Hello everyone,

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 26, has become rather long and slow to load or read, with well over 100 messages, 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, if you have any related pictures, you are invited to post them.

Fall is not far away, and I have begun spraying my older zinnias for Powdery Mildew. I also have started some newer zinnias with the hope of getting in a Fall "crop" of zinnias. This is a picture, taken today, of part of my zinnia garden.

Today was overcast, with some sporadic light rain. My breeders make up a minority of my zinnias. Most of my zinnias are kept for the benefit of butterflies and hummingbirds.

Hopefully my Fall crop of zinnias will provide some useful green seeds that I can use to start off the indoor phase of my zinnia hobby. My indoor phase will probably start again this year sometime in October.

I am always optimistic that next year's zinnia garden will be better than this year. My goals for next year are bigger blooms and better plants. And of course, a continued push for more unusual flower forms. As always, I look forward to hearing from all of you.

ZM

We're overcast and rainy off and on, too, today. And have I mentioned the unseasonable cold? It was in the 40's yesterday morning; in the 50's this morning. At the moment it's about 65 degrees. It's August 16th. The supposed height of summer. In two weeks, we generally start getting a taste of fall. What's wrong with this picture?

ZM - your zinnia bed looks lush and full of bloom. And I'm still seeing an almost grass-free area around them. Sigh. In my dreams...

OK, alright, it was a split second decision. I walked out yesterday morning to look at the garden and noticed the birds had been at one of my zinnias that wasn't covered. It was an almost single petal arrangement, not a double, so there weren't many seed opportunities to be had from it. I went ahead and cut the seed head off, and - I admit it, I started two seeds. That is, I am pregerminating them. I denuded them first, and they were small but look plump enough. I think maybe there are roots peeking out on each, but it's still early. So - I'm still in the game - Ha! I figure one pot in the kitchen window is do-able. We'll see. Oh, and the seeds should be a cross with my star zinnia - the giant watermelon-colored cactus.

- Alex

ZM, your zinnias are looking good! I am like you. I have a relative few of my total population that I consider breeders, but liking zinnias, I also have a general population that I just love having here. The massed color that the zinnias bring give me a sense of euphoria every summer ;-).

This year, I generated several hundred plants coming directly from the extreme roll-phenotype parents of summer 2013. And that population is enriched with the extreme roll phenotype this year. I think I know now how the scabious zinnia breeders feel. You know you have the trait in your population, you just don't get 100% of the desired phenotype in the f1s! I know I have a good amount of uncontrolled pollination among my plants and that may be one of the factors causing the variation here. Next year, I think I will eliminate all the offspring that don't show the trait. I've never done that before, but now I have a very large number of seeds descending from extreme roll parents, so I can afford to do that one summer.

Alex, I am glad that you may be growing a second generation of zinnias this year! Hang in there! I look forward to the converation that you and ZM will have regarding indoor and winter plantings!

Here is a more relaxed form of my line of plants--I like the white-tipped petals.

Jackie
=

So, let me ask you: do you direct seed all those hundreds of zinnias, or do you start some of your special breeders indoors for planting out? And if you're direct seeding, how are you planting - in regimented rows, or more loosely?

ZM - I am already seeing the necessity for wider rows like you have. It's been kind of a pain having to carefully scrunch my way up my tiny little middle path to better reach things for pollination. However, I like the look of random broadcast plantings. I will probably compromise somewhat by having the known potential breeders in the same general area, and then allow for a larger free-form area. Of course, there could be some stunners to come that I'd want for breeders, so I'll have to consider somewhat wider spacing in any case.

Oh, and on that note, what do either of you do when some of the direct seeders fail to come up? Do you try to replant in those bare spots?

I'm already thinking the veggie garden will be much smaller next year while I have fun with zinnias. But I am also going to try to limit the number of crosses I make, so this project doesn't become unmanageable. And then there's the novel idea of actually labeling things as to what they are.

- Alex

I direct seed nearly all of my zinnias, including the breeders. In the spring, I till up the gardens, then on a frost-free date, I set up rows with string and stakes, then trowel in a shallow trench under each string. I sprinkle in the seeds and mark IDs using labelled shims, and rake under. I mulch between the rows with old hay or straw, and keep the rows weeded for about a month. The rows are about 31/2 to 4 feet apart, but by this time of year, the rows are barely discernible, and the zinnias are easily four to five feet tall.

The only time I start zinnias indoors is when I have expensive seeds (several dollars or more just for a few seeds), like the Swizzles or Big Reds that I have purchased in the past. I have tried started several of my special line indoors, but for me, I found the best way was direct sowing.

Jackie

Hi Alex,

"I am already seeing the necessity for wider rows like you have. It's been kind of a pain having to carefully scrunch my way up my tiny little middle path to better reach things for pollination. However, I like the look of random broadcast plantings. I will probably compromise somewhat by having the known potential breeders in the same general area, and then allow for a larger free-form area. "

As you already know, I plant in-ground in 4-foot wide beds consisting of 4 rows 16 inches apart. And I like to start with 6-foot wide paths between the beds. As the zinnias grow, the beds expand to 6 feet and the paths shrink to 4 feet. Like Jackie, I mark the layout of the rows with string pulled tight, and pull furrows under the string with a favorite pointed hoe. The furrows are 1 inch or a little more deep. I place the seeds in the furrows with a "seeder" consisting of an aluminum tube with a plastic funnel on top. The seeder makes it easy to plant the zinnias from a seated position while on my "tractor scoot", a little 4-wheeled steerable "vehicle" with an adjustable tractor seat. I do as much of my gardening as I can from a seated position, using the tractor scoot or a kneeling bench. This is a picture of my last seedbed, complete with taut strings, but the furrows haven't been added yet. The newly prepared seed bed is being inspected by a "highly trained" troop of "guard guineas".

As before, you can see magnified versions of my pictures by clicking them and using the F11 key. I use 1/2-inch diameter steel rebars as stakes of different lengths, because they don't rot rapidly like wooden stakes do. I cap them with empty plastic bottles as a safety measure. There are some flat-topped caps that serve as in-garden drink holders. The rebars can be driven into the soil using a hammer. I keep a 3-pound hand sledge in the tool tray of my tractor scoot for that purpose, and some long handled pliers for pulling the rebar stakes when they need to be moved or removed.

My "garden" is a continually evolving work-in-progress whose design is based primarily on functionality, as determined by trial-and-error. With a fair share of the latter.

The garden hoops remain as a holdover from the failed low-tunnel-winter-sowing project, because they make handy handholds when leaning down and getting up. And I can use them for protective blanketing from an unexpected early season or late season frost. And I can throw some bird netting over them to protect a bed from seed-stealing birds. I am actually going to expand my use of the hoops.

ZM

Regarding the bottles, I most certainly DID NOT solve any tipping problems, but it did help me with over watering. You cut right around the half mark, and made drainage. I only cut off a small cone right as the bottle narrows again, slit it a few times, and invert it inside the bottle. That leaves a little cone of drainage area. I don't have any examples from last year, because I pitched most of them in anticipation of making more for this year.

As far as pests go, I am trying to grow a little bitty apple tree, a couple different root stocks to practice grafting with, and my zinnias growing in a guest room. I WAS trying to be all super earth friendly and tried a bunch of different insect soaps to get rid of the pests, but I finally said screw it and decided to spray all my indoor plants like I am spraying my potted apple trees. I sprayed them every other week with Organocide, a Neem oil product, and a copper fungicide, and when I see white flies, I dowse EVERYTHING in a Sevin spray. Crossing my fingers, it's been a week or two since I've seen an aphid (or possibly thrip, I'm not great with identifying things) on the apple tree, or white fly on the zinnias.

Since it seemed currently under control, I planted out two flats of green seeds from the yard, so hopefully mid September I'll have a flush of little blooms to choose from to cultivate this winter! I'm really dying to know how many look like their parents and how many seem new.

One of these years I'll have a nice little space out in the country, and my mom for the most part is letting me plant out her yard, but until then, my zinnias only get decorative border status to the vegetables that get the very little bit of prime sun. Maybe by the time I have the space to cultivate flowers for breeding being just wildly indulging myself currently I'll actually have some interesting genetics to show off!

Hi Mister.Guy,

OK, now I understand why you are growing zinnias inside during the Summer. I have never used Sevin indoors. I did use it on Squash Bugs outdoors. Sevin loses its potency in a matter of hours after you spray it. Which is a good thing if you are spraying vegetables. In the case of zinnias, the ideal thing would be a systemic that retains its effectiveness for weeks.

This last Winter, I thought that Imidacloprid would protect my zinnias from insects, because it is a systemic insecticide that can be absorbed through the plant roots. Apparently Imidacloprid does not penetrate well into the flower parts, and failed to control Thrips in my zinnias. Also, I think the Thrips developed an immunity to Imidacloprid, so I will not rely on it to control Thrips this Winter.

Acephate served to rescue my thrips-ridden zinnia seedlings this last Spring, but Acephate smells very bad and isn't really suitable for indoor use. Fortunately I was able to move my zinnia seedlings outdoors onto the deck where I could use Acephate on them.

It is said that Acephate kills the insects that are natural controls for Spider Mites, so that prolonged use of Acephate "causes" Spider Mites. Spider Mites can wipe out your indoor zinnias in a matter of days. I have never defeated Spider Mites indoors, but fortunately I did not have them last Winter. Spider Mites usually come indoors on your zinnia cuttings, but last Fall I brought green seeds indoors instead of cuttings, and unwittingly avoided Spider Mites.

A side effect of my unsuccessful use of Imidacloprid against the thrips is that I had no aphids and no fungus gnats. Incidentally, fungus gnats can be prevented and eliminated by using Mosquito Dunks in your water that you supply to your indoor plants. Mosquito Dunks are non-toxic and qualify as an organic solution to fungus gnats. I am not an organic gardener.

So thrips and spider mites are current unsolved problems for indoor zinnias. My research on them continues.

Incidentally, it might be possible to graft zinnias. I don't know of anyone who has done it on zinnias, but grafted tomato plants are now used by some market gardeners. There are several rootstock tomato varieties available. I plan to do some zinnia grafting experiments in the near future.

ZM

I don't really have a good reason to grow anything inside other than playing mad scientist and being able to control what breeds inside and being able to (in theory) control the environment. I am kinda big on the concept of modern technology bringing old school sustainable home gardens back into the community. Mathematically, it doesn't take a very large perfectly utilized shed to produce a large percentage of the fresh vegetables a family needs if you can sustain the growth through any season and don't need to can anything. A shed eco-cube kinda thing. I am tinkering with turning a room into a small garden to get some experience with the water, insect and heat control, because it seems like the new toys and high density techniques are knocking on the door of being able to convince homeowners to start requesting gardening porches in new construction designed to support irrigation and ventilation, powered by attractive integrated roof solar. A guy can dream right :-)

The color I picked as being the "bluest" purple I find. I chose this particular specimen because as it fades from purple to white petals, for like two days the petals have a distinct blueness. I am hoping to amplify this effect and get a truer blue, even if it's a pale physical effect from a purple layer and a white layer. I kept the closest to this color in the form of three plants of varying sizes. The smallest has the tightest, most prolific booms, and the largest is showing some tendency toward shagginess. It's quite possible the one in the middle is just right, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

The one in the middle:

The big one, which shows some distinct extra luminescence the others don't seem to exhibit, I don't know what causes that:

And the little bushy one I stunted under intense Metal Halide that seemed to go MEGA BLOOM in response:

Hi Mister.Guy,

I hope that you or someone can eventually create a blue zinnia. I have had some lavenders that, when immature and under open shade lighting, which is basically light from a blue sky, appeared to be sky blue. But that was always a temporary thing, and when the sun got to them the color changed to lavender.

I used to be convinced that a blue zinnia was "impossible", but now I am not so sure. A few years ago I would have said that zinnias like my Razzle Dazzle specimens would be impossible. Now I am impressed that zinnias can do amazing things.

Blue roses were impossible to achieve in hundreds of years of rose breeding, and now, thanks to genetic engineering techniques, there are blue roses. It may be that some company will use genetic engineering to create a commercially available blue zinnia. However, most likely it will be a patented plant, and we will be prohibited from saving seeds from them or using their pollen to cross-pollinate with other zinnias. I think that eventually there will be "public domain" blue zinnias, but I think that won't happen in the immediate future.

I think that genetic engineering was used to produce glow-in-the-dark aquarium fish and, I could be wrong, but I think that the light producing genetics didn't even come from another fish. In the brave new world of genetic manipulation, it is hard to identify what is impossible.

If I had a blue zinnia, I would be crossing it with pretty much every zinnia type that I have. In the bicolor and tricolor world of the Whirligigs, I can think of a lot of color combinations involving blues.

You are posting pictures using HTML, and that is great. I notice that your pictures are all 213 pixels wide by 320 pixels tall. I would guess that has something to do with how you took the pictures. I would be interested to know more about that. The forum allows pictures to be 550 pixels wide.

