Greetings all,

Welcome to this ongoing message thread. Once again, the previous part of this ongoing series, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 16, is becoming rather long and slow to load, so we are continuing the series here for yet another fresh start.

The same guidelines apply here. Anything remotely related to zinnias is fine. As always, you are invited to post your pictures, but as a courtesy to readers with smaller monitors, try to keep the pictures posted no wider than 986 pixels.

This picture is 986 pixels wide, and it shows a fairly recent snapshot in my zinnia patch of a grouping of my home-bred hybrids.

Those zinnias were a result of crossing selected Burpeeana Giants with selected Burpee Hybrid zinnias, with the goal of developing an improved Burpeeana style plant. The pink zinnia in the left foreground was used as a "breeder" and I collected some cross-pollinated green seeds from it this evening.

As always, I look forward to your participation in this message thread, to ask questions, answer questions, post pictures, or just make any kind of comment. In this off-season time we can discuss our past experiences with zinnias, any lessons learned, any unsolved problems, our plans for next year's zinnia gardening, or any thing that might be on your mind about zinnias.

ZM

I just spent forever typing a long message, and something went weird and it is gone.......

The basic gist of it was that I think its a great idea to use some of your "micro seeds" as experimental material. I thinkn you also need to use some seeds you know will be good as positive controls, otherwise you wont know if the seeds are no good, or if the tc method isnt working.

I am going to try to use some of my "kid free time" this winter to work on this too.

Ryan

I know how maddening it can be to get a lot of time invested in composing a message and then to lose it in the computer bit bucket. Over the years, that has happened to me a number of times. And you usually know that any attempt to remember and reconstruct the message won't achieve the fine effect of the lost original. That's depressing.

I am on a Windows XP system, and I have taken to doing a Ctrl-a to select all of my text and a Ctrl-c to copy it onto the Clipboard. That way, if I need to recover the text, I can just do a Ctrl-v to paste the text from the Clipboard to the Message entry field.

Occasionally I will decide not to include a section of a message, but I want to keep it in reserve to use at some later time. To do that, I will Copy that section to the Clipboard, open WordPad, paste that section into a new document, and Save As to assign a name to the fragment that I am saving for later use.

Returning to the subject of using Tissue Culture as a tool in the zinnia hobby. There could be a problem that arises when you germinate a seed in a gel medium if the roots become embedded in the gel. When you wish to move the seedling from the gel to a "normal" growing medium (I use Premier ProMix BX with extra added Perlite), the gel is definitely in the way. You could liquify the gel by heating it, but that could possibly kill the roots. I guess that would be an interesting experiment -- slowly warm the gel to liquify it without killing or damaging the root system.

Or maybe just treat the gel mass as a root ball and transplant the plant, gel mass and all, into a growing medium and just let Nature take its course with respect to gel breakdown or the roots growing out of the gel into the growing medium.

Well, there are a lot of things to be done. First, I guess I need to wash up a fresh batch of babyfood jars. More later. I really feel your pain about that lost message text.

ZM

First, Joe, with respect to zinnia expertise including methods of crossing plants, propagating plants from cuttings and immature seeds, and creating healthy indoor and outdoor growing conditions, ZM is your obvious choice from the ongoing thread "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias." He has a tremendous amount of experience and success in these areas! Not only that, but he has developed some very nice lines of zinnias through his work.

I would be happy to participate in any genetic studies observing results coming from specific crosses of zinnias if you ever want to do that. Mostly I have been generating a huge and varied pool of zinnias here in order to see what sorts of variation and combinations of traits may occur in the offspring. Occasionally I'll select a new phenotype and see if a specific trait is inherited. The inheritance patterns have scarcely been determined yet at my place! I'll e-mail you the same message..

ZM and Ryan...just curious, with your tissue culture, will you be trying to generate embryogenic calli from immature seeds, then regenerating plants from those? Or using media as a solid substrate to generate plants directly from immature seeds? Or using bud material to generate plants?
I am interested to follow your work! I have always enjoyed all the potential that tissue culture offers, but as a home hobby, I'm not sure that I would be good at maintaining the persistance it all requires...sure would like to see how both of you do!

Everything at my place is rapidly coming to a halt! The zinnias are staying up until frost for the hummingbirds, bees, finches, and butterflies, but now they are a sorry lot. The four inches of rain we have received in the past week is several times the amount of rain we received in June, July, and August combined...but sadly the garden is not going to be revived at this point! I can only start cleaning up parts of it, collect some seeds, and plant some perennials..

JG

If you leave it on, it can become a food source for mold or bacteria that wouldnt bother a "normal" plant, but with a plant fresh out of the jar it can be a different story.

I have found it easiest to simply take the plants out, wash them under running tap water to remove all of the gel, and then plant in clean soil. Then slowly let them get used to the air.

But enough of that, we need plants in jars first! :)

JG - Embryogenic calli can be tricky in my experience (I guess it depends on the plant)

generating plants from seeds can be an easy way to get clean starting material for experimentation. going from bud material is a good way to stay true-to-type to your parent plant, but if the plant is sensitive, cleaning it up can be tricky. some things dont like to be soaked in bleach. go figure...

