. That would be enough to plant a decent sized bed of zinnias just from that one flower. If the plant had several blooms, that one plant could populate a decent sized zinnia garden. I shouldn't preach about hand pollinating zinnias, because I have been multi-tasking myself this year and not doing near as much zinnia pollination as I should. But that extreme roll is "asking for it". More later.

ZM

Hi Diana,

"Jazzy is zinnia haageena or whatever, and I have totally sprinkled TONS and TONS of zinnia elegans pollen all over on and into the y-shaped stigmas under the petals. I'm not the first one on here that has done that right? Some of the stigmas have turned brown or died, but I'm not sure it's the elegans pollen. It is very difficult to get that inter-species cross right?"

It is a difficult zinnia cross, and I don't think any of us have succeeded with the cross. But it is a possible cross, and several strains of zinnias, including the popular Whirligigs, have been derived from that cross. The chromosome number is 24 for both Z. violacea (elegans) and Z. haageana, so that should not be a problem.

If you do get a successful cross, you will be exploring some new territory in zinniadom. I wouldn't expect the F1 hybrids to be too amazing, but the F2 generation could be full of all manner of new zinnia surprises.

This is a picture of one of my recent tubular recombinants. It is actually very similar to the original "tubular mutant", except that the flower size is more than twice as big.

The flowers on the original tubular were rather small, one inch in diameter to maybe one and a half inches in diameter. I crossed it with all of my larger breeder flowers, which ranged up to 6 inches in diameter, so a lot of recombinant tubulars are much larger than the original, and I hope to see that trend continue next year. I would like to have six-inch tubulars.

As we have seen previously, reducing the size of our photos to make them fit this forum's 550-pixel wide limit causes an unavoidable loss in detail. That photo had an odd fish-like artifact on the right side, so this is an unreduced view of that.

That mystery is solved. A spider web strand (barely visible) had snagged some kind of fiber that was floating in the air. Further examination of the picture revealed a tiny creature in one of the petals.

The picture isn't sharp enough to make a positive identification (these close-ups are whetting my appetite for a microscope that I could take pictures through with my Nikon D3200), but my best guess would be that it is a thrips. I have had thrips problems in the past on my indoor zinnias. Thrips aren't usually a problem outdoors, because they have natural enemies outdoors. But as a small insect that has access to the interior of my tubular petals, I wonder if they could also have a role in pollen transfer.

Another odd thing in that last picture is the white spots on the outside of the petals. There are also a few of them on the inside of a few petals. Those could be pollen grains on the inside, but the spots on the outside look like some kind of structure of the petal. I am curious what the botanical name would be for those white bumps on the petals. More later.

ZM

ZM, those tubular petals are really something...narrow and fine..they look like tiny straws! That flower is great! I'm guessing (I might be very wrong!) that those tiny bumps on the flower petals are modified trichomes, or hairs on the flower, almost glandular in nature at the base. I see that there are defined hairs on the tops of the tubes. Since flower petals are modified leaves, and leaves have trichomes, then possibly that is what they are.

Your camera is picking up some very good shots! The "micro" world is a whole new place than what we are usually accustomed to, and fascinating.

Diana, I really hope you get that interspecies cross you're looking for! We would all be excited to see the results of a successful cross! It's very likely a rare event! Are you doing anything to prevent cross-pollination of the Zinnia haageanas by insects?

I, too, am multi-tasking with visitors and many other activities. I shall post some photos when I get a chance!

JG

Time for bed. Night.

Martha

The trailing seedlings all turned out to be due to injury or very thin stems. Some of the thinnest stems formed trailing zinnias! Others grew in a corkscrew manner

I did do some more detailed observation of more individual blooms, and found some beautiful color patterns. I was able to capture a few nicely, but need different light for them to really show the colors well.

Hi Goclon,

"In my Senora seedlings, I found a variegated plant. Do you think that it might yield similar seed? "

That I don't know. Best thing to do is save some seeds from it, if it produces seeds, and see what they produce. Your variegated zinnia might be a chimera, involving both tetraploid tissue and diploid tissue.

Incidentally, I could be wrong about this, but I think that Senora is a tetraploid strain of Zinnia violacea (elegans). So crossing them with diploid zinnias would most likely produce triploid hybrids, which probably wouldn't set viable seeds, but might be interesting. Except for the no seed thing, there could be advantages to triploid zinnias. For one thing, they probably wouldn't need deadheading.

"The trailing seedlings all turned out to be due to injury or very thin stems. Some of the thinnest stems formed trailing zinnias! Others grew in a corkscrew manner"

I recently discarded several trailing zinnias that had thick stems, which were striking roots. I have never seen a corkscrew manner in a zinnia. I am curious whether your zinnias were genetically like that, or whether some environmental or pathological factor was to blame. I am a little bit suspicious that my trailing zinnias might be at least partially genetic.

If you have pictures of your trailing or twisted zinnias, perhaps we could learn something from the pictures. Pretty much anything that happens with zinnias is an opportunity to learn something.

ZM

Hi Martha,

Those are some very unusual patterns on the petals of your zinnias. I haven't seen patterns exactly like those before, and I think you definitely should save seeds from those. Their "children" might have some even more unusual patterns.

I have had some marbling effects that originated in a few of my Whirlligigs and I used pollen from them on some of my other breeders, so I got the marbled effect reappearing in a non-Whirligig flower form.

I will probably pollinate that zinnia with some zinnias that have other colors in an attempt to get the marbled effect in a range of colors. I don't care for the striped and spotted effect of the Peppermint strain, but the patterns like yours and my marbled ones do appeal to me.

Incidentally, there is another unusual thing about my marbled bloom that you can see better a little closer up.

The stigmas have an unusual three arms instead of the usual two arms. I think I see one that might have four arms. And there is even some color on a few of the stigmas. The original Whirligig parent also had the three-armed stigmas. I suppose that must be a mutation. Maybe there is an advantage to three-armed stigmas versus the usual two-armed stigmas, but I wouldn't think it would be a big advantage. Colored stigmas might be good.