I would also be interested in knowing more about the light sources you are using. I would assume the yellow light comes from a sodium type bulb, and you mentioned a metal halide bulb. I have the book, "Gardening Indoors with H.I.D. Lights" by Van Patten and Bust, but that is copyrighted 1997, so I would guess that it is hopelessly outdated.

I think you are the only person here growing zinnias under H.I.D. lights, so that makes you our expert on that. We will be interested in all of your experiences with HID and zinnias.

ZM

Hi Alex,

"...what do either of you do when some of the direct seeders fail to come up? Do you try to replant in those bare spots?"

Well, this time of year, when there isn't time to get in a second Fall crop, I just leave them blank. But you were probably referring to earlier in the season, when there is time for replanted zinnias to bloom and complete a normal growing cycle. In those cases, if there is a space of several feet of row that didn't come up, I will replant it, either with what was there before, or, if I don't have any of those seeds left, I will plant a different zinnia seed and enclose that section with appropriate labels. Earlier in the Spring, when I still had a few indoor seedlings recovering from Thrips on the deck, I would plug one of those into a small bare spot.

If I was planting seeds every 4 to 6 inches apart and there are a few singles that didn't come up, I just regard that as extra growing room for those that did come up.

Zinnias don't like to be crowded, and the only reason I plant them fairly close together is that I anticipate that at first bloom, I will cull them fairly severely. Removing the culls gives more growing room for those that "made the cut".

I continue to see tubular blooms appearing in my recombinant beds, and this is one of them.

I sure hope those little "webs" aren't from spider mites. (The webs show up much more clearly in the large version of the picture.) Since every petal and every floret in a zinnia bloom is a separate genetic entity, those "hand-shaped" petals might be the basis for blooms consisting entirely of hand-shaped petals. I'll be on the lookout for them next year. Or later this Fall, in my indoor garden. Those "hands" are kind of a Mango color, too. Or maybe their color needs a different name.

You never know what those zinnias are going to do next. Or what those guineas are going to do, either. A while ago I saw a bunch of them prancing around in a nearby field, calling out, in effect, "Hey, Mister Hawk, come and eat me." I am surprised we don't lose more of them than we do.

ZM

ZM - I meant to say a while back that the guineas were cool! Have never kept any fowl - well, except when I was a kid and had ducks. I've heard they are feisty little guys. Maybe the hawks know better. I think I need a few of those to eat whatever little critter keeps taking bites out of my zinnia leaves. Mostly they don't mess with the flowerheads, but the leaves are looking a bit lacy in places. Probably worms since I've found a few of those on them.

I like that mango color alot. I'm always attracted to those shades in any flower, though I generally group them altogether under the generic name of "salmon". I think "mango" is perfect as a description for those two above.

So - you and Jackie have just about convinced me to go the route of direct seed. It will save much work (and light space) not to start zinnias indoors in the spring. Oh, I'll probably still start a few just because I'm impatient to see the F1 results on some of my saved seed. But it will be so much easier to direct seed, and I'm thinking I will want to plant quite a larger area for my zinnias than the little postage stamp sized bed I had for them this year. Had already decided to cut the rest of the garden in half at least, so I'll have more time for "play".

Still waiting for my two little zinnia seeds to sprout. It's been 4 days, if I don't see some serious action, I may chose 2 other seeds - or not. Perhaps my original idea not to attempt winter growing, even if for one pot only, was for the best.

And forgot again, but question for Jackie if you're willing to divulge your secret - where did you order those whirligig seeds from that you posted awhile back - you know, the "happy" ones with the great bi- and tri-colors?

And I'm editing this post to add - does it irritate anyone else these highlighted advertising links with the little arrows on words like "easier" and "happy"?

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"And I'm editing this post to add - does it irritate anyone else these highlighted advertising links with the little arrows on words like "easier" and "happy"?"

Yes, it does. There is a very extensive list of "hot" words that the forum uses. The links aren't necessarily permanent, but they are one form of income for the GardenWeb forum, in addition to the advertising in the columns to the right of our message area.

I think that long ago GardenWeb had an optional paid form of membership (somewhat like PhotoBucket does now) and if you were a paying subscriber, you didn't see the ads. I haven't heard anything about that in recent years and I assume that it is no longer an option.

At one time I experimented with ways to thwart the inline message implants. I thought I was being very clever by spelling the keywords with a special font character. The lower case "a" looks similar to the lowercase Greek character "alpha", so I would write hαppy to keep the "system" from recognizing that keyword. Incidentally, I have no idea what your Browser is going to do with that Greek "alpha" in that last hαppy.

But, in any case, the GardenWeb system always found another keyword, and it is hard to defeat the system. I suppose it could be done, but for the time being, I don't think it is worth the effort. I know one approach that might work, similar to my method of inserting all of the HTML in my message text that I do. I have a special document, accessible by Notepad, that contains all of the HTML elements that I use. So I don't type any HTML, I just Copy and Paste the HTML elements from that Notepad document.

So, I could prepare a Notepad document that contained all of the advertising keywords with inserted special characters, to make them "immune", and when I needed to use one of those keywords, I would just Copy and Paste the "special" form of the word from the Notepad document. But I am not going to do that in the near future, because I am pretty busy with my gardening right now.

"Just when I was thinking of tossing my little experimental seeds - we have germination! In one of them anyway. Oh, I should add that I was pre-germinating them in the paper towel/baggie method, after having denuded them. That's why I was expecting earlier germination."

By "denuded" I assume you meant opening the seed coat in some way. This delay is so long that I wonder if your "denuding" technique needs some perfection. Could you describe it in detail, or, better still, show us a close-up picture of some of your denuded green seeds? Your paper towel/baggie method is essentially the Deno method, and it should be better than my method of just planting them in a square pot containing some Pro-Mix moistened with a dilute solution of Physan 20. In fact, I have made a mental note to try your method, based on its better visibility of the germination process.

I continue to get new zinnias blooming, and that will continue for several weeks as my Fall zinnias bloom out. This is one of my white tubulars that just bloomed out.

Some of my "whites" are off-white or ivory, but that one is reasonably white. Oddly, its center is purple. Some white zinnias have white centers. Some have yellow centers or very light yellow centers. Apparently the center color is controlled by different genes.

It seems amazing that time flies so fast, but "meteorological Fall" is September-October-November, so that version of Fall is about to start in a little more than a week. Actually, I prefer the meteorological season definitions to the elliptical-orbit Astronomical definitions, because they are so oddball and hard to remember. And the meteorological seasons correspond rather closely to the actual four seasons here in Kansas. More later.

ZM

Too late to take a pic of the seeds as I planted them both in their cells. But I can tell you what I did simply enough. I took cuticle scissors and snipped the edges of the seed coats enough that I could pry them open and gently ease the embryos out. They looked like small hulled sunflower seeds. It wasn't hard to do, and the seeds were undamaged. Not sure why the germination was so slow. Could there be some issue with them being a bit more green than they should be? Meaning, these were seeds that I took from a seedhead that the birds were getting to, but it wasn't one of the earliest crosses. Maybe only 5 weeks or so ago - (I've got a cat on my arm and don't want to get up and go check the date. Ha! And yes, it is hard to type with a cat on your arm.)

Anyway, here are the parents:

Mama

and Papa

- Alex

Secondly,
Help!
What's wrong with my zinnias? Here are some pics, all from the same plant...are these issues related?

But on a positive note, here is a pic of my new arrival - drum roll, please...ta da! Meet S6xC1 - I'll have to come up with a different name, I think...

Hi everyone,

Desirai, I think that that zinnia with the spots has a disease called Cercospora Leaf Spot. It is an infection by a fungus named Cercospora zinniae. You can't heal the holes it has made, but you could keep it from spreading by spraying with a fungicide. The Green Cure that I mentioned to Jackie lists Cercospora Leaf Spot as one of the diseases it controls. Or any good fungicide should help control it. But the Green Cure is safer to use. You are doing a really good job of taking pictures that are really close up. And clear.

Alex, wow! You are also getting great close-up pictures. You have an F1 zinnia embryo emerging ! Growing your own F1 hybrid zinnias is something. And growing zinnias from embryos instead of seeds is very unusual and special. Most people don't even know that is possible. I think you are probably right, that the embryos were a little slow to respond because they were not "full term babies". My zinnia embryos usually take at least three weeks to get really fat.

Desirai, I also have seen signs of some zinnia disease. I think there are a few Cercospora spots on this pink-and-white zinnia.

It looks like a rather big hole in one petal, and several smaller spots on other petals. I think I should do some spraying. I have some of the Green Cure to use, and I think I have a couple of other fungicides as well. Zinnias seem to lose their resistance to diseases in the Fall, and it is pretty close to Fall now.

I spent some time gathering zinnia seeds today. I won't know how many I got until I shuck the heads and pick out the good seeds. I used to envy the seed companies and their special machines that they use to process seedheads and separate out the seeds from the chaff and stuff. But in recent times I have found some extra long zinnia seeds that I was hand picking out of the seedheads and I realized that the automatic machines would treat them as stems and reject them in the chaff, or break them in two.

As an amateur manual seed processor, I am a lot more versatile than the machines. And the machines are actually a limitation for the seed companies, because they can't recognize extra large seeds as seeds. They have settings for minimum and maximum seed sizes that are very "average". Who knows how many mutant super giant zinnias may have been destroyed by the machines that either broke their giant seeds or simply rejected them as pieces of stem. I have already processed some zinnia seeds that I think were too big to go through the commercial seed winnowing machines. My Burpeeana Giants Mix seeds weren't impressively large at all. I hope to make some progress toward breeding larger zinnias.

ZM

ZM - yes, I believe you were right when you said This delay is so long that I wonder if your "denuding" technique needs some perfection.

And I think I was right to wonder if it was because the seeds were still so green. Because this morning, when I looked at my little S6xC1 to tell him what a cute little devil he was, I noticed there was some browning to his cotyledons. Oh no!

I looked closer and observed that this was the little membrane that typically gets left behind when the seedling pushes off the seed coat. Apparently, though I couldn't see it when I denuded the seeds, the membrane was still intact and not letting water in. If the seed had been older and dryer, this membrane would have been more brittle and would have broken down faster.

So, all is well so far. And it looks like the other seed is sprouting, too, though it hasn't broken through the surface of the soil yet.

Separating seeds from chaff is one of those relaxing, mindless activities that I especially excel at. It's an after dinner affair - sitting at my table, DVD plugged into the machine, these days invariably a cat watching whose paw I have to slap away periodically. How could I want a machine to deprive me of so much pleasure? :)

- Alex

And a closeup of the second seedling coming up, with the membrane showing clearly as a brown "caul" that the baby is emerging from.

Hi Alex,

"Because this morning, when I looked at my little S6xC1 to tell him what a cute little devil he was, I noticed there was some browning to his cotyledons. ...I looked closer and observed that this was the little membrane that typically gets left behind when the seedling pushes off the seed coat. Apparently, though I couldn't see it when I denuded the seeds, the membrane was still intact and not letting water in. ...And a closeup of the second seedling coming up, with the membrane showing clearly as a brown "caul" that the baby is emerging from."

Very interesting, and very observant on your part. This membrane may be documented and described in plant physiology texts, but it is new to me, and as far as I am concerned, you are the "discoverer" of it. I have also observed the brown discoloration on emerging seedlings from green seeds, but I interpreted it as a possible bacterial attack on the "unprotected" embryo. Your "discovery" of this membrane, and it may be an actual discovery, will be very useful in improving our embryo/green seed procedures.

Presumably the membrane serves some function. It may serve to protect the naked embryo from bacterial attack. Or it may be that the surface of the embryo itself can do that. I have been using Physan 20 as a bactericide in my green seed and embryo germinations. It very well may be, as you suggested, that the membrane does slow down the development of the embryo. It very well may be that my "denuding" technique also needs some perfection. In a sense, a truly "naked" embryo is already "germinated" and has merely to develop a longer root and expand its stem and cotyledons. But if it is still enclosed in an "amniotic" membrane, its absorption of water may be prevented or severely slowed down and the goal of the green seed technique, namely the accelerated development of a new zinnia generation, may be delayed. And that delay may be unnecessary if the "amniotic" membrane is removed or opened in some way.

It may be that the amniotic membrane does protect the zinnia embryo from bacterial attack and that a bactericide is necessary. Years ago, my green seed technique consisted of merely pulling petals out of a bloom and planting the green seed, petal and all, with no attempt to breach the seed coat or anything. I usually got pretty good germination doing that, but it usually took a couple of weeks for the seedlings to appear. Whereas mature "brown" seeds would germinate in two to six days. But still, even with the two-week delay, planting the petals was at least a month quicker than waiting for the zinnia bloom to mature and turn brown. I was happy to get two generations a year instead of just one generation.

The growing season was over before it dawned on me that the live seed coat was impermeable to water and that I could speed up the process by at least two weeks by doing some sort of surgery on the petal-seeds to let the water in.