JG,

"...just curious, with your tissue culture, will you be trying to generate embryogenic calli from immature seeds, then regenerating plants from those? Or using media as a solid substrate to generate plants directly from immature seeds? Or using bud material to generate plants? "

I hope to use Tissue Culture to "rescue" small "micro" seeds that aren't well developed enough to germinate under normal conditions. But my primary objective is to create shoots from callus tissue to accomplish the micropropagation of choice specimens. I also plan to experiment with some other branches of TC to further my zinnia hobby. But I will go into more details of that later. This picture compares some "micro" zinnia seeds with commercial zinnia seeds and home-bred zinnia seeds. The supporting graph paper is divided into inches and tenths of inches, to give you a semi-quantitative idea of the seed sizes.

It is curious that many of my home bred seeds are either larger or much longer than the commercial seeds. I think this may be due in part to the limitations imposed by the seed processing machinery that commercial seedsmen use. I think that some of my oversized and over-long zinnia seeds would not survive conventional mechanical zinnia seed processing. It may be that mechanical processing is imposing an artificial limit on how large commercial zinnias can become. The home zinnia grower has the advantage of being able to hand process the zinnia seeds, without imposing any arbitrary limits on the shape or size of the seeds.

I have placed a few micro zinnia seeds on tissue culture medium in babyfood jars, but so far there has been no sign of germination.

I placed them on the window sill only to take their picture. Until they germinate I plan to keep them in a low-light or no-light situation. This is still a very preliminary experiment. I plan to expand it considerably, and to include as "controls" some conventional zinnia seeds.

Incidentally, that group of micro seeds pictured is fairly large as micro seeds go. Some micro seeds are about half that size. Most micro seeds are floret seeds. More later. I am still busy with "end game" outdoor zinnia garden activities. A killing frost may be only a couple of weeks away here.

ZM

"I have found it easiest to simply take the plants out, wash them under running tap water to remove all of the gel, and then plant in clean soil. Then slowly let them get used to the air. "

Thanks for that tip. Carol Stiff's Kitchen Culture Kit manual agrees with you and says to "Rinse off all of the medium that is sticking to the stem and roots under lukewarm running water. Bacteria and fungus will grow on the medium and destroy the plant, so be sure to get all of it off."

I will definitely not just plant the rootball of gel medium based on what you and the manual said.

ZM

Keep us updated!

Progress report:

This is a picture I took a few minutes ago of one of my seedlings in the gel.

It may be too early to tell, but I am concerned that it can lift its cotyledons out of the gel. The next seeds will be just dropped on top of the gel, with no intended submersion at all.

Two of my first four TC seeds just turned into mold colonies. I doubt that a seedling will arise from all of that mold, but I will keep an eye on them anyway. Actually, this was very information-bearing for me. The seeds that I plant indoors almost certainly have mold on them too, as well as other organisms. I "disinfected" all of my initial TC seeds by agitating them in a bath of 10% Clorox for five minutes. Obviously that wasn't good enough. I will be trying an alcohol pre-rinse and full strength Clorox on my next batch. This may also have bearing on my indoor plantings. I am seriously considering disinfecting all of the seeds that I plant indoors, just before I plant them. I will do some experimentation on the best way to disinfect my seeds before planting them. That should eliminate most, if not all, seed-borne problems, and might even increase my indoor germination rates. If molds killed the TC seeds, molds or other organisms may also be killing some of my indoor seeds. The outdoor inground plantings are still an open issue for me. More later. I need to experiment with better methods of disinfecting my Tissue Culture explants.

ZM

The fuzzy seeds, you are right, are probably toast. But no need to get rid of them right away. Just keep them away from your other cultures, and dont open them up around anything clean.

As for your clorox treatment, 10% is usually good for plant material, because higher will usually burn the plant, but with seeds you can go higher (maybe even full strength). At least 20% and more time (20 to 30 mins or so) it depends on the seed coat thickness. With every plant and plant part the time to clean it up and the strength of the clorox will vary.

adding alcohol can also help, and it is a good idea to follow up with 3 rinses in sterile water (just throw some water in a jar in your pressure cooker for 20 mins or so at 15 psi).

Your sprouting seed will probably eventually pop out of the gel, but you are right, in the future you dont need to bury it. You can press it down a little or just place on top. in the jar is pretty much 100% humidity, so you dont need to worry about it drying out or anything like planting in soil.

great job.

I'm enjoying seeing all of ZM's tissue cultures as they come along..thanks, ZM. It's interesting to compare notes in sterilization of seeds and/or other plant material for tissue culture.

At one time, I did lot of tissue culture with rice, and sterilized seeds from with which we would get tissue to work with. We very seldom got contamination. I think potential sources of contamination are the little places in the seed coat where spores and other types of microbes can hide.

We made the seeds very smooth on the surface by lightly sanding with a very fine sandpaper (with zinnia seeds this would have to be extremely gentle if at all!). The surfaces were sterilized by placing in 70% ethanol for one minute, then in 30% chlorine bleach (~ 1.8% sodium hypochlorite) for 30 minutes, followed by 5 one minute rinses in sterile water.

To insure that no air bubbles were trapped on the seed surfaces (along with microbes), we did all the rinses in bleach, ethanol, and water in the presence of a vacuum and gentle stirring.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention how things worked pretty well for us when working with rice seeds.

Looking forward to future posts...