I am glad to see that you are getting some unusual zinnias in your garden. I look forward to seeing more pictures from your garden.

ZM

Hi Telescody,

Great pictures. That last one is unique. It almost has hints of blue. I save seeds from specimens like that, "just in case." If you take a picture of a zinnia like that in open shade, when it is illuminated by a bright blue sky and no direct sunshine, you can see a definite bluish cast. This one was sort of like that, although it was getting a taste of sunlight from the side.

And, in a kind of different way, this one looked like I should have crossed it with green, just to see what would happen.

I really "missed the boat" by not growing a lot of green zinnias this year and crossing them with everything. I will grow greens next year. This is another pale lavender that has bluish tendencies. I think that katydid (if that is what it is) agrees with me on that.

I should add that I don't think a blue zinnia is possible without the intervention of some genetic engineering (or some blue dye in a flower vase). But on the other hand, I have seen zinnias "do things" that I didn't think was possible. So I am not too dogmatic on that "no blue" thing.

ZM

Martha

We've had a few cool nights now, and I see the beginning of mildew on some of my zinnias. Also now, many of my plants are well over five feet tall, so it is a real challenge to walk through the gardens. I've got a lot of seeds to collect, so I've got my work cut out these coming weeks!

I really like the zinnias that come close to being blue. That would be a good project to try and get blue-flowered zinnias! Every year, I have a few flowers that I collect seeds from with that goal in mind, but no luck so far! You'd think it would be possible as purple is a combination of blue and red, and purple zinnias are common. It may be a matter of growing lots of purple zinnias and making many selections of the bluest flowers and their seeds every year.

The striped zinnias are also pretty. I sometimes find a few in the whirligigs that I grow every year, some like Martha's, but I haven't seen any this year! It will be interesting if you can get more of those from the seeds you collect this year, Martha.

The extreme roll flowers continue to bloom here. Often each plant has many flowers, as the one I photographed today:

I've been pollinating these plants as much as possible, and I find I get a good number of seeds from the flowers.

JG

Hi JG,

That picture with all those extreme roll blooms if fantastic! I have said it before, and I will say it again. Your Extreme Rolls deserve to be a commercial zinnia strain. That picture should be on a seed catalog cover.

Incidentally, your zinnia foliage is in excellent condition compared to mine. We have had an extended period of rain for many days, with continuous cloud cover and no sunshine. Yesterday we had sun, but today was mostly cloudy. So all of my zinnia foliage has one disease or another. But no Powdery Mildew. PM can't grow under water, and my zinnias have been pretty much under water for well over a week.

This odd little tubular bloom is almost triangular in shape.

Actually, I like it. The lighting on that picture was rather dull, because we still had dark rain cloud cover when I took the picture.

I have had a few other non-symmetrical zinnia blooms, and I like their effect as well. Zinnia blooms don't have to be circular, and if each petal is a little tubular flower, then they can be arranged in various irregular ways, and still look good. In the case of the tubulars at least, asymmetrical blooms could be a good thing. Some of my aster flowered zinnias have been irregularly shaped and not very circular. They just look really informal.

I have been busy pollinating, weather permitting. However, rain-wet pollen is water logged and unusable. My techniques for exposing the hidden stigmas in tubular petals have been improving. I continue to see tiny insects in the tubes and even in pollen florets. I was glad to see the bees back after all the rains had kept them out of the zinnia patch. And quite a few hummingbirds are also visiting my zinnias. More later.

ZM

Martha

Hi Martha,

It's possible that bees aren't visiting your zinnias. They may not have discovered them yet. I don't think that traffic would discourage them, because they aren't easily scared by anything when they are gathering pollen and/or nectar. I have had to actually flip a bumblebee off of a bloom that I was pollinating or gathering pollen from. It just flew to another bloom, and didn't attack me. If you have bees on your zinnias, you should notice them in the mid morning.

" Maybe I picked a fresh one, or maybe these don't have much pollen or nectar."

You may have picked a fresh immature flower head, but your zinnias are producing plenty of pollen. An abundant supply of the "yellow starfish" pollen florets are visible in both of the last two pictures that you posted.

If you aren't seeing any bees on your zinnias, maybe you should "be the bee" and use some tweezers or twizzors or forceps to pick some of the pollen florets and rub them on the yellow Y-shaped stigmas at the base of each petal. By doing that, you can get an abundant supply of fertilized seeds.

" I guess I'll leave what is left alone until they really start to get crispy and old looking."

Getting crispy and old looking will not substitute for a lack of pollination. Plump fertile green seeds can be harvested while the flower still has live petals with color on them. By carefully pushing a flower partially "open", you can inspect the seeds before actually pulling them. The seeds "ripen" in the order they were pollinated, and should be viable about three weeks after the stigma shrivels and dies, indicating successful pollination of that seed. The seeds usually "ripen" from the bottom of the bloom upward, and you can harvest them individually as they mature to plump heavy green seeds.

I learned to harvest green seeds from JackieR, and that technique has several advantages over waiting for the flowerhead to die and turn brown. Your early green-seed harvest minimizes the chance of water damage in the flower head from rain, heavy dews, or overhead watering (it's not unusual to find pre-sprouted seeds in a brown seed head), and it also lets you get your zinnia seeds before the seed-eating birds get to them.

ZM

ZM, the last flower you showed was not only tubular but also was toothy. The asymmetry was also interesting. I can see how flowers like that one would really do a lot for a bouquet of flowers. It almost reminds me of a statice flower. I agree with you that flowers don't have to be circular in form!

I wish that some of the rain that you are getting would come to us. It is getting to the point where I may have to give water to some of my younger plants as well as some of the tomatoes I have here.

Martha, you should go ahead and pollinate those flowers you like so much..You may need to net some of them to make sure the insects don't take the pollen that you want to use. I've been disappointed many times when I checked favorite flowers for seeds and found that none had set! Now I try to pollinate at least part of the flowers that I want seeds from.

My extreme roll flowers roll upward, while cactus zinnias roll downward. Today I found a tightly rolled cactus bloom...I wonder what would happen if I crossed this with an extreme roll flower? Maybe I'd get a flower with flat petals...but I will try and see what happens.