So the next year I experimented with "scarifying" green seeds, using wet-or-dry sandpaper and files, but I settled on an X-Acto knife as the fastest technique. The X-Acto cuts are limited to straight lines, whereas your cuticle scissors can cut in a curve or straight. My first cut is straight across the seed to remove the petal close to the embryo. My thinking was that, if I cut off the tips of the cotyledons of the embryo, I would just be removing a little of the seed leaf, which shouldn't hurt the seedling much. But if I cut off the small end of the green seed, I would risk cutting off the root tip, and that would probably kill the future seedling. So I limited my next cuts to the sides of the seed coats, and with the sides open and the petal end open, the seed coat top and bottom could be opened up like the covers of a book, to expose the embryos.

Well, your discovery of the "amniotic" membrane around the zinnia embryo opens up a new chapter in our experiments with green seeds. It's kind of ironic that, with just your two green seeds, you discovered something that I hadn't found while planting literally hundreds of green seeds. I will try not to develop an inferiority complex over that.

ZM

Hi again, Alex,

I won't embarrass you by gushing over every little thing you say, but I feel the need to embarrass you a little.

"Separating seeds from chaff is one of those relaxing, mindless activities that I especially excel at. It's an after dinner affair - sitting at my table, DVD plugged into the machine, these days invariably a cat watching whose paw I have to slap away periodically. How could I want a machine to deprive me of so much pleasure? :) "

That is pure Zen, and it expresses something that I totally agree with. You have a way with words, and that paragraph is worthy of publication.

"Because this morning, when I looked at my little S6xC1 to tell him what a cute little devil he was..."

That's professional grade writing.

ZM

PS I'll post some more zinnia pics tomorrow.

Now I’m watching this new seedling to make sure it manages to break free of its “caul”. It made it up above the soil still intact. This might not have been the case, except I have a tendency to plant my indoor seeds rather shallow. If the seed had been deeper, the microbes in the soil would have had the chance to soften the membrane. Well, if it doesn’t push it off, I will take a razor blade or the cuticle scissors and try to carefully slit the edge to help it.

Ha! I just saw your post which you put up while I was busy writing mine! Looking forward to your pics tomorrow.

- Alex

Hi Alex,

Yes, that last pic clearly shows the membrane. I know that "amniotic" and "caul" are animal terms, and we may still not know for sure what the official name is for the membrane in a zinnia seed. But you recognized the existence of the membrane, and that it is a factor we have to deal with in our procedures aimed at accelerating the germination of zinnia seeds. You did good. Incidentally, that last picture of the seedling with the membrane is an amazing close-up. That's really close. (And kind of artistic.)

Now, for some of those promised zinnia pics. This is yet another of the "Razzle Dazzle" flower form.

Next year I hope to have a genetic cauldron bubbling in my zinnia garden, involving recombinations from all of these variants. So far I have seen a very limited subset of what is possible with just the stuff I now have on hand. And I am always on the lookout for a new zinnia mutation to add to my genetic palette. See, I used an art term there.

I will address the expected life of zinnia seeds in a subsequent message. More later.

ZM

I have been enjoying your posts. Alex, I suspect ZM is not going to be the only one with an indoor zinnia lab this winter! Love your green seed germination trials! I think you asked earlier what my source of the Whirligigs is. It is Stokes Seed. They sell Whirligig seeds at a very reasonable price. They also sell Zowie, no doubt a Whirligig variety, as it has many of the same characteristics, but consistently has red centers and yellow borders on its flowers. The Whirligig "general" mix is very unpredictable...you can get any sort of flower, but probably 1/3 have multiple color patterns.

ZM, your white tubular flower is beautiful. Of course, the "Razzle Dazzle" flower is also pretty and very different.

I have similar spots to the flower that Desirai showed a while back on some of my zinnias...which doesn't surprise me! We have been having so much rain that fungi are taking advantage of the situation here. Probably having plants close together here doesn't help! I am going to increase the size of my garden next year for many reasons!

Besides collecting seeds and pollinating, as I said before, I can't resist the lure of the gardens at this time of year. The birds and butterflies are constant sources of interest, and I can't help but be out there all day when its nice and several hours when it's not ;-).

Jackie

Chile Pepper Roasting Day today, so I won't be doing much zinnia work, though I did get out yesterday before the rains came and did some crosses. I've got one very nice patterned whirligig that is unfortunately puny and stunted, but am crossing it with my giant C1, the watermelon cactus posted above that's Papa to my 2 babies.

Now that I have firsthand experience that the green seed technique produces viable seed, this has got me excited about the whole hybridizing thingey!

I've thought it out, and believe my approach will be in future that instead of starting a second batch of seedlings in the fall, I will start my 1st batch in early March when I begin the peppers and eggplants and some of the smaller seeded flowers that take longer: lobelia, petunias, snaps, etc. That means that some time in May they should be blooming and ready for hybridizing. They'd also possibly by that time, have the added advantage of occasionally being hauled out in their flats for sunshine and some healthy air circulation. Add another month or so to that time scale and I could harvest green seed that could be direct planted. And it would be early enough that I could get yet another harvest of seed before the season ended. Am I crazy or is that time frame correct? I'm still gung-ho about direct seeding for most of the crop, but for some of the special breeders, I mean.

Jackie - thanks for the tip about Stokes and the zowies, too. I've not been attracted to pics of zowies in the catalogs, but then I didn't realize how beautiful the whirligigs were until I started growing them. And now, as my focus is to get differing genetic material for breeding, they are all the more important.

ZM - and I mustn't forget those scabis - just look at the effects they are producing in those pics above! And there's that mango color again - I have never seen it before except for your zinnias, and I really love it. Perhaps I need to be crossing my orange flowers more to get that shade into the mix...

OK, off to pick peppers, and I'm late starting...
- Alex

Hello all,

Jackie, I also have some foliage disease spots, although they aren't very noticeable yet. I should spray some fungicide to control the powdery mildew, especially on my breeder quality zinnias, like this one.

That one also has obvious Whirligig influence, with an interesting bicolor effect. There are a variety of orangish (sp?) shades in zinnias, and "Mango" is one of them. Is "Chile Pepper Roasting Day" an actual day, or just a seasonal event? It wasn't on my calendar. More later.

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

Anyway, I wanted to ask: considering we're almost into September, I guess it's probably too late to make any more crosses that would yield mature seed before frost - would you agree or not?

Also, as to nomenclature - how are you designating crosses without having an increasingly long line of letters and/or numbers? There would already be a problem in my first two seedlings - can't call them both S6xC1, unless I said, maybe, S6xC1a and b. And then when I cross those two (which hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so if they both mature and flower), I'd have a very confusing string of symbols on my hands. How are you handling that?

Lastly, Chile Roasting Day is me being my usual flippant self, referring to the fact that my peppers needed to be harvested now, and it's one of those things best done as an event taking some hours. If I was my younger self, I would have been at it even longer, because after picking the peppers, washing them, roasting them under the broiler, and skinning them - I'd have gone the extra steps of stuffing them with cheese, putting them on cookie sheets to freeze, and then individually wrapping them in butcher paper before re-freezing them for making chile rellenos in the middle of the winter. My chile rellenos are muy excelente, if I do say so myself. :)

- Alex

Hi Alex,

" When those kind of combinations happen, are you halfway expecting it, or is it a total surprise?"

I knew that the female zinnia had scabious ancestry and that the male zinnia might have cactus and Whirligig ancestry, so bicolor scabious progeny were a possibility, and I was not at all surprised that some of the scabious progeny would also have two colors. But there are well over a hundred zinnia colors, so predicting a specific color combination would be a very long shot. I have seen a lot of bicolor combinations, and this year I have seen more than one orangish petal with a lavenderish base, but I don't recall having seen any of those specific combinations in previous years. So, yes, the Mango based lavender was a complete surprise, and I like it.

"...considering we're almost into September, I guess it's probably too late to make any more crosses that would yield mature seed before frost - would you agree or not? "

That depends on the likely date of your first killing frost. Our climates are rather different, despite the similarity of our USDA zones. I expect that the danger of a killing frost here is getting rather significant by the middle of October. If we get a frost warning early in October, I will throw fabric over my plants that are still maturing seeds. If it is late in October and we still haven't had a killing frost, I will probably have harvested all the seeds, brown and green, that I intend to. Today I harvested some seeds and made some cross-pollinations, and I expect to do that for the next several weeks.

"Also, as to nomenclature - how are you designating crosses without having an increasingly long line of letters and/or numbers? There would already be a problem in my first two seedlings - can't call them both S6xC1, unless I said, maybe, S6xC1a and b. And then when I cross those two (which hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so if they both mature and flower), I'd have a very confusing string of symbols on my hands. How are you handling that?"

First of all, I don't name the individual seeds, I name plants after they have proven themselves to be good "breeders". Usually that is after the first bloom has had time to develop for a week or two and really show what it can look like. By that time many of the zinnias will not "make the cut" and get pulled up and put in a trash bag that the sanitation truck will take to the local landfill. Some stay for the benefit of the butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds, but don't get designated as breeders.

Each breeder plant gets a unique code name and each code name gets a page in my garden journal with that code name as the page title. A Velcro tag with just the codename is attached to the plant. The description of the plant occupies the journal page. Information about that breeder is added to that page as it becomes available. All of my breeders that are recognized as breeders in 2014 have a codename that begins with "H". At this moment the breeders for 2014 are designated as H1 thru H53. (Last year breeders G1 thru G149 were entered and next year's breeders will begin with "I".) I will be designating a few more breeders tomorrow, so pages for H54 and upward will be added tomorrow. And that process will continue for the next few weeks.

My journal containing those pages is a small version of a 3-ring loose-leaf notebook, so I can add pages as they are needed. My notebook journal stays with me in the garden, to be handy for adding more information about breeders as it becomes available. A few years ago I and my journal got caught in the garden during a sudden downpour and we both were water soaked, so now my journal is a special waterproof notebook like the military uses. I and my journal nearly got caught in a sudden shower today.

The journal page contains the codename in the heading, and the codename of the maternal parent, the date the zinnia was planted, a repot date for indoor grown plants, a "complete" description of the plant and the bloom, and notes regarding what the plant was cross pollenated with. Sometimes a plant is pollinated with just one particular breeder and if that is the case the codename of the breeder is specified. Frequently more than one pollinator is used and the male parents are specified merely by category. Like today I was using "exotic" pollen on some of my large aster flowered breeders, so the pollinator was listed as just "exotic". Tomorrow I will probably be using some Razzle Dazzle pollen, but I won't specify the pollinator by code name, but simply as "Razzle Dazzle". Last year when I was massively using the pollen from G13 (the star-tipped white mutant), then the pollinator was listed as G13 specifically. Many pages in my journal included G13 as the pollinator, or as one of the pollinators.

Sometimes I will leave myself open to use any pollen that seems like a "good idea" and I will list the pollinators as simply "upgrades". I don't try to differentiate between different blooms on a plant. I was impressed when you started labeling individual petals, while I label just individual plants. I have had many plants in the scabiosa flowered category that had very many blooms on a plant, on the order of a hundred blooms. It is not unusual for even a zinnia with "giant" blooms to have a dozen or more on a plant. So having codenames at the plant level is practical for me.

So the labels attached to the plant (or the cage protecting the plant) contain at most four characters, the letter prefix and up to three digits. All the really detailed stuff goes in the journal.

Back to your "end game" plans for the year. I have a very vague idea where you are. I know you have had snow when we didn't and that a safe outside planting date was considerably later for you than for me. But any crosses that you make tomorrow might produce usable green seed in three weeks. Remember, you don't have to use the green seeds immediately. You can dry them for use next year, or the next several years after that. Even if you are expecting a killing frost in three weeks, it would still be worth a gamble making a few more crosses. Because weather is a gamble, and it can be kind of fun gambling. And there is that climate change thing that is presumably going on for all of us, which could skew the older climate data some.

Chili Pepper Roasting Day seems like a good idea. More later.

ZM

Hi Alex,

"I will not try to make more crosses, but will concentrate on protecting, gathering, and drying seed for saving."

A temp in the 40's would be discouraging. It has been almost hot here, so it would seem that we live in very different climates.

I have several specimens of "Aster flowered" zinnias. They arose by crossing Burpee cactus types with Whirligigs and crossing those hybrids with each other to get recombinations of genes. As is usual with F3 and beyond generations, new forms arose and the Aster flowered zinnias are one such form. This is a picture of one of my current Aster flowered specimens.

The aster flowered zinnias can exceed 6 inches in diameter and, as a "strain", they run a little larger than both the Burpee Burpeeana Giants and the now discontinued Burpee's Hybrid Mix. Their petals are long and narrow and tend to curl downward to make the bloom somewhat deeper. The petals are somewhat loosely spaced to give the bloom some "air".

I am using some of them as females to accept pollen from both Exotic and Razzle Dazzle specimens. I plan to grow some of those hybrids this Winter to see what the crosses look like, and to self and intercross the hybrids to get some F2 seeds for an in-ground trial next Spring. I expect some interesting results and hopefully larger versions of the Exotics and Razzle Dazzles. More later.

ZM

Hi dbarron,

Thanks for the positive comment. I'm sorry you aren't a zinnia person -- can we convert you? Zinnias are easy to grow, and they are capable of far more than the pictures you see in the catalogs and on the seed packets. By the way, I was born in Oklahoma, and "grew up" on a farm there. When I was a kid, I even raised some zinnias in Oklahoma.