JG

Hi all,

Well, Ryan, the old saying "live and learn" certainly applies here. I tried what I thought was a sure fire sterilization of four test seeds. Incidentally, this time, these were regular sized "control" test seeds. I gave them a one minute agitation in 70% ethanol followed by a brief rinse in sterile water, followed by 5 minutes of agitation in 100% Clorox (right out of the bottle). Then another rinse in sterile water and finally, using tweezers that had been sterilized in 100 percent Clorox and briefly dipped in sterile water, I transferred the seeds from the tea infuser and dropped them, one at a time, onto the surface of TC medium in babyfood jars. The results, as of three days ago (my HughsNet Internet connection has been down for three days), are pictured here.

I was amazed to see mold colonies start within a couple of days on two of the seeds and a third seed has the beginnings of mold growth. Only one out of the four appears to have avoided mold. That was the same as my previous 10% Clorox with no alcohol treatment. So just switching to 100% Clorox didn't work. You suggested a considerably longer treatment time, and I am going try that next time. Since the one mold-free seed was not killed by the 100% Clorox, I may use the 100% Clorox again.

Incidentally, Ryan, you were right about that previous seedling being able to force its way up out of the gel medium. This picture was also taken three days ago. Today it is noticeably larger, although not growing like a "normal" seedling on the TC medium. I am beginning to think that using TC medium that also contains sugar is not the best thing to use for seed germination. But I am going to continue using the MS with added sugar for these germination experiments simply because it is a good test for sterilization of mold organisms. I hope to find a good way to sterilize zinnia seeds from this particular group of TC experiments.

JG, I think you are right that zinnia seeds have seed surfaces that are irregular enough to provide little places where tiny mold particles or other harmful organisms can "hide". It's not practical for me to "polish" my zinnia seeds as you did with the rice seeds. The vacuum technique sounds promising, but at this time I don't know how to implement it in a home situation. I am thinking of getting one of those little ultrasonic baths that they clean jewelry with as a means of super agitation of the seeds in a disinfecting liquid. Ultrasound might be a way to get the disinfecting solution down into the tiny crevices of the zinnia seed coats.

My little office isn't exactly a clean room, so I plan to make one of those little clean area enclosures made from a plastic storage box. That will have to substitute for a laminar flow hood for the near term. I might try to build a laminar flow hood at some future time. More later. I need to "cook up" some more babyfood jars with gel medium. I also plan to test some disinfectants other than Clorox, such as hydrogen peroxide, for example.

ZM

You might also try adding a drop or 2 of dish soap as a wetting agent or surfactant. It helps to get the bleach all over the seeds.

In the lab I used tween 20, which is a common lab detergent, but dish soap would be fine.

I am pretty excited about your one green seedling. Depending on how things go with that, you may have plenty of material for testing different multiplication or rooting protocols.

I probably wouldnt open that jar with the green guy in it until you have a glove box or something put together to keep it sterile. it would be pretty easy to contaminate it.

Keep up the experimentation.

Good job, and dont let a little mold get you down. If you get really good at growing mold, you may want to try mushroom cultivation. its another fascinating hobby....

Ryan

"But even with your moldy seeds you gain experience and learn what doesn't work."

Yes, this is a learning experience for me, and I am not discouraged at all. I should eventually be able to dependably drop a zinnia seed onto TC medium without creating a mold colony, and I obviously have a lot to learn before I can do that. Once I learn to do that, I will know a lot more about treating my zinnia seeds for conventional indoor culture.

This control seed did not develop a mold colony, but it is obviously "not at home" in a TC babyfood jar. I think that is its root that is sticking up.

My TC experiments are on hold for a few days because a killing frost is imminent and tomorrow is probably the end of the season for my outdoor zinnias. I have been saving some last minute greenseeds and taking a few cuttings of specimens that I want to try to grow indoors.

Some of my mold colonies are scary big now. I will definitely be autoclaving them for 30 minutes at 15 pounds in my pressure cooker before opening those lids to clean out the babyfood jars.

"Good job, and don't let a little mold get you down. If you get really good at growing mold, you may want to try mushroom cultivation. Its another fascinating hobby...."

I'm not sure that what I am doing now would carry over into mushroom or edible fungus culture. But I can see how that could be an interesting (and tasty) hobby. However, I think I'll stick with zinnias and Tissue Culture for the time being. I obviously have a lot to learn in that area.

ZM

Hi all,

Well, time flies when you are having fun. I had no Internet for several days due to our HughsNet satellite connection being "on the fritz" and I called in for a service call, but then we had a little earthquake last night (epicenter down in Oklahoma, but felt as far north as Wisconsin) and maybe that jiggled our antenna dish just right, because we seem to have Internet via HughesNet again. Our system is still a bit "flakey". I am sure we can't depend on earthquakes to align our dish antenna, so we probably still need the service call.

I have been shucking zinnia seeds lately, and I continue to notice little details. Some zinnia seedheads have rather short skinny core stems that come to a sharp point, while others, like the ones in this picture have longer thicker cores that seem to grow longer without tapering.

I like the idea of sturdy cores in my zinnias, and I consider that to be a desirable trait. I also like big strong zinnia seeds. I can actually select for those at seed shucking time.