I have one plant that has domed, very full flowers like the one below:

JG

Martha

Hi Goclon,

JG can tell you an interesting story about all of the zinnia seeds she has used over the years. I have a much more limited sources of seeds that I have used -- primarily Burpee Giant Hybrids (now apparently discontinued) and Burpee Burpeeana Giants (still a good source of choice cactus flowered types.)

Cactus flowered zinnias actually have several different flower types, including that beautiful yellow-and-white specimen that JG just pictured. I refer to that flower form as "spider flowered" because the petals are long and thin and down-rolled and somewhat reminiscent of spiders or spider webs.

Actually, the spider flowered flower form inspired me to start breeding zinnias seriously, and I have been distracted by a number of other zinnia opportunities like the scabiosa flowered zinnias and the Whirligig two-toned and three-toned flowers and the "toothy" petals. And more recently the tubulars.

But the spider flowered zinnias have an airy, graceful look that is downright pleasant to look at, and I hope to make more progress toward establishing them in my zinnia gene pool next year. I still have them appear from time to time in my recombinants, like this one.

Cactus zinnias also have a flower form that I refer to as "chrysanthemum flowered" for no good reason, because I don't recall seeing chrysanthemum with that looked like that. I also refer to that form as "fantasy flowered" because many years ago there were cultivars that had that form. This is a rather extreme version of that flower form, whatever you call it.

I sometimes refer to that extreme form as "medusa flowered". To me, it is more unusual than attractive.

There are several other variants in the cactus flowered group of zinnias, including some with long straight kind of pointed petals, vaguely reminiscent of the long thorns on some cactus plants. These are an example of that form of the cactus strain.

Those cactus flowered zinnias are now considered an heirloom strain, because they go back nearly a hundred years, and were derived from one of the important mutations in zinnias. Zinnias have changed amazingly from the original native wildflower.

ZM

I've got lots of color now in the zinnia patches, but the mildew is spreading with with our cool, dry nights.

A few more of my cactus zinnias blooming now are shown here:

As ZM has mentioned, I like to order seeds from everywhere to see how they grow out. The yellow cactus I showed on August 15, along with those today are all from HPS (Shumway's Horticultural Products and Services Division) seeds--the Cactus Mix Improved. This is not an ad by any means, but I always have liked this mix of seeds because it gives a nice variety of cactus-type blooms.

JG

I did find lots of germinated seeds in the last few "marbled" blossoms I collected from. So, hopefully there will be more like those next year. I am limiting myself to bloom types with prominent centers that are large pollen producers. Those are favored by the pollinators such as butterflies, bumble bees, honey bees, etc. I'm already getting excited for next year!

Telescody, that tiny zinnia is adorable. What kind is it and how tall do they grow?

Martha

That little zinnia has a very unique look. Those big paddle-like petals coming out of that little center give the flower a cartoon-like flavor. Like no zinnia I have seen in a seed catalog or on a seed packet. Thanks for posting its picture. You did a good job of showing us a close-up view.

ZM

"Sadly some of my blooms have been muddied up. I think they may not seed because of that, I think moths muddied them. Pictures to come later."

I am curious about what is affecting those zinnia blooms that "have been muddied up." Perhaps some pictures will help reveal what is happening, and why.

ZM

Hi, all,

I have been busy pollinating and cross-pollinating. I still see a new tubular flowered "look" from time to time, like this one.

I am crossing many of my tubulars with non-tubulars in an effort to get different forms of the tubulars next year. More later.

ZM

Well, I've talked about it, but not shown it...the scourge of late-season zinnias...mildew. My latest pictures have come from beds with younger plants. My older plants, and also those growing in my main garden, which may get to a few degrees cooler than the other beds, have leaves like this:

We haven't had rain for several weeks, and that probably doesn't help! ZM, did you say that if you wet the leaves, that will help set mildew back? I may start spraying my younger plants in the evening before cooler temperatures are reached.

Here is another extreme roll zinnia. A number of them are accented with white, which I think is kind of pretty.

I like your tiny zinnia, too, Telescody. Do you have little ones in other colors?

Goclon, you say your Thumbelinas have fringed petals. I didn't know that they had those! Could you show us how they look?

Martha, you can pick the fat seeds from the center, but I would let them turn green first. The white ones may not store so well. Your strategy of selecting for zinnias that have the most disc florets is a good one for the pollinators.
For the first time this year, I am finding dead honeybees on my flowers. I can see finding maybe one, but now, I've seen about ten...not a good sign! I use no pesticides in my garden. Another interesting thing...I am seeing a lot of flies visiting the flowers.

ZM, you have many expressions of the tubular trait in your garden. I think my favorites are the very full flowers with many tubular petals and the asymmetric flowers. If course, I like the very long tubes your flowers have, which I have yet to see here!

JG

Hi, JG,

That is another splendid Extreme Roll. I notice that a lot of the petals seem to have a pointed end, which is kind of neat. They are definitely a new and different kind of zinnia, well deserving of becoming a zinnia cultivar.

That is disturbing about those dead honeybees. Are they just lying dead on your zinnia flowerheads? Could they just be "asleep"? I frequently see bumblebees apparently dead on my zinnia blooms in the morning. But they are just sleeping, or possibly suffering hypothermia. This evening, as it was getting dark, I noticed a bumble bee still industriously sipping nectar from my zinnia pollen florets. He (or she) will probably be "asleep" on a zinnia flower in the morning.

The mere fact that the bees are dead on your flowers does not mean that what killed them is in your garden or on your property. Many insecticides have a mode of action that takes some time to take effect, and the bees may be picking up their poison at quite some distance from your place. And I suppose it could be some kind of bee disease or parasite that is doing them in.

If you have a hose end sprayer, or some other convenient way of spraying your zinnias, you could try giving them frequent baths in GreenCure. It is true that water can actually be a treatment against Powdery Mildew, although wet foliage invites a number of other zinnia foliage diseases. But if the foliage is wet with GreenCure, the zinnias should stay happy.