ZM

Zinnia grandiflora would be my grail...but it doesn't like as much moisture as we get...even with gritty artificial soils.

I don't mind admiring yours and your efforts, though.

I would love to see you develop a strain and/or (if you feel profitable) a patent (not so big on patenting plants).

Hi dbarron,

I'm not enthusiastic about patenting plants either. I know there are a lot of patented rose varieties, but they are propagated asexually. I don't know of any seed-propagated patented ornamentals.

Zinnia grandiflora, sometimes called the Rocky Mountain zinnia, is a wild flower in parts of Kansas and Colorado. I am under the impression that its chromosome number is not the same as Zinnia elegans (violacea), so I haven't considered crossing it with any of my zinnias, which have a chromosome number of 24.

"I like Z. angustifolia and should try to grow it I guess. "

You could do that. Zinnia angustifolia is available commercially as Star White, Star Yellow, and Star Orange and as Crystal White, Crystal Yellow, and Crystal Orange. They are probably all inter-crossable. They grow about 8 inches tall, don't take up a lot of space, and do well in ornamental beds. I don't grow them because I am under the impression that their chromosome number is 22. And they are kind of short.

I will probably experiment with some inter-species zinnia crosses between species that have a chromosome number of 24. Zinnia peruviana and Zinnia haageana have 24 chromosomes, and are prime candidates for those experiments. I don't want to have to double the chromosome number to make my crosses viable.

But, meanwhile, I am getting plenty of variation and enjoyment within the members of Zinnia violacea (elegans).

"I don't mind admiring yours and your efforts, though."

I'm glad to hear that.

ZM

Dbarron - I have been totally hooked now on zinnias as a result of this hybridizing project. Just can't resist the lure of gambling with flower genes. Remains to be seen whether it is less expensive in the long run than conventional gambling. Who knows - if I get spectacular results down the line, I might want to revamp the greenhouse! :) I am kidding. Though the greenhouse does need some new plexiglass panels...

ZM - I believe your various aster-flowered zinnias that you have posted over the course of the many threads I've looked at, are my favorites. Is that pic above accurate as to color - is it lavender? No matter, truly, as it's the form that I especially like, but the lavender is lovely.

More later, as you like to say - I have another very long book-filled day ahead of me...

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"I believe your various aster-flowered zinnias that you have posted over the course of the many threads I've looked at, are my favorites. Is that pic above accurate as to color - is it lavender?"

That last picture of an aster flowered specimen is not lavender. It is another of those hard-to-name pastel zinnia colors. It does show up on my monitor in a shade very close to the actual flower color. It is closer to a Caucasian flesh color than lavender, maybe a bit darker like a facial blush. There is a tiny hint of lavender in it, but I think that is due to the blue color of the sky above it. That pic was taken in open shade, so it was illuminated by an overhead blue sky. I seem to recall that there were some fluffy white clouds drifting in that blue sky.

Because zinnias have so many color nuances, capturing and displaying accurate colors is important to me. I am still using my "old" entry level Nikon D3200, and I will probably continue to use it for at least another year, so its color accuracy is probably not as good as the many more expensive digital cameras. But to compensate for that, I capture my images as RAW files in the Nikon NEF format. I extract "corrected" 16-bit TIF files from the NEF files using DxO Labs' DxO Optics Pro raw processing software. Those TIF files go to my Photoshop CS3 for cropping, downsampling, and conversion to JPEGs for Web display.

The DxO Optics Pro software compensates for the shortcomings of both specific camera sensors and specific lens distortions and aberrations. It "knows" what camera you used and what lens you used and it downloads modules to accommodate both the specific camera and the specific lens. DxO Optics Pro supports a very wide variety of cameras and lenses. The uncontrollable factors are the properties and adjustments of the different computer monitors, tablets, or smart phones used to view these Web pages. So a word explanation like I gave above may remain a useful communication about zinnia colors.

Your "kids gone walkabout" seem to be coming along nicely. But they grow up so fast. Before you know it they will be wanting a car of their own, or maybe just repotting to a bigger container.

"Just can't resist the lure of gambling with flower genes."

That is an accurate perception of the random nature of the genetic redistributions that occur in the cellular meiosis processes that produce zinnia pollen grains and zinnia egg cells. Actually the zinnia pollen process is even more complex, involving tri-nucleate pollen grains, but I think Jackie could explain that better than I can. Early on, I was hoping we could exchange zinnia pollen with each other through the mail, but Jackie stepped in to explain why that is not possible or, at least, not feasible.

I still haven't forgotten my "plain old" tubular flowered strain, like this current example.

Many of the tubular specimens developed interesting flare-out petal ends even before the appearance of the star-petaled mutant, and they have the advantage of no brown-tipped genes to deal with.

Well, more later. I also have a very busy day ahead of me.

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

I'm also shooting in RAW with my Nikon D40, but I'm using PS Elements 12. A friend was telling me of other options, but this seemed as much as I needed.

Gotta go. Labor Day weekend. I have definitely labored, and it's not over yet. Exhausted. Will continue later -
Alex

I suppose rooting cuttings and mailing them around is probably too much hassle compared to sending seeds as well...

Well, I have to admit my marking system was less than successful. The fingernail polish was definitely a bust, though there were some survivors of the technique. The magic marker didn't do the damage, but faded too much and certainly didn't last the browning of the petals.

But I've come up with a new scheme - latex paint! :) Will have to try it next season.

Here's a pic of some of the red whirligigs. They are the brightest of my reds.

- Alex

Hi Mister.Guy,

"I suppose rooting cuttings and mailing them around is probably too much hassle compared to sending seeds as well... "

At the present time, I think mailing cuttings would be much more of a hassle than mailing seed. The disadvantage of mailing seed is that they will not necessarily be the same as the plant from which the seed were saved.

If we all learned tissue culture, mailing explants could be feasible, and have the advantage that the tissue cultured progeny from the explant would be identical to the parent plant, with occasional exceptions. I think I will return to my tissue culture experiments this Winter. Tissue culture has several other important applications for plant breeding. And tissue culture can be an interesting hobby, all by itself.

Here is another current example of scabious recombination.

You can still click my pictures to see a bigger version. I have yet to see what results can come from crossing my "exotics" and Razzle Dazzles with scabious zinnias. My zinnia hobby will be in a very interesting phase this Winter.

I like to have about a month of overlap between my outdoor growing and my indoor growing, to allow ample time for saving green seeds and starting them or their embryos indoors. So I will be turning on my fluorescent lights in about two weeks. More later.

ZM

- Alex

Hi Alex,

Wow! You photographed a hummingbird hovering and sipping nectar from a zinnia. Good timing. They are very "flighty" and hard to photograph.

"So what kind of tissue cultures are you doing? Stuff in a petri dish?"

Some people use test tubes, but I prefer to use babyfood jars, because they aren't as crowded as test tubes. Petri dishes are more for bacteria or fungi -- things that are really tiny.

"Are we growing Franken-zinnias?"

Well, some of my tubular petaled and Razzle Dazzle zinnias might impress some people as Franken-zinnias, but the most popular use of Tissue Culture is micropropagation. In micropropagation a small piece of a plant is placed on a culture medium and that small piece (called explant) grows on the medium to produce a cell colony called a callus. The callus is treated with an auxin that induces small shoots to arise from the callus. The small shoots are harvested and rooted like tiny cuttings. Those tiny plantlets are potted for growth into "regular" plants which are genetically identical to the plant from which the explant was taken. The advantage of tissue culture micropropagation is a much higher yield of plants than you could achieve by conventional cuttings. The classic textbook for micropropagation is Plants from Test Tubes, an Introduction to Micropropagation, which is now in a Fourth Edition.

You can do tissue culture at home in your kitchen, provided you have either a microwave oven or a pressure cooker. (I have both.) That Kitchen Culture Kits, Inc. website has links to many other home tissue culture resources.

Tissue Culture has other applications in plant breeding in addition to micropropagation, including haploid plant production (potentially very useful for quickly stabilizing a good zinnia recombinant), in vitro pollination and fertilization, somatic hybridization using protoplast technology to "cross anything with anything", in vitro mutagenesis, and somaclonal variations. Some of that stuff is in the area of "franken-zinnias". Those things are described in more detail in the book, In Vitro Plant Breeding.

The in vitro haploid plant production is something that we may eventually want to do with zinnias. Briefly, it works like this. You tissue culture a pollen grain or an anther (the flower part that contains pollen grains) which produces a haploid plant. The haploid plant is sterile because it contains only half a complement of chromosomes. You "fix that" by doubling its chromosomes with Colchicine or an equivalent substance and your plant now has the "normal" diploid number of chromosomes, with the important difference that the two sets of chromosomes are identical. It is absolutely true breeding, in that all of its selfed seeds will produce identical seedling progeny.

That is much different from regular zinnias, whose two sets of chromosomes differ in varying degrees. Even so-called pure strains will have significant differences in their chromosome pairs that cause some variation in phenotypes from one plant to the next. The seeds from doubled haploid plants can produce absolutely uniform plants, and their seeds could be marketed with confidence that they would live up to their description.

Of course, bees and their random pollinations would contaminate the genetic purity of the doubled haploid zinnias, but if those plants were grown in isolated fields, the speed of that contamination could be very slow.

Actually, when I was younger I doubled the chromosomes of some of my zinnias with Colchicine and got some of my own tetraploid zinnias. But I soon learned that I much prefer diploid zinnias to tetraploid zinnias.

But it is possible that at some future time that the haploid zinnia approach could be useful for quickly purifying a zinnia strain. More later. There are some complications to that technique that I will go into later.

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

Hi Alex,

Wow! Double wow! Those little guys are growing at warp speed. It's hard to believe that a little less than three weeks ago they were just tiny naked white embryos. I don't know what you are feeding them, but they must like it. They look super healthy.

"Just checked, and if all goes well, these babies should be blooming around the first week of November. Give them another month for seed to mature enough to harvest, and I should have my F2 generation seeds for an early Christmas present to myself."

That's possible, assuming all goes well. Speaking from experience, growing zinnias indoors has its hazards. But, as they say, nothing dared, nothing gained. Your progress with the zinnia hobby so far has been nothing short of amazing.

I am in the zinnia season endgame here, doing more cross pollinations and saving and shucking seeds. That mango and lavender scabi has several blooms on it now. This is one of them.

And, this evening, I am "separating seeds from chaff as one of those relaxing, mindless activities that I especially excel at" and enjoy. More later.

ZM

ZM - mangos and grapes - Holy Cow!!! You could definitely market that one. That purple is incandescent!

Yep - I'm going to need to plant next year with more space between plants. I'm already dreaming and planning for the future. Today, however, I need to get out there and harvest whatever's ready, as they are already predicting temps in the upper 30's for later this week. Not freezing yet, but it's also going to rain supposedly for some days, so best do my seed picking now while we're dry.

The babies are indeed growing quickly, I think because I have taken them outside on the good days. Yesterday, though, I left them out while we went to run errands. The day was so nice that we decided to play hookey and took off on a ride looking for books that we didn't return from for several hours. When we got back, I noticed to my dismay that some 'hopper had taken a couple of bites out of the smaller seedling's leaves. Not enough to hurt, but he no longer looks so perfect. Sigh. Maybe when I'm out today, I could keep them beside me so I can keep an eye on them. Otherwise, I'd better leave them inside under their lights.

Here's another of the hummingbird-zinnia pics.
- Alex

Hello Queen-Gardener,

Glad to have you here. It sounds like you have a good background in zinnias, and at one time had some success breeding your own, by the time-tested method of saving seeds from your favorites.

"Could someone please list the tetraploids and list the diploids"

Most zinnias are diploids, so I will just try to list the tetraploids. State Fair and Burpee's Big Tetra Mix are the two main ones. I believe Senora is also tetra, although that seems to be absent from most descriptions of it.

Profusions, Zaharas, and Pinwheels are all 46-chromosome Zinnia marylandicas, so you can't use them for breeding with "regular" Zinnias, which have 24 chromosomes. And, by "regular" zinnias, I mean Z. elegans or Z. violacea, which are the same thing.

"I already bought scabious type zinnias for next year, and I realize they won't come true, too bad, but those genes will be beneficial! Sadly enough, I didn't know there were scabiosa type zinnias until this year . . ."

I guess by " I realize they won't come true " you mean that you are aware that a fairly high percentage of the commercial strains will be off-type and not have the scabious flower form. If you self or cross your specimens that do have the scabious flower forms, you will get a high percentage of scabious flowerforms. The problem with commercial scabious zinnias is that if you look at the field of zinnias that they are harvesting their seeds from, you will see that the seed field has the same problem -- a high percentage are not true scabious forms. And they can't afford to hire people to go in and "rogue" the seed fields, because they would have to kill over 90% of the plants in the field.

"I also would like to know where the "Toothy" petal gene is coming from? Whirligig?"