That seedling that I showed in the previous message with its root growing up into the air has continued to develop in a bad way. The root is now a non-functional thick brown stem, still in the air, and the plant is developing into a very confused mess that looks like it might eventually become a callus. At least no fungus or mold has showed up yet. I think it is fairly evident now that agar gel is not a good growing medium for zinnia seedlings. Zinnia roots need to be exposed to both a liquid phase for nutrient uptake and a gaseous phase (air) for dark time oxygen exchange. Root hairs can't survive without the gas phase.

Seedlings also need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, so a sealed system is not good for that, either. I do think that I will be using tissue culture for micropropagation and, hopefully, for haploid culture. I am thinking that I will be practicing what they call photoautotrophic micropropagation. That means no sugar in the media, and a supply of light and carbon dioxide to support photosynthesis. They used to have babyfood jar caps (B-caps or PhytoCaps) available with filter vents, but apparently those products are no longer available. So I purchased a 1/2-inch arch punch and some 1-inch circular adhesive bandages to make some vents in some of the unvented caps that I have on hand. More later. I still have a lot of seed sterilization experiments to do. I think I will try 3% hydrogen peroxide.

ZM

Some background... Last spring I had some unclassified zinnia seed saved from the previous year that I didn't care to spend a lot of effort on. My germination of seed was not going well this year. I dumped about a 100 in a small plastic tray and hoped for the best. I didn't get a single plant.

A couple of weeks ago I found the tray with potting soil completely dry when I needed to sow some leftover poppy seeds. I wet the medium then put it in the microwave for a few shots until I saw some light steam coming off the mix. I cooled the mix and sowed the poppies on the surface.

Not one poppy came up but four of the old zinnia seeds sprouted; all from around the edge of the tray where surely the microwave had been the hottest.

First of all, welcome back. I am not certain what happened in your germination situation, but I can make some guesses.

"Not one poppy came up but four of the old zinnia seeds sprouted; all from around the edge of the tray where surely the microwave had been the hottest."

Actually, the edge of the tray would have been the coolest. Microwaves heat by absorbing energy in water, so that the water becomes, in effect, the heating element. Your completely dry tray, before you re-wet it, probably contained a large fraction of germinateable zinnia seeds, and the microwave killed all of those in the middle, leaving those at the very edge still alive and ready to benefit from the water that you added to the medium.

Do you cover your germinating trays with a humidity dome or some other cover to hold the moisture in until the seeds have time to germinate? The air indoors usually has a very low relative humidity, which tends to dry out a germinating medium very quickly.

I don't know anything about germinating poppies, but I suspect that poppy seeds need a cold treatment to break their dormancy. They get that in nature. Zinnias usually germinate in 2 to 4 days. Occasionally one day.

ZM

I don't recall the exact mix for the medium, but it was a high peat mix with some vermiculite. The medium was damp at the time of sowing. The zinnias were distributed on the surface and covered with a film of milled peat moss. I often don't cover the tray if I will have time to check the moisture 3 times daily. The surface was not allowed to dry for a period of 10 days. After I got not a single sprout I assumed either the seed was not viable or some pathogen was present.

I was also having trouble germinating zinnias from saved seed placed in paper towels inside plastic bags; only about 20% ever sprouted.

I now believe that much of the seed was viable but had some element of dormancy preventing germination. What I would like to know is what broke that dormancy so they are now sprouting. Was it the warm dry heat of the last few months? Something to do with the microwave process. Some other cause for which I am unaware?

Could it be that I may have gathered the seed in the fall and they needed a period of high heat to ripen the seed?

"I was also having trouble germinating zinnias from saved seed placed in paper towels inside plastic bags; only about 20% ever sprouted."

That is way better than zero percent. I don't know of any dormancy period for zinnia seed. During rainy weather, I have seen them germinate in the brown seedheads, which of course kills them. Sometimes, when I am shucking a brown seedhead, I will find seeds with little dried roots sticking out of the sharp end, and I know that those seeds are now dead. Avoiding losses to rain damage is one of the reasons for saving green seeds. JG and I both do that. Another advantage of saving zinnia seeds while they are still green is that it lets you get the seeds before the birds do.

Commercial seedhouses usually shoot for an 80% germination rate, and they have adjustable cleaning and winnowing type equipment for removing questionable seeds. And they test germination rates for each seed batch. They can blend high germinating batches with low germinating batches to increase their salable yields and profits, while meeting an 80% germination rate.

For my high value zinnia specimens, I sometimes save some questionable seeds, but doing that lowers my germination rate to about 50%. By being a little more picky about which seeds I keep, I can get germination rates in the 65% to 75% range. Rarely do I get the commercial figure of 80%, although occasionally a batch will germinate nearly 100%.

"Could it be that I may have gathered the seed in the fall and they needed a period of high heat to ripen the seed?"

No, I don't think they needed microwave heat to ripen the seed or break a dormancy. Since you didn't allow that tray to have a dry surface for 10 days, I am thinking that the medium wasn't warm enough. Cooler temperatures can cause zinnias to germinate much slower. Thompson & Morgan list a zinnia germination time of 10 to 24 days. A room temperature of 72 degrees could give you a zinnia germination time in excess of 10 days. I germinate with bottom heat via a heating mat with thermostatic control, and I usually set my heat mat thermostat at 80 to 85 degrees. That is about 10 degrees warmer than room temperature.