"...you have many expressions of the tubular trait in your garden. I think my favorites are the very full flowers with many tubular petals and the asymmetric flowers."

They are my favorites, too. But I am encouraging as much tubular diversity as I can, hoping that further recombinations between various tubular traits can lead to something new and better. This one is just unusual, but not inherently attractive.

It might even be a little bit "scary", as in Halloween. Based on its center, it probably has some scabious genes. It's not something I would want in a strain, but it could contribute to some recombinations that would be interesting. So I will use it as a breeder, even though it is on probation of sorts. I am still optimistic that some kind of "break" in the tubular flowerform will produce something new and desirable. In zinnia breeding, as in other things, "hope springs eternal."

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

Hi, Goclon,

"The fringes on my Thumbilinia are not so big- don't be too impressed! Either each petal is pleated, or the petal is smooth and the tips divided into 2-3 lobes. The pleated ones look almost "pinked", but only slightly..."

It is good that you are noticing small details on your zinnias. That is key to enjoying your zinnias, and also helpful in noticing those traits that you like and take into account when you are saving seeds for next year's zinnias.

One little zinnia detail that I have started to notice is the diameter of the main stem at the base near the ground. I have been culling a lot zinnias and many of them are too close together to make it safe to pull up a cull that is near a "good" zinnia. If I pulled it up, it could possibly bring up a neighboring zinnia with it. So I snip off many of my zinnias near the ground with hand pruners.

And that calls my attention to the stem diameter near the ground. It varies by a lot. Some zinnias are almost like little trees, while others have slim, spindly main stems.

I consider the strong stems to be a good feature, but if the zinnia needs to be culled, I take the effort to cut it off anyway. Some of them have stems thick enough to be a challenge for my little hand pruners, so I have a big pair of loppers to get them. And if a cull isn't too close to another zinnia, I just pull it up. I put my culls in the trash, rather than throw them on the compost pile. I don't want zinnia diseases in my compost.

Now-days I am thinking ahead to Fall cleanup time, and I am trying to do some of that work now, so the Fall cleanup won't be so much of a challenge. I am optimistic that some of the zinnia seeds I will be saving will have some interesting new features next year. I am putting little "hairnets" on my "breeder" zinnia seedheads to keep the seed-eating birds from getting them. I will be looking for harvest-able green seeds in the days to come. And I am continuing my cross pollinations.

ZM

ZM, fall is sneaking up pretty fast. The hot weather we're having for the moment seems like a short burst, just long enough to make you think that it's still summer and yet next week we're supposed to have highs in the mid 80s, and maybe it will climb back up before finally dropping. I'm not so bothered by the heat, but we're going through another drought here again. I wish I could go a few days without pumping a ton of water on my garden.

Anyways, pictures!

Two zinnias that look like each other - and I had zero orange blooms last year.

A "Great Spangled Fritillary" hanging out for a snack.

An odd layout.

And finally, when I was collecting seeds I noticed a cutworm on one of the petals. I would normally crush the poor guy but I noticed what looks to me like some kind of parasitic eggs on him - so I promptly put him back in the garden undisturbed. I had quite the cutworm problem for a while, with almost every plant in my garden besides the peppers having some little bit eaten. I hardly see them anymore so I can't help but think that they either moved on or were attacked by some predator. Either way, glad they're not causing much of a problem anymore.

Hi Telescody,

Excellent pictures. I think you were right to "let nature takes its course" with the parasites on the caterpillar. I'm not sure that caterpillar is a cutworm, although it could be. Cutworms go through a juvenile phase when they are above ground as mobile "free feeders".

When they go into the actual cutworm phase, they hide underground during the day and at night they cut seedlings down so they don't have to climb up in the plant to get at the foliage. In that classic phase, they actually may be too large and fat to climb up into the plant.

There were years there when we lived in Maine that the cutworms were devastating, felling zinnias that were over a foot tall, like little trees. Normally cutworms just go for relatively small seedlings.

Fortunately here in Kansas cutworms haven't been a big problem in my zinnias. Last year, Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetles were a problem. They seemed to move from my cantaloups to my zinnias in large numbers. I didn't grow any cantaloups this year to avoid encouraging the Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetles, and that apparently worked very well. I have seen only three this year.

Wooly worms were a problem last Fall, and I will be on the lookout for them again this Fall. Fortunately they are easy to hand pick. Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetles are not so easy to hand pick, but they tend to drop when disturbed, so you can use that against them and hold one hand below where they are and approach them carefully with the other hand.

I see the effects of scabiosa flowered heritage in some of my recombinants, and this is an example.

It gets its colored florets from a scabiosa flowered ancestor. We, too, are in a dry spell, and I have been watering my zinnias.

ZM

Hi, Goclon,

"The first one open was unusual, yet pretty. It was semi-double, about 3 1/2 in wide, with a purple center. The petals have a base color of yellow with purple petal bases, and the yellow is strongly infused with a oral red. Some of its florets look like your zinnia above- they turned very long and have the coral-red blush, like the petals!"

That is a very interesting zinnia. It sounds like it has both Whirligig heritage, with more than one color on the same petal, and scabiosa flowered heritage. Do you happen to know what variety it was, or is it from seeds that you saved?

You are the first one, that I know of, to describe the faint fragrance that zinnias have. I wonder if the zinnia fragrance is associated with the zinnia nectar. I wonder if that fragrance could be increased by selective breeding, or by a lucky mutation.

I, too, have noticed that some zinnias have some color at the leaf base near the stem that seems to be related to the petal color. It would be interesting if that trait could be accentuated by selective breeding.

This is another of my recombinant zinnias that shows scabiosa-flowered heritage.

Next year I plan to plant some of the commercial scabiosa flowered zinnias to increase the amount of that trait in my zinnia gene pool. I like it when the florets don't look like florets.

ZM

We are finally getting rain here after three weeks of dryness and high temperatures. This is the shortest season ever for my zinnias...the cool evening temperatures in the beginning of August got the mildew started and then with the lack of water, they have a fried, gray appearance...this goes for my two largest patches. I have younger plants in my smaller plots that are still fine, and now I am really glad I started them! ZM, I notice that GreenCure has potassium bicarbonate as an active ingredient--I wonder how a spray of sodium bicarbonate would do...just thinking of a possible easy fix for my remaining plants.