Yes, Whirligig primarily. I have had some interesting results from crossing Whirligigs with scabious types. The scabious blooms are very "toothy" in the central mound, and to a lesser extent in some of the guard petals. But I don't think we would have the toothies without the Whirligigs.

"Do you guys trade seeds?"

You know, early on I had hoped that we could trade pollen by mail, but, as Jackie pointed out, that isn't feasible because zinnia pollen "dies" in a day or less. And then it seemed likely that some seed trading could occur, as long as both sides of the trade involved some unique properties and the trade would be a "win-win". But somehow I have made way more progress than I ever dreamed of, and now the possibility of eventually selling seed stock for commercial development can't be ruled out.

I can't speak for Jackie, but I think she has some zinnias with commercial potential as well. I think that some of these new zinnias deserve to be available to people everywhere, and I can't think of a better way for that to happen than to have commercial seed companies grow and introduce these new zinnias as new varieties or cultivars.

This is really a rather ironic situation, because I entered this zinnia hobby purely to have fun, with no thought or expectancy whatever of ever making any money out of it. I certainly had no intention of selling seeds to other gardeners. I intend to continue "playing with" zinnias for fun and only for fun. But, for the time being at least, I won't be sharing seeds.

ZM

Hello again, Queen-Gardener,

"Can I start crossing the scabiosa type with a toothy type and try to get a layered toothy dahlia type? (that's why I want to know about the diploid and tetraploid - is it even going to be possible?) "

Yes, it is possible because they are both diploids. Actually, the toothy type can be rather layered, as in this one.

For some reason, the extreme toothy specimens tend to be on rather small plants, and I need to backcross some of those to toothies that are on larger plants. Trial and error may not seem like a very sophisticated approach, but it works.

ZM

And that toothy zinnia above is unique and beautiful - I can easily imagine it as a sellable item.

Hi Alex,

"But my question is: should I be trying to gather any green seed I can before frost? I figure completely dry seed is safe enough, except from possibly deep, hard frost. But I wonder about the green seed."

Last year, about Oct 15, we had a frost that blackened zinnia leaves and petals and I gathered green seeds from those plants and planted them inside and they seemed to germinate normally. So any green seeds that you have that you want to mature some more, my advice would be to wait for the frost to actually kill the leaves on the plant before harvesting them. Brown dry seed are probably unaffected by the frost.

We just had a cold spell. No frost warning, but nighttime temperatures in the low 40s and high 30's. We are on a knoll and both of my gardens are on slopes, so cold air pooling is not a problem for us either. But my outdoor zinnia garden is definitely in the end game, with some late season pollination continuing, in addition to ongoing seed saving. The green seed technique is a lifesaver.

This is a recent (taken yesterday) picture of one of my variant tubular petaled zinnias.

It was cloudy and cold yesterday, so the lighting is none too good. That zinnia's petals are very skinny and it's a wonder there is room for stigmas in there. But I like that delicate look, and envision what if the ends of those petals had skinny teeth radiating in all directions. A flower like that could look like a dandelion that had gone to seed, with those airy little "parachutes" attached. I should cross some toothies with tubies. More later.

ZM

Hello Queen-Gardener,

"I hope I'll be showing my pics on this board next year - I'd like to set up a few SFG beds for next year's veggie/herb/selective flower beds. "

Do you plan to put your zinnias in the Square Foot Garden beds? If so, I have some comments about that. It is true that most people probably allow less than a square foot per zinnia in their zinnia beds, so a square foot is an improvement over that from the standpoint of the individual zinnias. But I plant my in-ground zinnias much closer than that, in rows 16 inches apart but seeds about 4 to 6 inches apart in the rows. Obviously 4 to 6 inches apart in a row is much closer than is "good for" the individual zinnias, but, because I am trying to improve my zinnias, I cull them at first bloom. I thin them pretty heavily in the name of growing only the best ones. So a lot of those zinnias get removed, leaving probably more than a square foot for my selected "breeder" zinnias.

Every early Spring I also start a few dozen zinnias inside in 3.25-inch square pots. I try to pick some "good" seeds for those pots and I almost always plant only one seed per pot. If it doesn't come up in a few days, I replant it with another "good" seed. Now, even though I planted a "good" seed in each pot, I don't know if it is going to be "good" when it blooms out. But I do space those seedlings about a foot apart in the row (the rows remain 16-inches apart), so there is a "double standard" for those zinnia seedlings started early indoors under fluorescent lights.

If I were doing Square Foot Gardening, I would probably plant more than one zinnia seed (three or four) in the middle area of each square foot, with the idea that when they first bloomed I would pick the "best of the bunch" for that square foot and remove the others.

Commercial "field run" zinnias tend to need a lot of culling, because for one reason or another the seed companies don't do a good job of that. The F1 zinnias don't need culling, and the Zinnia marylandicas (Profusion, Zahara, and Pinwheel) don't need culling because they are reasonably uniform. But for some reason as soon as a seed company commits a new zinnia strain to field-run production, that strain starts to "run out" and degrade in quality. Seed companies can't afford to lavish the individual care on their zinnias that home gardeners can do.

So any commercial field grown zinnia strain can easily be improved by home gardeners, who can thin out the culls and keep the better zinnias and save seeds from the best zinnias. This year I planted a bed of Burpee's Burpeeana Giants zinnias, and I am saving seed from only about 5 percent of them. Hopefully those seeds will show some improvement next year. One thing I want to do is make big zinnias bigger.

Actually, I expected better of those Burpeeanas, because they were from a grower in Holland. I will buy more Burpee Burpeeana zinnia seeds next year, with the idea of repeating that to widen my gene pool of Burpeeana-type zinnias.

"Does anyone else love to draw zinnias? I used to make the prettiest cards several years ago with these paintbrush tipped markers, drawing mostly zinnias and roses and day lilies. (Dahlia-typed flowered zinnias, probably my fav)"

Well, the dahlia flowered zinnias are pretty easy to draw, because of all the closely overlapping petals. You just start in the center making U-shaped petals and continue around in a spiral doing that until you get the zinnia as big as you want it to be. Most of my "real life" zinnias aren't that easy to draw, because their shapes can be rather complex. I suppose you could start with a photo on a computer and trace over the boundaries. And there are several computer programs for converting photos into artwork. Maybe I will show some examples of that in a subsequent message.

More later. We might get a rain tonight.

ZM

Queen Gardener - yes, just lately I photo-shopped some of my zinnia pics using the filter called "colored pencil", but I haven't been doing any real-time drawing for awhile now, though I used to.

My two little zinnia plants that I have inside for the winter, are doing well. Which reminds me: Zenman - how tall can I expect the indoor plants to get, given that one of the parents is a cactus zinnia? Surely they're not going to be as big as what they'd be outside, which is 3-4 ft. Will have to work on my lighting system.

I gathered quite a few green seeds out there today, but the rest I'll just leave till after frost I guess. It's kind of cool being able to feel the difference in a viable seed and one that didn't get pollinated. Thank you for that. I've already got way more seeds than I'll have room to plant. It's a big part of the reason I was anxious to come up with a decent marking system - so I'd know which seeds were actually ones I'd pollinated. As I said before, my methods so far were only half successful. But I'm still working on it. :)

- Alex

Hi Alex and Queen-Gardener,

Wow, Alex! Who knew that breeding a blue zinnia would be so easy? Just out of curiosity, what version of Photoshop are you using?

Hi Queen-Gardener. Now it's my turn. This is the photo I am going to use as the basis for my "art".

Voila! Computer art. Admittedly that is not the most "painterly" piece of art there ever was, but it is a start. I'm kind of rusty at this, and I need to "bone up" on this computer art thing. More later. Incidentally, you can click on those pictures for the larger versions. Don't forget the trusty old F11 key. Stupid computer. Has to be told everything.

ZM

Hi Alex,

"My two little zinnia plants that I have inside for the winter, are doing well. Which reminds me: Zenman - how tall can I expect the indoor plants to get, given that one of the parents is a cactus zinnia? Surely they're not going to be as big as what they'd be outside, which is 3-4 ft. Will have to work on my lighting system."

If the lights aren't intense enough, they will stretch and grow right into the fluorescent bulbs. I have had them do that. They jammed their flower buds up into the shoplight fixture, between the bulb and the reflector, and "cooked" their flower buds. Be sure to have some way of either raising the light fixture, or lowering the support for the plants.

It shouldn't be too expensive to upgrade your system. You can get economy grade shoplights for about $12 for a two-bulb 48-inch T8 fixture. They come without bulbs but you can get T8 bulbs for about $3 each (don't spring for the extra price "plant" bulbs). If you buy the bulbs in boxes of 10 you can get them for less than $3 each.

I prefer the "cool white" bulbs with a Color Temperature rating of 5000K or higher. My last box of Philips bulbs had a rating of 6500K and a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 85. If you put two fixtures over your zinnias, with cool white bulbs in one and warm white bulbs in the other, the zinnia plants will lean dramatically toward the cool white bulbs. I figure that if the zinnias prefer cool white, then I will give that to them. That is a controversial subject, though.

You can accelerate the growth by setting your timer for at least 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark. I think that last Winter I wound up at 17 hours of light and 7 hours of dark.

You don't have to use fluorescent shoplights. You could use strip lights, which don't have a reflector, so you can put them very close together. The shoplights I now use have a minimal reflector, so I can put them very close. The more fluorescent bulbs you can get over your zinnias, the better. Within common sense limits, of course. With just two plants, you might be able to get by with just a few CFL bulbs. (compact fluorescent lights) You might even want to experiment with LED lights. Some people are. More later.

ZM

Yes, I already leave the lights on for long hours, though I may be changing the lighting scheme soon to match what I generally do in the early spring with my veggies. That is, I have the lights on during the dark hours, when the plants can benefit from the little bit of additional heat, and then in the day I have the lights off. I know those fluorescents don't put out all that much heat, but even that little during the cold winter nights can be a help, I feel. Perhaps I'll do what I've threatened to do for years as well, and set up an incandescent bulb with reflector in addition to the fluorescents. Gotta go - cats are reminding me I haven't fed them.
Later - Alex

Hi Alex,

"...can I put the T8 bulbs in a regular "garden-variety" as they like to say - 4 ft double-socketed shoplight? Or do I have to get a new shoplight to house the bulbs?"

Look your shoplight over carefully. It might say something on it. If it currently has T12 bulbs in it, it is probably an older fixture with an old analog magnetic ballast. The newer T8 shoplights have digital electronic ballasts. If you have any written description regarding your shoplight, it should tell you whether it can accommodate T8 bulbs or not. Unfortunately, the "tombstones" in the ends of the shoplight will fit either T12 or T8 bulb prongs, so you can't go by them.

Incidentally, the electronic digital ballasts are somewhat sensitive to current surges, so it is better to run them on a surge protector. Some timer switches can create a little surge. The kind of surge protector that has an on/off rocker switch with a place for maybe six different plugins and costs about $12 or a little more should be adequate. We are not talking about protecting from mile-long lightning bolts here.

ZM

Pretty cool artwork! Like that multi-phase approach. And the effect of the coloration with the layer of line drawing. I'll have to do one in return in a minute here. Think I can find a zinnia photo to work from, what do you think? :)

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"He also says it's one of the new kinds of energy efficient bulbs, and smaller around - definitely not the same as the old bulbs."

Yes, the T8 bulbs are smaller in diameter and more energy efficient. The old T12 bulbs are decades-old technology.

On that computer art, when all else fails, read the manual. That art I showed was done with a Photoshop plug-in from a company named Topaz, and the plug-in I used is called Simplify. (scroll down on that page, a lot of stuff is down below the top of that page) It's not bad for an inexpensive plug-in. They have a free 30-day trial version. I have some other computer programs I could use, but I haven't read their manuals and am way too busy with gardening to do that now. Actually, I do enjoy computer art, it's just that I never seem to have the time to really get into it. More later.

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

I justified at least SOME of my excess because I'm a photographer, and I had built myself some DIY hotlights for portraits and white box work, so I had a lot of fixtures I cross purposed. Maybe it says a lot about my lack of self control, but this is kind of how my math worked:

1 packet of zinnias, under 1 florescent light in 1 tray of seeds became 36 hard to pick between babies, which takes up another 2 or 3 square inches each, so the light become an array of lights on a shelf. Then those babies grew into a dozen or so favorites, each of which needed 3 to 5 square inches, so they outgrew the first lights, and plus, by then, I was having fun so I had roses and cuttings from gardenias establishing too. Then the simple four foot shelf became an eight foot shelf, with an array of lights.

But see, to have REAL results, if you're impatient, you have to grow as many babies as possible, so the babies had barely popped out their buds when the first buds when they started getting crossed and green seeded. Suddenly there's another tray of 36 popping up, everything starts getting leggy and pushy.

ZM has self control, and a lot of room outside. My bright idea was to only plant culls in my garden, and keep all the favorites in perpetual summer inside. My thinking though, was that since I had all the lights, why not force as many generations through as possible in pretty darn good growing conditions. So while he uses the real world, I set about finding out how other people set up mini-worlds inside.