I have on several occasions gotten very low germination from a seedhead, and I suspect that could be caused by some seed-borne organism, viral or bacterial. I am currently experimenting to find a good way to disinfect my choice seeds before planting them, to eliminate any seed-borne issues. I will report on the results of that later, after I convince myself of their validity.

Incidentally, you mentioned using "a high peat mix with some vermiculite". Peat is very water retentive, and so is vermiculite. I use Perlite to improve the aeration of my planting/growing mixes. I use Premier ProMix BX, which has a trace of vermiculite and a visible amount of Perlite, and I usually add some extra Perlite to it to increase the "openness" and "drainability" of the mix, and to avoid the possibility of it becoming water-logged. Zinnia seeds and seedlings can drown in the absence of oxygen for their roots.

ZM

It is hard to tell exactly how that zinnia in the jar is doing from the picture, but a few things I have experienced:

Plants in jars dont need roots, necessarily. They also dont need CO2, to varying degrees and depending on the plant. They get their sugar from the medium they are growing in.

I am not saying that plants in jars dont photosynthesize, but they dont need to do it at anywhere near the level of those not sitting in a sugary gel.

In my experience, some plants will grow fine (although not as fast or as big) with their vessel sealed. When I have used vented lids, I get bigger leaves and faster growth.

If you want to supply co2 to your plants, it will need to be filtered.

from the looks of your plant in the jar, I am thinking the hormone balance is pushing growth in a weird direction.

I havent had a chance to try my hand with zinnias in jars yet, but I hope to soon, and I may have some more insight.

Keep up the good work.

Have you planted any seeds for indoor crosses this winter?

Ryan

"In my experience, some plants will grow fine (although not as fast or as big) with their vessel sealed."

I think we have different definitions of "plants will grow fine". A plant without roots or a need for CO2 is not "growing fine" by my definition. My primary objective is to use Tissue Culture for the micropropagation of zinnias, and I would like to develop a photoautotrophic technique for doing that.

A secondary goal is to use TC to produce haploid zinnias, to enable the production of true-breeding dihaploid homozygous zinnia strains. Another secondary goal may eventually be to perform somatic hybridization of zinnias and other plants using protoplast technology. But that is years away for me. Some seed company may do that before I do.

Zinnias may eventually benefit from genetic engineering, but that will probably be accomplished in some other country, because of the popular distrust of genetically modified plants by gardeners in this country. If I had a blue zinnia, I would cross it with everything in my zinnia patch.

I don't see a practical advantage to growing zinnia seeds in TC, although there are published papers on the subject, such as In vitro Germination and Early Seedling Growth of Zinnia elegans. Their TC zinnia looks kind of "wonky", too.

"Have you planted any seeds for indoor crosses this winter?"

Not yet, but soon. I do plan to disinfect the seeds just before I plant them, hopefully to prevent any seed-borne problems, using one technique or another.

ZM

Well,Keep experimenting and adding to the field of knowledge for this beautiful flower.

Are zinnias self-fertile? and if so, do they show inbreeding depression?

Thanks for what you are doing.

Ryan

"Are zinnias self-fertile?"

I think you would have to say that zinnias are self-fertile, because their petal stigmas can accept pollen from the same flower. That pollen transfer is primarily by gravity, with disturbance by bees helping to dislodge the pollen as it spills out of the floret. Zinnia pollen is too heavy to be considered as wind-borne, but in the absence of bees and other insect pollinators, wind currents within the flower may give gravity an assist in getting the pollen down from the florets to the petal stigmas below. Of course, bees carrying pollen frequently drop some and cause cross pollination of the petal seeds.

Zinnia self fertility is also assisted by the florets themselves. They normally push their pollen out of the enclosed anther bundle with a modified stigma, which is frequently receptive to its own pollen, and that fertilization results in a floret seed forming at the base of the floret. Floret seeds are almost always selfed, while petal seeds are frequently cross pollinated, either by bees or by a person.

It is easy to forget that zinnia blooms are composites, and that the "flowers" are the individual florets and petals. And although the florets and petals are on the same plant and even in the same bloom, they are not genetically identical. They are siblings. That helps to explain some of the differences that you will see between zinnia petals and florets and seeds on the same plant. Botanists like to call the bloom of a composite, like a zinnia, a "capitula".

"...and if so, do they show inbreeding depression?"

I think that the inbred strains that are produced to act as pollen donors for commercial F1 zinnias do show some inbreeding depression. But in normal zinnia growing, inbreeding depression is not a problem, or even relevant. Selfing hybrids, or crossing one hybrid with another, are good ways to get novel new recombinations of genes, and hence new forms of zinnias. Zinnias are a bit like the genetic "fruit flies" of the floral kingdom, because they are so easy to cross pollinate and they grow so rapidly that you can quickly (relatively) see the results of your crosses. By starting zinnias early, you can make your crosses, save and plant green seeds, and see the results of your crosses that same year, all in your outdoor zinnia garden. By adding indoor growing to your game, you can double that to four generations of zinnias a year.

I am a rather impatient person, so that is why I breed zinnias as a hobby rather than roses, iris, daylilies, or all those other things that make you wait years rather than months to see the results of your crosses. And it is an added bonus that zinnias have such amazing diversity in color and form.