Here is a cactus flower in one of my newer beds:

I will be saving seeds from this and many others as the days go by. I have been able to collect quite a few seeds from my most extreme rolled flowers, and am collecting seed from other types as well. I collect like the finches do-- go around and pluck off seeds from the bottom and most mature layer of petals, and let the remainder of the bloom stay for pollination and the insects. Later I will collect the uppermost seeds.

This year, I planted many seeds descended from the original extreme roll plant, but I really didn't see too much expression of the trait, except from those seeds coming directly from last year's plants with the extreme phenotype. So, next year for the main garden, I plan to do as in past years, and that is, plant the big mix of everything I have collected from all plants in the last couple of years. I find I get more interesting results that way. Except for color, I didn't see all that much diversity in the extreme roll descendents (those that didn't have the appearance), nor did I see much expression of the trait as I thought I might from inbreeding. It almost looks like the extreme roll flower may possibly be a dihybrid consisting of a dominant and a recessive gene, each for a different trait. That of course remains to be tested.

ZM, your orange tubular is remarkable with the little scabious florets, but especially for the dark orange color with purple underside. I hope you get more of those next year! Your semi- scabious pink flower reminded me that I once more want to grow my general mix of recombinant plants.

Telescody, keep posting your flowers--look forward to seeing what you get. It also looks like the insects are enjoying your garden. Goclon, I'm glad your thumbelinas are doing well..I've read somehere that they are the flowers most likely to draw pollinators--don't know if that is true...but you're probably noticing what all sorts of insects are attracted to them. It does seem as if the giant zinnias you have may have whirligig genes.

As always, loking forward to everyone's photos!

JG

Hi, JG,

"I wonder how a spray of sodium bicarbonate would do..."

Sodium bicarbonate also works, but it has the disadvantage that too much sodium can be phytotoxic to plant leaves, whereas potassium is actually a foliar nutrient. However, sodium bicarbonate is one of the recommended remedies for Powdery Mildew. So, use it at about the same dilution that you would for GreenCure, namely 1 to 2 level tablespoons per gallon of water. To be on the "safe side", I think I would stick to 1 tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate per gallon of water.

A few years ago I purchased several pounds of potassium bicarbonate as a backup for my GreenCure. Since Physan 20 reduces the surface tension of the water, I sometimes use potassium bicarbonate in conjunction with Physan 20 as an alternative to GreenCure. The Physan 20 serves as both a wetting agent and a bactericide in that use. I got my potassium bicarbonate from Grape and Granary in one pound bags.

That cactus flowered zinnia is like a red-orange fading to coral version of my pink shaggy dog. It's a spectacular blossom, well worthy of a separate planting as a breeder. Your zinnia gene pool continues to amaze.

I have the tubulars in most of the basic zinnia colors, but I don't have a pure white as of yet. This is one of my lighter colored tubulars.

I continue to make crosses between pure white non-tubular zinnias and various tubulars in order to set up for the recombinations necessary to get pure white tubulars. And I intend to make crosses involving tubulars in greater numbers, to increase the chances of getting something new and improved derived from the tubular petal form. I plan to grow a lot more tubulars next year, looking for that new something special.

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

Hi, Goclon,

"Can you take zinnia cuttings?"

I don't know of any books that say you can propagate zinnias from cuttings, and from my experience doing it, I can say that it isn't easy. Over the years, by trial and error, I developed a technique for growing zinnias from cuttings, and I now routinely take cuttings from my best zinnias in the Fall before a killing frost, in order to continue growing them indoors. I have even taken cuttings from zinnias that were grown from cuttings, so that in effect I had the same zinnia growing for more than a year. I don't know of anything that would keep you from taking cuttings repeatedly to keep the same zinnia from growing indefinitely from repeated cuttings of cuttings, which raises the question of whether a zinnia is potentially immortal or not.

Growing zinnias indoors is also not for beginners. Zinnias definitely aren't houseplants, and they require almost daily care and special techniques to deal with several pitfalls.

Various aspects of growing zinnias from cuttings and growing zinnias indoors have been discussed in previous parts of this message series. This is a picture of an early stage of starting some of my zinnias from cuttings in the Fall, taken a few years ago.

The zinnia cuttings have been treated with Dip-n-Grow (which contains two different rooting hormones) and they are in a sterile growing medium (Premier Pro-Mix BX) that has been watered with a complete nutrient formula to which some Physan 20 has been added to kill any bacteria that would infect the open wounds and rot the cuttings.

The humidity domes stay on for 10 days or so, until the cuttings have time to strike roots and become self-sufficient. Intense fluorescent lighting is provided with timers set for 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness. Heating pads provide some bottom heat.

The fluorescent lighting is from four 2-bulb shoplights with T8 cool white 6500K 48-inch tubes. The fixtures have been modified to overdrive the tubes for nearly double the light output. The zinnia plants grow rapidly, and have to be re-potted to larger 5-inch square pots in a few weeks. In a few weeks more they go into 8-inch square pots. A few special specimens wind up in 10-inch square pots.

Indoor zinnias need protection from aphids, thrips, and spider mites. Those pests have natural enemies outdoors that usually keep them in check, but their populations can explode indoors. The indoor zinnias also need protection from Powdery Mildew and other foliage diseases. I use systemic insecticides, miticides, and fungicides, because spraying indoors is problematic.

You probably don't want to go to the trouble and expense to grow zinnias from cuttings. I do it partly for the challenge, and because I do enjoy continuing my zinnia hobby indoors in the Winter.

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

We continue with our hot, dry weather. Zinnias are still standing in the two big plots, and they don't look too great..but, the pollinators are enjoying them, and I'm hoping later this month I may have the opportunity to tag some monarch butterflies here. I have now only seen three monarchs this whole summer--they have been having a rough time. Many of the other butterflies are few in number, too, except for the cabbage whites whom I don't mind having visit.