My current set up costs, in fairness, a few hundred dollars total. I bought an inexpensive starter kit of a HD light and digital ballast that can put out 600W of either HPS or MH light, and is dimmable, for about $150, which isn't that much more than replacing a shelf's worth of tubes, and to maximum it's potential I bought myself a grow tent at around a hundred bucks to keep all the light in, and some duct work and a fan to suck the air out into the hallway from my spare bedroom. I haven't had it operating long, the tent was a birthday present recently, so I can't totally declare victory, but it seems to be doing what you'd expect, and helps keep me from overflowing into the rest of the room! I haven't really put a TON of effort into the ventilation of it, because the temperatures are staying in the upper 80s in a 73 degree room, but winter coming should help me out there.

I can now only keep what fits in the tent, and my garden is starting to fill up various shades of purple.

ZM - looked at the shoplight John was talking about, and it is just what you were mentioning. I observed the one that was already in place in a darker area of the store - it appears to put out a very bright light. The bulbs are also the cool white ones. And, happily, there is a spare shoplight that I can take right now, since when he bought the first one, he saw there was another and figured it would be good to have a backup. Except now it will be a plant light instead. Yay me!

Speaking of stupid computers, I had written a long response to your last comment, and then when I went back later, saw that instead of posting it, I'd somehow deleted it. Couldn't have been my fault! (sigh.) Anyway, I don't remember what I said except that the manual for my Photoshop Elements 12 that I got just last year, is 423 pages long. Part of my reason for why I haven't studied it - it's intimidating. But I will eventually have to go look up the layering stuff, since I don't seem to remember how to do what I did before. [ imagine many curse words here]. The program I was using before PS12 was PS3 which we bought already installed in my laptop. When I started shooting manually and saving pics in RAW def files, I decided it was time to upgrade. The new version is so much in advance of the other, it's scary. I don't know half of what it can do yet.

So here's a multi-step pic which isn't actually a layered pic. I WILL figure the other out...

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"...except that the manual for my Photoshop Elements 12 that I got just last year, is 423 pages long. Part of my reason for why I haven't studied it - it's intimidating."

I am still using the old Photoshop CS3 (I think they are up to CS6 now) and it's manual isn't so intimidating, but I bought several third party books for it from Amazon and the total of that is well over 1000 pages. The books were heavily discounted because they were for a very out-of-date Photoshop, which made them just as out-of-date.

However, I feel fairly comfortable in my old Photoshop CS3 merely because I started using Photoshop back in 1997, when it was just Photoshop 3 then. Very early days. Your PSE 12 is light-years ahead of that old PS3. It may be ahead of my old Photoshop CS3. I have never studied Photoshop intensively, but after using it off and on for 17 years, I have picked up a few things.

We have all had the experience of crafting a really long masterpiece message, only to have it lost in the transmission stage. It is really a very sickening feeling, because you know full well that you will never be able to re-write the message as well. And you don't feel motivated to even try.

As you know, I am just naturally "long winded" when I am writing messages, and now I have taken to copying the message draft into the computer Clipboard by doing a Ctrl-a to select all of the message content in the editor and then doing a Ctrl-c to copy it into the Clipboard. As long as I don't turn my computer off, the message stays relatively safe in the Clipboard and, if I need to, I can restore it in the Editor window with a Ctrl-v.

We are in a somewhat remote rural area and the only available Internet connection is via the HughesNet satellite uplink/downlink service. So everything goes up to the satellite and down from the satellite here, and the same at the HughesNet station, back east somewhere as I seem to recall.

So our connection is subject to weather interference both here and back east. Sometimes I have to re-boot our HughesNet satellite modem several times in a day. And if the weather is bad here or there, it won't reboot and we just have to wait for the weather to clear. Modern technology! Which reminds me, whatever happened with that solar flare that was supposed to be headed at us? That could play havoc with the HughesNet satellite.

I spent about an hour today just cross-pollinating my "toothy" zinnias. I hope to grow a bunch more toothies next year and maybe a few this Winter indoors. This is a picture of one of the female toothies taken this evening.

You did get a nice drawing superimposed on your zinnia artwork. Impressive. I am thinking about starting a few green seeds in the basement under fluorescents in the next day or two. More later.

ZM

Hello Mister.Guy,

I read your last message with great interest. Your year-round indoor zinnia project is very cutting edge. You very well may be the only person on this planet to attempt a non-stop indoor zinnia project.

Your HID lighting technology and indoor tent for environmental control are fascinating, and we want frequent updates on your experiment. I have nearly a decade of experience growing zinnias indoors and I don't want to discourage you, but it has been one calamity after another.

One year I was growing several hundred zinnias in a breezeway that allowed me to have independent temperature and humidity control from the house conditions. I noticed a strange discoloration developing on the zinnia leaves which within a week or two was leading to the death of the leaf. It didn't look like any foliage disease I had ever seen, and it was progressively wiping out my zinnia crop. I mounted a desperate search on the Internet, looking for photos of a similar zinnia foliage problem. Then one day I found pictures similar to my foliage problem, and identified the problem. It was the Western Flower Thrips (WFT). With no natural enemies in the breezeway and, with me being helplessly unaware of what was going on, the WFT population exploded and the foliage damage increased exponentially. I used an 8-power magnifier and a 20-power pocket microscope to observe the thrips finishing off the last of my zinnias. I bagged them all up for a trip to the landfill.

Aphid populations can also explode on indoor zinnias. I have successfully controlled them with Imidacloprid, a systemic insecticide. The same with fungus gnats. The Imidacloprid kills them as a bonus. In previous years I had used Mosquito Dunks for a Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (BTI) control of fungus gnats.

The other repeated calamity I have had with indoor zinnias is spider mites, specifically the Two-spotted Spider Mite (TSM). And once again, the initial attack caught me completely off-guard, unaware of the nature of the problem. I thought it curious that cobwebs were forming on my zinnia plants and, in the strong light from the fluorescents, I could see tiny points moving on the webs. I felt fortunate to have finally seen the "cob spiders" that create cobwebs. And then, suddenly, all of my zinnias were dead. WTF. More Google research.

Those "cob spiders" were Two-spotted Spider Mites (TSM). And since they aren't insects, insecticides are essentially worthless against them. Outdoors they have natural enemies that keep them in check. Indoors, with no natural enemies, their populations explode.

Last Winter I was fortunate not to have had an attack from the TSM spider mites, and instead fought a running battle against thrips (again, specifically, the Western Flower Thrips (WFT), which ended in a kind of draw in which I learned that Imidacloprid won't stop the WFT thrips, but Acephate will (but smells very bad).

I am not looking forward to my next battle with the spider mites. They are like The Borg, "resistance is futile''. I have some Kontos, a systemic insecticide with some miticide action. On my last battle with TSM spider mites, I used the isopropyl alcohol and water spray recommended by Organic gardeners, and lost that battle decisively. The isopropyl alcohol bath did seem to kill the spider mites, but it apparently killed my zinnias as well. Or maybe the dying spider mites killed the zinnias. In either case, I wound up with a bunch of dead web-covered zinnias that reeked of isopropyl alcohol. I was willing to consider the Two-spotted Spider Mites as The Borg, because my resistance was futile.

I hope that I don't encounter the spider mites again this Winter. I am not optimistic about the outcome of that battle. I am almost certain that I will be fighting the thrips again this Winter, perhaps in the next few weeks. I am more optimistic about that battle. I have Acephate, and I will use it again against them, and it will kill them. And it will smell really bad. I am hoping to find an odorless alternative.

The stoners have confronted and dealt with some of these problems. I think someone said that Shell No-Pest Strips can control both mites, thrips, and whatever if the plants are in an enclosed area. They are effective against houseflies, but should not be used around children or old people. I think I might qualify as an "old people". That old saying that "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" can be sadly wrong.

But you mentioned an indoor tent, and I had been wondering about making a plastic film jacket that would fit over one of my chrome wire shelving units that serve as plant stands. That might be useful for containing the effects of Shell No Pest Strips or Acephate or whatever. But for the time being I can take my plants out on our open air deck to apply stuff. That's how I applied a lot of Acephate this Spring.

I could be wrong (it wouldn't be the first time), but I think you are likely to encounter "biological" problems with your zinnias, and some of those problems may prove to be challenging. You impress me as a person who is resourceful, and you may find some solutions that I have failed to find. That is why I am following your project with more than casual interest.

ZM

I've never had any problems like that when I start my seeds in the spring, but then I'm not doing it on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Generally nothing is under the lights from some time in May till the following March. But now I have my two special children up there... all alone...unprotected from Mickey and the Borgs - OMG!!!
I will have to stay vigilant.

BTW - they are already putting roots out of the bottom of their little pots, so I will probably upgrade pots today. You can believe I am going to sterilize the pots first after reading your latest.

- Alex

For mites, I've found nothing works better than pruning the worst of it, washing the plants with soapy warm water to physically remove them, and misting the plants for a few weeks heavily. That got rid of the mites, but fungus gnats became a real problem. I used fly strips and a ceramic vase filled with water as a fly trap very effectively until the mites were gone and I could dry the soil back out to kill off the gnats. I also used cinnamon from the grocery store sprinkled heavily to kill off fungus on the soil surface, and it seemed somewhat effective. Smelled good anyway :)

The latest problem I had MAY have been thrips. The culprits looked like some kind of lice, if I had to describe them. Very tiny white lice that seemed to set up right in the growing bud and stunt everything. The little hairs on the stem got heavy and thick and white, or something thick and white was growing on them, it was hard to tell. Eventually large leaves would pale, wither and die. A combination of Spinosad, neems oil spray, and a copper based fungicide spray seems to have brought those plants back, although they show some definite signs of their trouble.

I REALLY think like I'm going to start pouring boiling water through any purchased potting mix. It feels to me like I get outbreaks primarily after adding plants potted with store mix. Either that or I need to explain to my fiance that having lady bugs in my growing tent is totally reasonable and a thing a normal person might choose to do.

Like I keep mentioning, I don't have a lot of self control, and some of these issues are really fascinating to me from a woo woo metaphysical kind of perspective, and I decided that I wasn't going to let having a heavily treed yard, with a steep north facing sloped front yard stop me from playing with all the plants I wanted to. Technology had solved the problem for ILLEGAL growers, I figured growing tomatoes and flowers would be no problem.

Tomatoes, it turns out, are huge pain in the rump indoors. Way, way worse than zinnias. I keep giving up on them, and then trying again with seeds from germ tests, and then giving up on them again. They get fungus easy, burn easily, get rust and blight seemingly out of nowhere and spread it around, and when you do things well, they are a pain to keep in their allotted space! I think the main difficulty with zinnias is needing to commit to enough wattage to get a full three or four foot of usable light. It just takes bunch of juice to grow more than three or four inches of plants happily.

Right now, the grow tent is working TOO well at keeping the light and heat and our summer kept my upstairs too warm, so I kept accidentally burning the plants. Between that and the recovery from the thrips, I don't have a ton to show at the moment. Unlike you, my genetics aren't all that interesting to begin with! When the next couple of blooms open up, I'll clean up the floor trays so it's not embarrassing and take some pictures of my set up!

The whole learning to graft thing, well I have no excuse for that other than I had the light already and I like fruit...

Anyways, I forgot to say - ZM, really like the latest toothy - I think it might be the best yet. I didn't get around to repotting the kids - will do it tomorrow. Dang, I had a question I specifically came on here to ask, and now I've forgotten what it was.

Later - if I remember - Alex

Gardening always sounds worse when you list off only the problems you've had all year! On the brighter side, I have terrible clay soil that I'm really working hard on amending well. Sheet composting went wonderfully this year, and I have a couple rows where things will actually grow well, and the soil actually drains.

Eventually I'll have the acreage of my dreams, but until then, I'm doing the most in the suburbs that I can, and one of these days maybe I'll have something pretty enough to justify the effort, but until then I'm collecting genetics for the orchards I want to have, and learning how to grow food conveniently at the scale I can handle, as close to year round as I can manage.

One of these days I'll have retractable high tunnels with solar powered grow lights in giant fields. And I'll STILL probably not have any good reason to justify it, other than I CAN.

Hi fullmoon,

Welcome to this zinnia hobbyist message thread. Feel free to post more zinnia pics, ask questions, make comments, whatever. Your zinnias look quite healthy and you got a nice close-up picture of them. I notice we are both in zone 5b, although our growing seasons and conditions could be quite different. I am doing some late season pollinations, fighting mildew, and saving seeds.

ZM

Hi fullmoon,

Chuckle. That picture is a good close-up. And those grasshoppers are something else. I see a lot of grasshoppers on my zinnias, but they don't seem to do any real damage. Mostly, I think the grasshoppers eat grass and not zinnias, which is a good thing, considering how many grasshoppers we have.

"... but I'm not real sure how to tell if they are fertile or not."

You can pick zinnia seeds in two ways: Wait for the heads to mature and become brown and dry and pick the whole head and shuck it out and pick out the seeds. Or, you can pick the seeds when they are still green, but matured enough to have well developed embryos inside. It is actually easier to tell the fertile seeds from the "empty" ones when they are green. Notice that the petals themselves still have color.