ZM

Thanks! That is a lot of great info. When I used to work breeding poinsettias (and other Euphorbia species) we would sometimes self plants, and they would usually make some seeds, but not as many as with crosses between plants.

The plants that grew from those self pollinations were usually pretty ragged.

Its good to know about zinnias. so you can fix selected traits fairly quickly? by selfing plants with interesting traits?

"so you can fix selected traits fairly quickly? by selfing plants with interesting traits? "

Yes, by selfing them and/or by crossing them with other specimens that have the selected trait. Many zinnia traits are controlled by more than one gene, so a trait can appear in various degrees.

ZM

What pains me is that when I went to germinate the seeds I ended up having a couple extra that I'm not willing to take care of. I threw them in the pots with the others to see which would grow stronger or faster, and ended up having a pot with two seedlings that I really adored. I had to pick the (only marginally) weaker one out of the dirt and it still upsets me that it might have turned into a beautiful flower. I guess that's pretty crazy since I have an overwhelming mass of seeds collected from last year's summer zinnia patch. Oh well...

I'm kind of going about my zinnia's genetics willy-nilly and seeing where it takes me. Rather than breeding for appearance, I'm trying to think of ways to breed for other traits. If I could somehow keep seedlings alive to two pairs of leaves then cut off their water supply and see which one goes the longest without wilting to death (and nurse it back to health at the last minute), I think I could weed out the heavy drinkers by averaging it after a few times and going from there. All other factors being equal it might work out as planned... right? I don't have the environment to actually run those odds so it's just a thought for now. Another thought would be edible zinnias targeting either the stem or the seeds themselves for flavor. That'd be funny.

By the way, really glad to see that you've kept these threads going over the years. I've been following silently for quite some time. Jealous of some of the plants you guys have worked so diligently for, of course. Oddly enough, just as you mentioned pseudo tricot seedlings I had one growing. And the same happened for the three-leaf stems - had the same thing happen and was pretty mystified by it. I kind of skipped a couple threads so not sure if you guys have encountered seedlings seemingly lacking chlorophyll or not. I tried to keep one alive for as long as possible but it really stunted and wasn't growing its first true pair of leaves.
Sorry for the lengthy first post. Cooped up from all this cold weather.

Welcome to the GardenWeb and to the zinnia hobby. Don't apologize for your long post. I very much enjoyed it. You have some interesting new ideas. And as you can see, I am no stranger to long posts myself.

"The fluorescent shop lights that I use (along with southern window exposure) are 3000K so the main thing that I notice with all of my indoor zinnias is that their foliage is very soft and larger than normal."

I have found that my zinnias prefer 6500K bulbs, which give a very cool, almost bluish light. I used to load my fixtures with both warm and cool bulbs, but I noticed that my seedlings were very obviously growing toward the cool bulbs, so I have been buying 6500K bulbs ever since. I set my timer for at least a 16-hour day length. I am thinking about going to 18-hour days. I don't know how much we covered in previous threads about fluorescent lighting, but several of my fluorescent fixtures are now "overdriven" for greater light output. This Winter I will be converting more of my fixtures to the overdriven configuration. I purchased several spare ballasts for that purpose. Overdriven fluorescent fixtures are nearly twice as bright as conventional fixtures. And zinnias respond well to the brighter lights.

"I had to pick the (only marginally) weaker one out of the dirt and it still upsets me that it might have turned into a beautiful flower."

I know the feeling. I have been in that predicament many times. In some cases I just let both of them grow and share the pot. I repot them to 5-inch pots, and grow them both to first bloom. At first bloom you can pick which one to keep, or you can just decide to let them keep sharing a pot. I have some larger 8-inch pots that I can repot to to give my zinnias more media support. If I do decide to eliminate a seedling, I just snip it off at the surface with small scissors, to avoid disturbing the roots of the remaining zinnia. I also use that same snipping technique for culling outdoors zinnias that are growing close to each other. Outdoors I use a pocket pruner for the snipping, and cut the culled zinnias off at ground level.

With respect to drought tolerance, I have noticed that zinnias with large deep root systems aren't so dependent on frequent watering, although I tend to baby my zinnias and provide them as much water and nutrients as they can take. I noticed that my "shrub zinnia" seemed to have a very large root system, and was much less dependent on being watered. But I haven't been breeding for low water requirements.

I hadn't thought of breeding an edible zinnia. To my knowledge, zinnias are not edible. They aren't listed as poisonous plants either. But just being non-poisonous doesn't make them edible. I suspect that there would be some undesirable results from eating them.

The deer, squirrels, racoons, possums, and rabbits around here don't seem to eat zinnias, for whatever reason. Even the grasshoppers leave them alone, except for an occasional taste. Wooly worms love them, and I hand picked a bunch of wooly worms during our late Summer wooly worm "season".

"...it's pretty much just spending 40 seconds in the woods to fill a small pot with crumbly woods-dirt. So far so good, I guess."

I use "sterile" commercial Premier ProMix BX. There isn't any soil around here that I would trust as an indoor growing medium.

"Any new updates?"

Nothing to brag about. The tissue cultured zinnia seedlings continued to grow more "wonky" and they eventually succumbed to fungus infections.