ZM, white tubulars wold be nice to have with all of the other colors you have. I am amazed you have been able to get so many colors with that trait in such a relatively short time! It's possible you may get an idea of what to expect in various color crosses from Boyle and Stimart's paper in J. of Heredity 289-293, 1988. In a nutshell, it looks like a cross between a yellow zinnia and a white zinnia should give you white zinnias in the F1 generation..whereas, a cross between pink, orange or red zinnias and a white zinnia will only give you white zinnias in the F2. That's based on the Zinnia elegans that those workers used (I think I have that right!)...

While collecting seeds, I noticed that some of the Benary zinnias have fused ray flowers, resulting in fused seeds, or at least structures that could lead to fused seeds. I expect they might not be viable when fertilized. They look like this:

d

JG

Hi, JG,

I have also seen only a few Monarchs. And we had several milkweed food plants that they didn't lay any eggs on. Maybe the Monarchs all flew to that television series, "Under the Dome". (grin)

I'm pretty sure I won't see a pure white tubular this year, because all of my tubulars have bloomed out and are developing seeds. I am making quite a few crosses with my tubulars and other colors, including white. I do hope to see a white tubular next year -- perhaps more than one.

I am getting better at "surgically" exposing the stigmas of tubular petals, so I am making quite a few crosses using tubulars as the female. A lot of those F1's will be non-tubular, due to the recessive nature of the tubular genes. But then there will be decent reappearance of tubulars in the F2's and hopefully some of them will be good, and maybe some will be pure white.

I did make a later planting of some toothy zinnias, to increase and improve my toothy seed stock, and to have some toothy pollen to use on my tubulars. This is one of my current toothy specimens.

It is pure white, but has a somewhat asymmetrical flower shape, which is OK by me. I will intercross some of my toothies for more toothy seeds, and use their pollen on conventional zinnias for more toothy colors (I don't currently have a yellow or orange toothy). And I will use toothy pollen on tubulars for a modification of that flower form.

You got an almost microscopic view of that odd petal and seed, which is interesting good photography. That seed doesn't look fertile, which might be a good thing. I have had a few zinnias with double centers, and at first I allowed that as a novelty. Now I am culling broken centers because the trait seems like a defect or malformation.

It's hot and dry again here, and I have begun to water my zinnias once more. I average at least an hour a day cross-pollinating my zinnias. I hope to get a good seed crop of interesting crosses.

ZM

We may even get a frost Friday night, so the zinnias may be done for this year. Hope everyone else is still enjoying their gardens,

Martha

Hi, Martha,

I also find zinnia seed cleaning to be a therapeutic activity. And I too am looking forward to next Spring. Your growing season in Michigan is at least a month shorter than ours here in Kansas. While you may have a frost Friday night, we will be down to about 52 degrees. That's cool compared to our recent hotter than average spell, but nowhere near a frost. I'm glad you had a successful garden this year, and hope for even better for you next year. Please do plant some of your marbled petaled zinnias -- I would like to see what variations they might produce in their next generation.

I have been doing some cross pollinations of my tubular petaled zinnias. They are rather radical looking up close, but from a distance they can look rather like regular zinnias.

There was a heavy dew on those zinnias on the morning that I took that picture. They say not to get the foliage of zinnias wet at night, but Mother Nature violates that with rains and dews, and you can't prevent that. Some of my older zinnias are looking pretty "ratty" now with foliage diseases. Zinnias tend to get that way late in the season.

I have been doing some Fall cleanup, with lots more to do. I think of the climates in the "meteorological sense", with three months each for each of the seasons. So I consider Fall to have started on the first of September, and continuing through October and November. And the "meteorological" Winter starts on the first of December. The "astronomical" Fall doesn't begin until September 22nd. Let us know if you get a frost tomorrow night.

ZM

Hi, Telescody,

"They aren't as deep green colored as your pictures, ZM, and I wonder if that's because your soil may be really good. Mine is rather poor, mostly clay and I amend it in the spring with compost, but it still reverts after the hot summer."

The soil here is rather heavy silty stuff, so I have added some sand and compost to it, and tilled that in and mixed it fairly well with my Merry Tiller. After I finish my Fall cleanup, I will spread some more compost and till that in.

I don't depend on the compost for fertilizer, I just want the compost to give me better soil structure. And I like earthworms. I use soluble nutrients like Miracle-Gro for plant nutrition. I am not an organic gardener, so I don't mind supplying plant nutrients in a water soluble form.

And if the plants get some nutrients from the rotting compost, that is fine too. I just don't depend on the compost supplying available nutrients. I suppose the compost does act as a very slow release fertilizer. It is just too slow for zinnias, which are heavy feeders and fast growers. Miracle-Gro comes in several formulas, and I use most of them at one time or another.

For my indoor zinnias, I use the Better-Gro products, because they don't contain urea. My indoor zinnias are in Premier Pro-Mix BX, which doesn't contain soil bacteria to break down urea into usable ammonium and nitrate ions. So I use urea-free nutrient formulas indoors.

"I'm gonna try to get some better soil composition going on next year, maybe dig some up and move it. We'll see how enthusiastic I am when I'm holding that shovel."

Maybe I am weird, but I actually enjoy tilling soil with a spade or spading fork. I also enjoy tilling with my Merry Tiller. It is one of the deepest digging tillers, because it is a mid-tine design. It tills about twice as deep as most rear-tine tillers. Rear-tine tillers are hard put to till 6 inches deep, while my mid-tined tiller is rated at 12 inches deep, but by going slow and going back over it, I can and do till 16 inches deep with it. The rotors are nearly completely submerged when I am doing that. I just have to keep the engine above ground. (grin)

But you can till even deeper than that by hand, using the "double digging" technique. I have double-dug a whole garden in the past, but here at this location in Kansas I have double-dug only a few parts of the garden that "needed it". I have four 8-foot diameter compost piles that are "ready" to use this Fall.

Incidentally, I do not put my zinnias in the compost, to avoid spreading zinnia diseases that way. I am sending my discarded and Fall clean-up zinnias to the landfill via contractor trash bags left out for our trash pickup service.