Regardless of whether you prefer to use an artist's brush, tweezers, twissors, or forceps to pick up the pollen, the pollen florets and stigmas are relatively large, easy to see, and easy to get at. You can pollinate a lot of zinnia stigmas in only a few minutes.

We want to hear more about your gardening plans. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

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

Hi woodnative,

Your zinnias are in better shape than some of mine. I am fighting powdery mildew here, much worse than usual for me.

Some of your zinnias look quite tall. There might still be time for you to make a few experimental cross pollinations to get some hybrid seed that you could start indoors early next Spring. From the time of a successful cross pollination, you can have a reasonably mature green seed in about three weeks. And in my experience, a killing frost does not kill the green seeds. You could harvest a few green seeds and dry them for a week or two and give them a try next Spring. Just a suggestion. No pressure.

I have been doing some cross pollinations and self pollinations this morning, and I will continue doing that into the afternoon. I have some specimens that I particularly want to get some green seeds from for my indoor Winter zinnia growing project. Welcome to this message thread.

ZM

Anyway, it's going to be agonizing waiting for that blossom.
Hey, woodnative and Irie.Island.Farmer - join the party! Yep, zinnias are still blooming here as well - we haven't had frost yet amazingly enough. But to have them blooming all year around - holy moly. There you go, ZM - you didn't move far enough south. :)

- Alex

Welcome, Irie.Island.Farmer,

We really envy your ability to grow zinnias year-round. Most of us are anticipating a possible killing frost in maybe two weeks or so.

" These seeds my dad sent me from Nebraska where he grows them every year since I was a kid so 20 something years, and my dad got the seeds from my great grandpa who grew them on his farm since the 50's . "

That is absolutely fascinating !!! Those seeds are, in effect, a family heirloom. I can see how you might hesitate to cull any of them, but when you are saving zinnia seeds, you do have the right to choose your favorites to save seeds from.

This is entirely up to your discretion, but you could add to your zinnia gene pool by purchasing some zinnias of a different variety or varieties of your choosing. Your year-round growing season presents a powerful opportunity to do some zinnia breeding on your own. I always suggest the Whirligig strain from Stokes Seeds as one starting point, because it has such a wide range of zinnia variations. Whirligigs are from a line of interspecific hybrids between Z. violacea (elegans) and Z. haageana, so they have a greater potential for variation than zinnia strains that are derived from just Z. violacea.

I tend to be attracted to spectacular variations like the tubular petaled mutation and the star-tipped mutation, but I am also becoming more sensitive to subtle variations, like this current specimen.

It is essentially just a cactus flowered zinnia, and could appear in a commercial seed packet. As it happens, it does have some distant Whirligig ancestry, and I tend to credit the Whirligigs for that. This specimen does differ from the "average" a bit, by having longer, narrower, straighter petals, and it has a look that I have named as "linear" because of that petal shape. I am treating this specimen, and several similar ones, as breeder zinnias. I hope to eventually develop a separate strain of these big "linear" flowered zinnias in a complete range of colors.

Just by looking over the zinnias that you have, you can see subtle variations, and some not-so-subtle variations, that you can form your own opinion of, and use your opinions to guide which zinnias you save seeds from. I think of those contemplative observations as some of my "zen" moments and, for me, they are an important dimension of the "fun" that I get from growing and breeding zinnias.

Incidentally, your year-round situation means that you could use the green seed technique that has been described in these message parts as a means of "speeding up" your next generation of zinnias. You could even plant zinnia embryos instead of seeds, as some of us have done.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. In a public forum like this, you always have the advantage of getting a second and a third opinion on things.

ZM

Just repotted the two hybrid plants this morning into 6-1/2" clay pots, as they both had roots starting to come out of the drain holes again. They both had nice well-developed root systems when I knocked them out of the smaller pots. The larger one is 13-1/2" tall; the shorter is about 12-1/2".

Possibly they will need repotting again during this indoor experiment. I have a couple more sizes of the clay pots, though, so that's OK. Oh, and both have buds now. I guess this may be due to the scabious rather than the cactus genes - the fact that they're already setting buds.

- Alex

Hi Alex,

Your indoor experiment is going better than I expected. Perhaps those trips out into the great outdoors are very beneficial for your experimental zinnias. I am very close to re-starting my indoor zinnia project. Last year at this time I was very confident that I could control all insect pests using the systemic Imidacloprid. Now that I have seen Imidacloprid fail miserably to control thrips, I am approaching this indoor zinnia project with much less confidence. But, for sure, it is going to be a learning experience, and I always look forward to learning.

I am trying to guess what the flowers on your two brave little hybrid zinnias are going to look like. Predicting the results of crossing zinnias is something I am not good at. Zinnias have a way of surprising me. That's why I frequently say that zinnias are full of surprises.

You published good pictures of both the "mama" and the "papa" of your cross, so we look forward with anticipation to see what the cross will produce.

"Oh, and both have buds now. I guess this may be due to the scabious rather than the cactus genes - the fact that they're already setting buds. "

Your "mama" zinnia is a single bicolored yellow with a white base bloom, with no sign of pollen florets in the picture. When I see bicolored petals, I tend to think Whirligig. I suppose the "mama" could be scabious, but there is some uncertainty in my mind about that. In any case, the parents of your cross differ considerably, so the appearance of your F1 hybrid is a matter for speculation. This is one of my current breeders that combines the properties of both yellow based non-yellow and a lavender color.

So, that is my prediction of what your little guys will look like when they bloom. You can take that with a very large grain of salt, because I am almost always wrong about the results of zinnia crosses. I blame that on "zinnias are full of surprises". I do hope your little guys survive to the blooming stage. Considering all the "slings and arrows" that indoor zinnias face, that is not a certainty. But the suspense grows.

ZM

Hello Queen-Gardener,

Yes, I have heard of Canary Bird yellow zinnias. They are an old heirloom variety. The Bodger Seeds company introduced the dahlia flowered strain of zinnias in 1919, and it consisted of 18 separate colors, one of which was Canary Bird yellow. I don't think that all 18 cultivars have survived to the present, but Canary Bird was a nice yellow that has survived, and is available from several commercial sources.

"So what else am I missing out on??? What are some unusual types/colors out there I can easily get my hands on?"

Well, most seed companies now offer seeds online, and if you don't mind online shopping, there is a very large variety of zinnias available to you. To get some idea of what is available, I suggest you go to Hazzard's Seeds and type zinnia into their Search box window. That will bring up the first of many pages of zinnia seed offerings.

And, of course, there are many other companies that offer a large selection of zinnias, like, for example, Johnny's Selected Seeds, who offer a good selection of zinnia seeds suitable as cut flowers for home use or for sale to florists.

Johnny's is one of several companies who cater to Market Garden Growers who grow acreages of zinnia blooms for sale to the florist industry. Many of those growers prefer to plant zinnia seeds with mechanical seed planters, and some of those growers prefer to buy special coated or pelleted zinnia seeds, because they work better in the mechanical planters. A few of the mechanical planters work reasonably well with non-pelleted seeds, although every now and then some double and triple placement of smaller zinnia seeds will occur.

I actually considered getting a mechanical planter, but decided that my zinnia seeds varied enough from the usual to make that a questionable thing to do. So I still plant my zinnia seeds in open furrows the "old fashioned way", by feeding them one-seed-at-a-time down an aluminum tube from an attached seed hopper. That way, it is up to me to "singulate" my zinnia seeds. ("Singulate" is an actual word that the mechanical planter people use.)

We welcome your questions and comments, and would like to hear more about your zinnia plans.

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

Hi Queen-Gardener,

Burpee was also the main catalog we used during my childhood on the farm. We also got Shumway's catalog. I grew some Banana Melons from Shumways. When Burpee was headed by W. Atlee Burpee and even later by his son David Burpee, Burpee was active in plant breeding and growing their own seeds. In the 60's and 70's Burpee offered some great zinnias, including the Luther Burbank strain, and ending in the series of F1 hybrid cactus zinnias called "Zenith".

That was a good name for them, because that was about the high point for Burpee, who started going downhill and faced bankruptcy along about 2000. Ball bought Burpee to save them from bankruptcy and extinction, so now Ball is the parent company of Burpee.

But now Burpee is just a shadow of their former selves. Sadly. I still buy zinnia seeds from them every year, but I won't be able to buy separate colors of either Burpeeana Giants or Zenith F1 hybrids like I could in the past. And the shrinking continues -- Burpee Hybrid zinnias have now been discontinued, at least on their online site and in their print catalog. I guess it is no longer profitable to pioneer new zinnia varieties. Maybe private zinnia growers have now inherited that function. Who knows?

Incidentally, is Parks Seeds one of the catalogs you get?

ZM

Hi Alex,

It was cold here this morning, and blustery windy from the north. Not freezing yet, but might as well be. I actually planted a few indoors green seeds last night. So my indoor zinnia project is now active.

Here is another possible prediction for your hybrid embryo guys:

Well, now that my indoor zinnia project is going, I have a bunch of pots that need washing. More later.

ZM

ZM - now you really shouldn't get my hopes up like that - it's cruel! What you've posted is wa-a-ay more fancy that I think I have a right to expect on the first generation - or so you've warned me in the past!

Also, you're probably right that I switched my scabious with my whirligigs, and everything I'm thinking is scabious is whirligig and vice versa. Sigh. Well, what the heck - I'm starting fresh with this next generation, my first F1 troop.

Interesting stuff about Burpees - I never buy from them anymore because mostly they seem too expensive for the stuff I want. Though I do always peruse the catalog just in case there's something super special that I feel I must have. Hasn't happened in a long time. More than once they've tempted me with plants which they don't offer seeds for. I would have purchased the seed, but not so interested in paying for a single plant unless I'm standing in a nursery with the plant right in front of me. I break my own rules sometimes - year before last I did order several plants out of a few different specialty catalogs. :)

Yes - cold, windy and wet here, too. Not much left to do in the garden except clean-up. Have harvested most foods except root crops and cabbage, and have pulled someting like a gazillion zinnia seeds which are either packaged already or still sitting in cups drying. Think I'm done harvesting there as well.

Looking forward to hearing about everyone's indoor zinnia escapades this winter. And on that note, here is a visual update on the boys:

We are growing happily under our new lights. The towel behind them is to block daylight, as I have switched them over to lights on at night and off during the day. Plus it maybe reflects some of the light back at them. I think I have a more reflective piece of posterboard I could put up...hmmm...

And a close up of the tip burn - a product of their last outdoor excursion. Not esthetically pleasing, but not particularly health threatening. The adolescent plant equivalent of multiple piercings and tattoos. They think they look more badass now. Yo, dudes.

Hi Alex,

"What you've posted is wa-a-ay more fancy that I think I have a right to expect on the first generation - or so you've warned me in the past! "

Well, admittedly my pictures are of recombinant advanced generation specimens, but your seedlings look good and, as always, there is that anticipation about what the opening zinnia buds will look like.

"And a close up of the tip burn - a product of their last outdoor excursion. Not esthetically pleasing, but not particularly health threatening. The adolescent plant equivalent of multiple piercings and tattoos. They think they look more badass now. Yo, dudes. "

Chuckle. That tip burn is a common occurrence in container grown zinnias. However, their last outdoor excursion is probably not the cause. It is more likely a nutrient deficiency, with the most probable cause being a calcium deficiency. The solution is to provide a little soluble calcium in the water that you water them with. (You could also foliar feed them with some dilute soluble calcium.) Some water supplies with "hard water" have enough dissolved calcium to supply the needs of your plants, but zinnias are heavy feeders on all of the plant nutrients and, as the linked article says, the budding stage is likely to "steal" calcium from nearby leaves, causing the tip burn symptoms.

You could consider the measures suggested in the article. However, I have experienced calcium deficiencies in all of my indoor grown plants (zinnias, other ornamentals, and veggies) in Premier Pro-Mix BX at about the 4-week or 5-week stage. That is when the calcium supply in my Pro-Mix gets "used up".

So I routinely include some calcium nitrate along with the other soluble nutrients that I water my indoor plants with. Your situation may be somewhat different, depending on the potting mix you are using.

When growing in a sterile soil-free medium like Pro-Mix, I am in effect practicing a form of hydroponics, in which the Pro-Mix serves primarily as a hydroponic substrate. So I water my pots with what is essentially the same as would be used in a hydroponic setup. Hydroponic growers almost always add some Calcium nitrate to their water. If there is a hydroponic supply store in your area, they most likely can sell you some calcium nitrate.

Incidentally, calcium is not a "trace element", plants use quite a lot of it. Not quite as much as the classic N-P-K elements, but way more than the trace elements like magnesium, iron, manganese, copper, zinc, molybdenum, boron, nickel, and cobalt.

If you don't have a convenient supply of calcium nitrate in your area, you can purchase it (and other plant nutrients) from an online supplier of hydroponic nutrients. One convenient source is Amazon. A pound of Calcium nitrate will last you for years of indoor growing. If you start spraying your tomatoes, peppers, etc. with it outside, it will go rather fast.