You can see the beginning of a fungus infection to the right of this seedling. Once a fungus gets started in a tissue culture with sugar in the agar, it spreads very rapidly. I learned belatedly that I was supposed to store my PPM (Plant Preservative Mixture) in the refrigerator, and that mine had probably lost all or most of its potency from being stored at room temperature for nearly two years. I will store the next bottle of PPM that I buy in our refrigerator, but meanwhile I plan to do some experiments with different Physan 20 dosages on zinnia seedlings. I am interested in zinnia seedling phytotoxicity for various concentrations of Physan 20. I used some weak Physan 20 (3/4 tsp/gal) on my seedlings last year, and I would like to increase that dosage this year.

I took a few zinnia cuttings this Fall and they were pretty much wiped out by Spider Mites as soon as I got them inside. I wasn't expecting that or prepared for that. None of the insecticides I had on hand were effective against the spider mites. Actually Spider Mites aren't even insects, they are 8-legged mites and you need a miticide for them. I am going to purchase some stuff to deal with spider mites, because I assume I will continue to have problems with them. The systemic Imidacloprid that I have gives good protection from thrips and aphids, but was totally ineffective against the Spider Mites. The mites are going to be a challenge for me this Winter, and I will give ongoing reports about that.

I see a zinnia seedling with no chlorophyll every now and then. I suppose I could keep one going by giving it foliar feedings that includes sugar, but I just consider it a lethal mutation and let nature take its course. There is a lot of genetic recombination going on in my zinnias, and I strongly suspect that some of my apparent good zinnias seeds that failed to germinate did so because of lethal genetic defects. More later. Keep us informed about your indoor zinnias. Zinnias are easy to grow outdoors, but growing them indoors involves a lot of possible problems. When you overcome those problems, you can have some satisfying results.

ZM

Once read a newspaper article on what animals 'gain' by eating certain plants, and it said that Zinnias gave them courage. Our female Dane certainly didn't need more of that!

We now grow patches of Zinnias as a tribute to the dogs, since they're no longer with us. Brings back fond memories, for sure.

"I have found that my zinnias prefer 6500K bulbs, which give a very cool, almost bluish light."
My reasoning was that the lights are used in combination with a southern window, which should even it out, I think.
At winter solstice there's roughly nine hours of daylight, maybe six of which hit my plants because of the angles. This setup was intended for February and March, though. If my numbers are right (I'm not 100%), that should come out to about 50/50 with sun and lights being used. By some wicked guessing, I think that puts the mixture somewhere around the 4500K range. This has had a noticeable effect on the plants I've grown inside over the past couple years - seems to make them fluffier and bulkier as compared to completely outdoor zinnias.

'[...] but several of my fluorescent fixtures are now "overdriven" for greater light output'
I considered doing this early on but I have my reserves about it. For one it doubles the wattage, which would add up to a heftier bill if you ran it the same length. Which leads me to my question, when you say "16-hour" days, do you run the lights for eight hours or less and factor in any other light (being that it's 2x output)? I say that because I run somewhere around 16-18 (factoring in sun exposure, if it's cloudy, etc.) but I've been adjusting on the fly using the curl of the leaf as a measure for how much light it has received or needs. I like to err on the side of too much light, since the opposite leads to lanky/floppy plants. Not all of my zinnias respond in that way, but as far as I've observed, most do.

I must admit that I haven't been the most diligent in caring for these particular zinnias, but two winters ago I grew one that had such luscious foliage that I'm still fascinated by it.

This particular zinnia had really bad luck when I went to adjust a light and it fell on one leaf and burned a hole clean through.

"Zinnias are easy to grow outdoors, but growing them indoors involves a lot of possible problems."
I'll agree, but with a twist. I started out by growing zinnias from seeds indoors. It was only last summer that I ventured into outdoor zinnia growing. While there is the potential for more pests, having such a controlled environment suits my style more. When I went to grow them outdoors a number of things happened that I didn't expect.
Some of the leaves wilted, some were eaten by bugs, the germination rates were pretty much zero unless I nursed them in containers (not sure why), and some ground cover really became a headache to my little patch of zinnias. On the plus side they grow like crazy and it's nice to see butterflies and bees benefiting as well. I could go on for a while longer but I have some work to tend to so I'll cut it off here. I enjoy seeing your experiments and hearing about different mixtures. It gives me some ideas of my own to think about.

I agree with Telescody that it is inspirational that you would grow zinnias in memory of your Great Danes. In your memories, your dogs are still among those zinnias.

It would be interesting to know how your dogs came to develop a taste for zinnias, and your other flowers. Perhaps they contained some trace nutrient that they craved, or perhaps they just liked the taste.

Thanks for sharing that touching story.

ZM

I wouldn't encourage you to eat any part of zinnias. There are herbal supplements based on zinnias, but the regulations applying to the safety and/or efficacy of herbal supplements are, to say the least, insufficient. Sunflowers are much more productive seed producers.

"The novelty alone would be worth it, in my opinion."

I'm sure those Japanese connoisseurs who eat the dangerous poisonous fish would agree with you on that. I have eaten chocolate covered ants, but so far, no parts of a zinnia.

"My reasoning was that the lights are used in combination with a southern window, which should even it out, I think."

Probably. It seems to be working for you.

"I considered doing this early on but I have my reserves about it. For one it doubles the wattage..."