Like you, I intend to get some better soil composition going next year.

ZM

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago I found another odd "mutant" that I have been crossing onto a lot of my "breeder" zinnias. I put the word "mutant" in quotes, because I don't believe that these unusual specimens actually mutated in my zinnia patch. I think that they represent unknown zinnia strains that survive "under the radar" in zinnia seed fields. There may be other such unknown zinnia strains waiting to be "discovered".

This "mutant" tubular form appeared in a bed of commercial white cactus zinnias. Incidentally, about 95 percent of those white zinnias were not what I would call cactus flowered, but most of them were white. I was looking for an extra good white cactus flowered zinnia to use as a breeder, and I really didn't find anything exceptional in that regard. I'll try that again next year.

But, back to the "mutant". It is definitely different, in that it has tubular petals, and they end in a five-star pointed flare-out. The petal tips are evident in this photo.

There are two obvious flaws in this specimen. The most troublesome to me is that the five petal points are brownish. A less troublesome trait is that the mutant is not very double. Some of its blooms are essentially single. But, except for the brown tips, I think this new petal form has potential. This is a detail of the petal ends.

I am possibly making a lot of headaches for myself in the future by creating a lot of brown-tipped culls to be disposed of at our landfill. The brown tips develop as the bloom develops. They do not show up immediately in the young budding bloom, as is shown in this closeup.

Those petals actually seem related in structure to the "starfish" pollen florets. As far as I know, this is a completely independent tubular that has no relation to my original tubular. Two years ago I code-named my original tubular as "E2". This tubular is code-named "G13".

The hope is that I can get rid of the brown tips and single-ish flowers, but keep that tubular 5-star petal. If that fails, using pollen from G13 could turn out to be a big mistake. I feel that it is risky using a lot of pollen from this specimen but, as they say, "No pain, no gain". Next year should be an "interesting" zinnia year for me. Combining two different tubular forms could widen the spectrum of possible tubular petal forms. Or, this could "blow up in my face".

ZM

No, my G13 is not a scabious. Scabious zinnias have colored smooth florets, and G13 has regular fuzzy yellow florets. G13 actually came from a commercial packet of white cactus flowered zinnias, so it came from a completely different seed source from my original E2 tubular.

I could be wrong about this, but I think your Senoras are actually a tetraploid cactus zinnia. Any cross pollination between a tetraploid and a diploid creates a triploid, and triploids are almost always sterile. So you might be growing a few triploid zinnias next year and they probably won't set viable seeds. But that is next year.

Triploids actually have some advantages, because they don't "go to seed", so they could potentially flower over a longer period of time. However, there are very few triploid annuals available, because they cost more to produce. I have never seen triploid zinnias, although I think there may be a triploid marigold available.

ZM

And secondly, this morning while watering my garden, I pointed the flash light at a bloom and noticed a full-sized grass hopper chomping away on zinnia petals. I left him alone because the season is winding down and I don't really care anymore, but I've never seen that before. I checked again later in the day and noticed a number of grass hoppers scattered about, eating various parts of the zinnias, not just the guard petals. Quite funny to see a huge critter weighing down a little flower.

Hi, Telescody,

Those two blooms are remarkably different, not just in petal color, but in petal form and in the center of the bloom as well. As you mentioned, I have seen that phenomenon several times, in which one branch of a zinnia seemed genetically different from another branch. I know that roses occasionally have "bud sports", so that isn't an exclusive with zinnias. But I haven't seen that effect in other ornamentals nearly as frequently as I have in zinnias. That makes me wonder if zinnias aren't somehow special in that way.

Possibly one clue about the uniqueness of zinnias is that it has been shown by time-lapse photography in tissue cultures that isolated Zinnia leaf mesophyll cells (cells from the interior of a leaf) can differentiate directly into tracheary cells (interior stem cells) without any prior cell division. If you do a Google search on zinnia mesophyll, you will get an abundance of references to that strange capability of some zinnia cells to "morph" from one type to another without an intermediate cell division.

You are right, the threat of a killing frost isn't too far in the future. Our overnight lows have been flirting with the upper 40s. We had an early killing frost here last year, that took nearly a month off of my growing season. That was partly the reason why I built low tunnels for an earlier start this year.

I have some toothy zinnias that I hope to get some seeds from this Fall. This is one specimen.

I have several white "toothies". The white toothies aren't putting out much pollen, so most of them are being used as females for toothy x toothy crosses, and some toothy x tubular crosses. Mainly I just want to get some seeds from them. This is one of the white toothies.

I think that most, if not all, of the toothies have some Whirligig "blood" in them. That shows up in specimens like this one.

If you grow a lot of Whirligigs you will find a few with toothy tendencies, and if you intercross them, some of the offspring will have more toothiness. This is another toothy with obvious Whirligig heritage.

I plan to grow more Whirligigs next year, just looking for some new genetic material. I am always optimistic about the zinnias I am going to grow next year.

ZM

Martha

Hi, Martha,

It got down to 39 degrees here last night, so a killing frost may come almost any time now for us.

"Were those last photos taken recently?"

Those pictures were taken about three weeks ago in a fairly young zinnia patch that wasn't seriously affected by Powdery Mildew yet. Most of my zinnias now have at least some PM, but I am not spraying them with GreenCure because that has to be done after every rain or even heavy dew to maintain protection. (It rained heavily here last night.)

I have treated a few breeders with Bayer All-In-One Rose and Flower Care because it is systemic, and doesn't get washed off by rain or heavy dew. It is not non-toxic and it is relatively expensive, so I don't use a lot of it. I am just using it to prolong the life of some high-value breeders, and not for cosmetic purposes.

I have been concentrating on pollinating and cross-pollinating and seed saving, because this is the end game for my outdoor zinnias. This is one of my late season breeders.

That one is in the 6-inch class. Next year I am going to renew my efforts to breed big zinnias. I have had a few breeders in excess of 7 inches across, and I hope to build on that, with 8 inches or more as an objective. And I will continue my scabious, tubular, and toothy zinnia projects. Busy, busy.