We had a frost warning for last night. I covered some of my newer zinnias using my hoops and fabric. It may have been a false alarm, as uncovered zinnias seem to have survived.

This is another of my "linear" series of zinnias.

I planted a few more zinnia green seeds in my 3.25-square pots last night. I will be busy today getting my indoor gardening jump started.

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

Thanks for the tip about the calcium nitrate - sounds like something I should invest in. I'm thinking, as well, that I need to do some serious amendments to the soil this coming spring. I used to be such a committed composter, but life got too busy to keep up with it. Maybe I will be able to do more of that next year when I supposedly "retire". Yeah, right. Well, I can try. :)

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"Thanks for the tip about the calcium nitrate - sounds like something I should invest in. "

Another thing you should invest in is a small bottle of Boric Acid powder the next time you think of it, and are in a drug store. Zinnias usually become deficient in Boron in containers (and pots) and they can get insufficient Boron in some outdoors in-ground environments. But for the time being, we are just concerned with container/pot conditions.

The objective of the small bottle of Boric Acid powder is that we will want to have 0.25 ppm of elemental Boron in the nutrients that you water your zinnias with and, if you are just watering without soluble nutrients, it is still a good idea that the "plain" water also have 0.25 ppm of Boron. After you get the Boric Acid powder, I will go into the details of making a stock solution of Boric Acid and how much of that stock solution to add to each gallon of water that you provide to your zinnias. It is important not to get too much Boron in the plant water -- 2.5 ppm of Boron will cause definite toxicity symptoms.

In the past I have made serious nutritional mistakes by basing the composition of my nutrients on target tissue sample analysis data for zinnias. Bad mistake. A couple of years ago I killed some outdoor breeder zinnias with an overdose of Manganese Chelate based on tissue sample data for zinnias, and I think that was a "teachable moment" for me. The tissue sample data can tell you about possible deficiencies, but it does not relate to good nutrient solution compositions. In retrospect, I should have known that.

However, the 0.25 ppm for Boron is a good nutritional value. In the absence of a laboratory balance, I will convert from gravimetric to volumetric data, so that we can deal with teaspoons, cups, and gallons.

Gardening can involve a good deal of chemistry. This is an online publication that you might find interesting. More later.

ZM

Later - Alex

Hi Alex,

The Bonide Blossom End Rot Stop is most likely Calcium chloride. Which is the same stuff in 50 lb bags used to melt ice in the Winter. Chlorine is actually a necessary trace element for plants, but they need it in such small quantities that there is always enough of it available as an environmental contaminate.

Different plants have different tolerances for salt (sodium chloride) before it becomes phytotoxic. And I think that is also true of Calcium chloride. Hydroponics growers would never use Calcium chloride because of its phytotoxicity. I use Calcium nitrate for that reason. Incidentally, some people avoid using Calcium chloride as an ice melter for the same reason -- that it can be phytotoxic to plants.

The Boric Acid in the ant killer has been treated to make it stick to the bodies of ants that walk through it. It isn't the same product as the pharmaceutical grade sold in drug stores. However, if you can get it to go into solution in water, it should work. I think you will find that the ant killer boric acid tends to float around on the top of the water. You might do a little experiment to see if that is the case.

Even the pharmaceutical grade Boric Acid is very slow to dissolve in cold water. To speed that up, I put a coffee cup with tap water in it in the microwave for one minute to heat it up, and pour that hot water in an empty drinking water bottle and add a quarter teaspoon of boric acid powder to that, screw the lid on and shake it up to get the boric acid to go into solution.

Incidentally, I use a marker to label that bottle as boric acid as a precaution against someone using the bottle to hold drinking water again. If you can get your ant killer to go into solution, then it should work fine as a trace source of nutrient Boron for plants.

There will be a little issue with whether a quarter teaspoon of the ant killer contains the same amount of Boron as a quarter teaspoon of drug store boric acid powder, but that equivalency should be, as they say, "close enough for government work." More later.

ZM

Hi Alex,

"So, how much water are you dissolving the 1/4 tsp boric acid in?"

I am dissolving the 1/4 tsp of boric acid in about a cup of hot water, just to get it into solution. The exact amount of water in the initial dilution doesn't matter.

But that amount of water, whatever it is, is added to a one gallon container and filled with water to produce one gallon of water containing 1/4 teaspoon of Boric Acid. That is the stock solution. It should be labeled as such, and put out of the reach of children.

Tomorrow we will calculate how much of the stock solution gets added to a gallon of plant water in order to get the target strength of 0.25 ppm of elemental Boron in the plant water. That may get a bit "technical". More later.

ZM

Hi Alex,

Pancakes are yummy. But rather than try to calculate how yummy they are, I will return to the Boron and zinnias thing. First, I will try to provide some solid justification for the 0.25 ppm elemental Boron figure. That figure appears several places on the Web, but I think the basis for it is this study by Redington and Peterson. All we can see on that page is the Abstract, but that is sufficient, as it provides this statement.

"Boron was investigated as the possible cause of bud blasting and non-development in Zinnia elegans. Blasting is characterized by a blackening of the developed bud as a result of necrosis of the scales, unopened calyx and enclosed tissue. Plants were subjected to boron levels of 0, 0.0025, 0.025, 0.25 and 2.5 ppm. Plants grown without added boron and at the lowest level supplied showed extreme new leaf chlorosis, thickening and distortion of older leaves, stunted growth and abnormal flower development including blasting. Plants grown at 0.025 ppm level showed moderate chlorosis and, to a slight extent, the other deficiency symptoms. Plants were healthiest when grown at the 0.25 level of boron. Boron at 2.5 ppm produced plants with marginal leaf necrosis, reduced height and root weight, and slower flowering when compared to the 0.25 treatment level. Analysis of boron in plant tissue confirmed that decreased levels of boron in the medium resulted in decreased levels of boron in various plant tissues." The bold emphasis was provided by me, because that is the justification for the 0.25 ppm Boron target.

I provide elemental Boron via boric acid, and that is the main ingredient of the insecticide you have on hand. The chemical formula for boric acid is H₃BO₃. Wikipedia provides this information about boric acid.

From which we glean that its molecular weight is 61.83302 and the fraction of elemental B to boric acid is 10.811 / 61.83302 = 0.1748 rounded to four figures.

There are 4.92892 milliliters in a teaspoon, so our 1/4 teaspoon of boric acid in the gallon of stock solution is 1.23223 ml.

Next comes a tricky part, converting that volume of boric acid into a weight of Boron. Wikipedia gave the density of pure Boric acid as 1.435 grams per cc, which is considerably more dense than water. But that figure is for the solid material and we have a powder, which includes quite a bit of entrained air. If you drop a quarter teaspoon of boric acid into water, you will notice that the "glob" floats. I eliminated the surface tension of water as the explanation by replacing the water with some water to which a small amount of Dawn dishwashing liquid was added. Same result. The glob of boric acid powder continued to float, admittedly quite low in the water.

If I had a laboratory balance, the simple solution would be to drop 1/4 teaspoon of boric acid powder onto the scale and see how much it weighed. That would give us a good figure for the density of the powder as well as the weight of boric acid powder and, by multiplying by the 0.1748 factor, the mass of elemental Boron in the gallon of stock solution.

I will probably purchase an inexpensive laboratory scale in the future (I am curious what some of my zinnia seeds weigh, and I have several trace element chelate powders that I need to weigh). But for the time being, I will make an estimate for the density of my boric acid powder. The glob floated rather low in the water, so, for the time being, I will use an estimate (guess) of 0.9 for the specific gravity of my boric acid powder. So, with that estimate, we can calculate:

1/4 teaspoon = 1.23223 ml x 0.9 g/ml = 1.109007 grams of Boric acid in the gallon of stock solution. And multiplying that by the weight ratio (0.1748) of elemental Boron to Boric acid, gives us an estimate of 0.1939 grams of elemental Boron in the one gallon of stock solution.

We note that accepting that 1 ml of water weighs 1 gram and assuming that our stock solution density does not vary significantly from that, we can say:

1 US gallon = 3.7854 liters = 3785.4 ml = 3785.4 grams. Therefore we can say that our stock solution contains
0.1939 grams elemental Boron per 3785.4 grams of solution, which amounts to 5.1223 x 10^-5 grams B per gallon.

We want the concentration of Boron in the plant water to be the target value of 0.25 grams Boron per 1,000,000 grams of plant water. Let's do a little algebra, and let y represent the grams of elemental B in a gallon of plant water. So lets equate that concentration to the target concentration.

y / 3785.4 = 0.25 / 1000000

Solving that equation for y:

y = 0.25 x 3785.4 / 1000000 = .00094635 grams of Boron in a gallon of plant water.

Now lets solve algebraically for the amount of stock solution, S, needed to supply that much elemental Boron.

.000051223 grams B per gram of stock x S = .00094635 grams B

S = .00094635 / .000051223 = 18.475 grams of stock solution per gallon of plant water

Assuming that the density of stock solution doesn't vary much from the density of pure water, lets convert 18.475 grams of stock solution to a more useful form.

18.475 grams x ( 1 gallon / 3785.4 grams ) x (16 cups / gallon) = .07809 cups

Its not practical to use that small a fraction of cups, so let's convert that to tablespoons.

.07809 cups x (16 tablespoons / cup ) = 1.249 tablespoons

So, if I haven't made some kind of stupid mistake, the target Boron level in the plant water is achieved by including only about 1.25 tablespoons or 3.75 teaspoons of stock solution in a gallon of plant water. And that is subject to how well my estimate of 0.9 specific gravity for the Boron powder fits reality. If these results are reasonably correct, I have been overdosing my zinnias by a factor of 2 or 3 on Boron. Fortunately, I would have to overdose them by a factor of 10 to see the phytotoxicity reported in the Redington and Peterson reference.

I have convinced myself that I need some sort of little weighing device. I'm sure glad this message didn't get "technical". Now I have a craving for pancakes.

ZM

ZM - Believe it or not, there have been times when I can really enjoy doing those sorts of calculations. However, I didn't try to do the math this time to check you; I'll take you at your word that you've worked this out properly. If my plants die, of course, you're toast. :) Anyway, to cut to the chase - you're making a stock boric acid solution in a gallon of water, and then cutting it again by adding 3.75 tsp of that solution to make up another gallon of watering stock - do I have that right? To which I might add whatever other fertilizer or supplements (Miracle Gro, etc.) - or is there some hazard mixing other things with the boric acid solution - things binding that shouldn't, don'cha know?
I'm with you about getting a decent scale - can't count the number of times I've wanted one for various projects. BTW, once upon a distant time, I worked as a lowly medical tech. Never got to use the electron microscope, but I did get to work in a clean room. Which is more than I can say now. Heh heh...

- Alex

Hi Alex,

"Anyway, to cut to the chase - you're making a stock boric acid solution in a gallon of water, and then cutting it again by adding 3.75 tsp of that solution to make up another gallon of watering stock - do I have that right?"

Yes. And as I improve my figure for the density of my Boric Acid powder, I will leave the stock solution at 1/4 teaspoon per gallon, at least for the time being, and simply "tweak" the 3.75 tsp per the improved density figure.

"To which I might add whatever other fertilizer or supplements (Miracle Gro, etc.) - or is there some hazard mixing other things with the boric acid solution - things binding that shouldn't, don'cha know?"

Yes, you can add Miracle-Gro or whatever. However, Miracle-Gro contains some Boron, so I should calculate how much that is and revise the 3.75 tsp figure for the Boron stock solution. It will be interesting if the Miracle-Gro is already providing enough Boron, although I suspect it isn't enough for zinnias, because I have seen Boron deficiency symptoms when using Better-Gro, which also has some Boron. (I don't use Miracle-Gro indoors because of its urea content.) The thing is, zinnias need more Boron than typical plants, and zinnia Boron deficiencies are common in nutrient programs that would be fine for most plants. The Boron plant water is so dilute that precipitation problems aren't a problem when mixing with other things.

The same dilute mixing principle applies for Calcium nitrate (or Calcium chloride). Given that all plants need quite a lot of Calcium, you may wonder why there is no Calcium in Miracle-Gro or Better-Gro. It's a precipitation problem. If they added Calcium nitrate to Miracle-Gro, it would precipitate insoluble Calcium phosphate as soon as you added water, killing the Phosphorus nutrition of the product.

However, if you dilute the Miracle-Gro to twice the normal strength, and also dilute the Calcium nitrate to twice its needed strength, and then combine the two solutions, no Calcium precipitates out and each of the double strength solutions acts to complete the dilution of the other to the needed single strength.

That same dilution principle applies to any situation when you are combining two or more stock solutions. Each stock solution added to the mix dilutes the other stock solution(s) in the mix, because they all have different active ingredients.

"...but I did get to work in a clean room. Which is more than I can say now. Heh heh... "

I'm pretty sure your room would qualify as a clean room when compared to my room. Maybe next Spring I will actually do some Spring cleaning. More later.

ZM

Hi everyone,

Since this message thread has become so long, we are continuing this over in It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 28 for a fresh start.

Hope to see you all over there.

ZM