ZM

Martha

should I germinate it first using paper towel method and then transfer it to the soil?, or should i just plant the seeds directly to the soil?......

and how many hours should i expose the plant on the light?
I Live in Philippines, so the weather here is summer and rainy season only. hope you can help me.

Hi Jason,

Welcome to this message thread. Zinnias are not houseplants, so growing them indoors is considerably more trouble than growing them outdoors. At least, that is the case here in most areas of the "lower 48" United States. Since your Philippine climate is summer and rainy season only, I would consider growing them outside as a less troublesome alternative.

Zinnias are tender plants and susceptible to frost. Here in central-east Kansas we had a 23-degree F killing frost a couple of nights ago, so all of my outdoor zinnias are dead. But apparently that would not be a factor for you.

There may be environmental factors in the Philippines that I don't know about, such as exotic insect pests or other creatures that have an appetite for zinnias. If there are any people reading this thread who have any experience gardening in the Philippines, we invite you to join in and share your knowledge here. As far as I know, there is no Philippine Gardening forum on GardenWeb, although there is a Tropicals forum, with several related forums. None of which address the problem of growing zinnias in the tropics, unless there is a message thread like that buried somewhere. There might be.

Here in Kansas, zinnias are easy to grow outside and hard to grow inside. That said, as an enthusiastic zinnia hobbyist, I do grow zinnias inside, and have done so for several years, to extend my zinnia hobby year-round. I am growing a generation of newly hybridized zinnias from freshly saved seeds inside now.

"I am thinking about planting it indoors using full spectrum CFL bulbs..... "

I don't use compact fluorescent light bulbs because I don't need the "compact" feature, and I do need an extended light source. I use inexpensive 4-foot fluorescent shoplights, with 6500K T8 32-watt bulbs. Depending on the shelf size, I get three or four shoplights over each shelf. Each shoplight has two T8 bulbs. I overdrive many of my shoplights for nearly double the light output. Overdriven fluorescent bulbs are quite bright, although noticeably warmer to the touch, and probably have a shorter life because of that. But my bulbs are rated at 20,000 hours, so they usually outlast my fluorescent light ballasts even when overdriven. I get several years of use out of both my bulbs and ballasts.

"should I germinate it first using paper towel method and then transfer it to the soil?, or should I just plant the seeds directly to the soil?"

With paper towel germination, you risk damaging the root or cotyledons while handling the sprouted seedling to transplant it into the growing medium. The seedling can get into a contorted shape in the paper towel that is difficult to get properly situated in a growing medium without damaging the seedling. I plant my zinnia seeds directly in a growing medium, one seed per 3.25-inch square plastic pot, about a quarter-inch deep. I use a sterile growing medium instead of soil because there are several soil-borne diseases and pests and because a growing medium can have superior drainage and oxygen availability for the zinnia roots. Zinnias, like many plants, can "drown".

"...and how many hours should I expose the plant to the light? "

I usually set my timers to 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness. Sometimes 17 and 7. Zinnias are nominally Short Day Length plants, which means that the shorter days (or longer nights) of Fall trigger flowering. But the problem with indoor growing is that even with 17-hour days, zinnias will put out a first bloom in 5 to 6 weeks from when they germinated. I would prefer to get more vegetative growth, and I wish I could find a way to get that without pinching the growing point to cause branching. I am still learning the ins and outs of zinnia culture myself. I am thinking about experimenting with still longer daylight time periods.

I can go into more details about growing zinnias indoors, but first I would like to know more about your situation -- in particular whether it might be better to grow your zinnias outdoors. And maybe somebody else can "chime in" with some comments as well.

ZM

I will try another batch of seeds tomorrow and plant them directly to the soil.

Keep us informed of your progress and experiences growing zinnias in the Philippines. I don't know if it is convenient or even feasible for you to take pictures and post them here, but it you could I am sure they would be of much interest.

In any case, verbal descriptions of your zinnia gardening activities would be most welcome.

ZM

Hello all,

In recent years I have rescued a few choice breeder zinnias from a killing frost in the Fall by taking cuttings and growing the cuttings to maturity indoors, but I am not doing that this year.

Instead, I plan to grow a couple of new zinnia generations indoors this Winter, to get an early start on my outdoor zinnias next year. I have a few choice hybrid zinnia seedlings growing in pots right now. These are on a shelf in front of windows next to my computer. I have others downstairs in the basement under fluorescent lights.

I am doing this because I think it will be more effective for me to go on to my next generation of zinnias rather than to prolong my current generation.

A couple of years ago, when I crossed my tubulars with a variety of non-tubulars, I discovered that the results of those crosses were almost exclusively non-tubular in the F1 generation, and I didn't get my recombinant tubulars from those crosses until I grew the F2 generation this year.

This year I made a lot of crosses using pollen from my white mutant that had tubular petals ending in five points.

I think that if I waited until next Spring to plant those F1 crosses, I might discover that the mutant's interesting 5-pointed petal trait is also recessive, and I might have to grow F2 generations from those crosses to see recombinations of the five-pointed petals traits.

So, the plan is to grow those F1 generation crosses indoors this winter, self and cross-pollinate selected specimens from that F1 generation, and accumulate a good supply of F2 seeds ready for a relatively big plant-out of F2 recombinants next Spring. Hopefully, in that big plant-out, I will find a few high quality recombinants to use in continuing the five-star petal project. I will need to get the right genetic recombinations, because that 5-star mutant had a lot of undesirable features. It was kind of ugly, but it had unique petals.

Next year should be an interesting zinnia year for me, and my zinnia activities during this coming Winter should teach me a thing or two, also.

ZM

Are you OK? The terrible devastation by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines is very much in the news world wide. We are all very concerned for all the people affected by this awful storm.

ZM

Martha

That is an impressive close-up picture. Yes, they are cute when they are babies. And then they grow up and are hard to manage. Were you, by any chance, able to keep that zinnia growing?

And hello everyone,

Since this thread has passed the 100 mark and takes a while to load and read, I am starting a new part over at It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 23 for a fresh start. See you all over there.

ZM