Actually, it increases it some, but it doesn't double it. A two-bulb ballast driving a single bulb uses significantly less watts, the ballast runs cooler, and it is sort of "loafing" on a single bulb. The single overdriven bulb gets about 70% more power than the normally driven bulb, which makes it noticeably warmer, almost hot, to the touch. Overdriving a bulb probably does shorten its life, but my bulbs are rated at 36,000 hours, so even if their life were cut in half, I wouldn't mind. My bulbs outlive my cheap ballasts by a wide margin, and overdriving a ballast probably increases its life, since it is running cooler while driving only one bulb. With respect to equipment lifetimes, overdriving is a win-win for me.

The rationale behind overdriving isn't to save electricity or bulb life. It is to get more light on the plants. I use 2' x 4' chrome wire shelves, and I can get only four 2-bulb shoplights over each shelf. That is 8 T8 bulbs per shelf. I would get more lights over the shelf if I could, but more won't fit physically, when using shoplights. By overdriving my fixtures I can get the equivalent of about 14 T8 bulbs per shelf. That is significantly more foot candles on the plants, and I am willing to pay for the electricity to get that brighter light. As a side benefit, the plants are a little warmer, too. Zinnias love warmth, and hate the cool.

"Which leads me to my question, when you say "16-hour" days, do you run the lights for eight hours or less and factor in any other light (being that it's 2x output)?"

My plant stands are in the utility room in the basement, which has only two small north-facing windows up near the ceiling. So essentially all of the light that my zinnias get comes from my fluorescent fixtures. The 16-hours refers to the actual setting on my timer.

"I've been adjusting on the fly using the curl of the leaf as a measure for how much light it has received or needs."

You are developing some ingenious geometric metrics there.

"I like to err on the side of too much light, since the opposite leads to lanky/floppy plants."

It would be difficult to give zinnias too much light. They like full sunlight. Full sun ranges between 5000 to 8000 foot candles, and zinnias like a long day length, which could be 16 hours or more. Continuous light might not be a good idea, because I think they need a dark period of some length. I don't know the minimum dark length they need. It would be good to know that.

"When I went to grow them outdoors a number of things happened that I didn't expect. Some of the leaves wilted, some were eaten by bugs, the germination rates were pretty much zero unless I nursed them in containers (not sure why)"

You need to keep the seed beds continuously wet until the seedlings start getting their true leaves. Sprinkle the seed beds at least once a day. Damping off won't be a problem in the sun.

Insects can be a problem outside. If you have Japanese Beetles in your area, they can cause a lot of damage (to a lot of things, including roses and zinnias). But they can be managed by hand picking. Fortunately, here in this part of Kansas, we don't have them. Cutworms can be a threat to young zinnias (not so bad in this area, but when we lived in Maine they could be devastating). Oddly, 9-spotted Cucumber Beetles were a bit of a problem here last summer. I hand picked a bunch of them, and a few pollen-eating blister beetles (used Kelly forceps on them). Wooly worms were surprisingly destructive in a short season in the Fall. Grasshoppers were only a minor annoyance, despite their scary numbers.

I have not had to resort to poisonous sprays on my outside zinnias. But, inside is a different story. Thrips, aphids, and now spider mites can't be controlled inside without resorting to a chemical solution. So I will resort to the chemicals inside, and be careful. And not eat any of my zinnias.

More later. I have some Physan 20 tolerance experiments to set up for some zinnia seeds.

ZM

We used it against mites and fungus when I worked farming papaya.

good luck
Ryan

It's good to see a conversation started up in the off-season on this thread! Just a couple of notes on the topic of zinnias as edibles..my dog also loves to break off zinnias and chew them. It doesn't seem to hurt her, but I've noticed on several occasions that there is a LOT of fiber in the stems..

Once I made a stupid mistake of putting an old bouquet of zinnias into the garbage disposal. The fiber in the zinnias broke the disposal. As I say, that was dumb! Guess you might make rope or woven goods from those fibers.

Again, who knows if zinnias are edible? I collect enormous amounts of seeds. While they're dry and in their containers, the seeds have a very pleasant, tea-like smell.
They probably could be used to make a tea of sorts, but the safety for humans is not known!

JG

I also pulled one of my seedlings out at the start that I was planning on throwing away. When pulling it out, it snapped the taproot clean off. There were still some other small roots so I decided to give it another chance. I propped it up in a plastic container with the water level barely touching one of the roots, and over the course of 10 days or so, it's still alive. I may just put it in that spare pot to reward it for being so resilient. Either way, I need to feed it soon or it's a goner.

And for my question, should I "pinch off" the new growth of indoor zinnias? I see two sides to it. On one hand you will grow more stems / maybe a more compact plant, and on the other you will delay the bloom. Anyone have an opinion on that?

One last thing... last spring I accidentally ripped a root while trying to transplant a seedling. I had to prop it up and nurse it for a couple days but after that it went on like nothing happened - except one thing, it was very compact. May have just been the variety, but I wonder if trimming the roots would be something to look into.

"...should I "pinch off" the new growth of indoor zinnias? I see two sides to it. On one hand you will grow more stems / maybe a more compact plant, and on the other you will delay the bloom. Anyone have an opinion on that?"

You are right about the two-sides trade-off. Unless you are in a big hurry to see what the bloom will look like, it is better to pinch the central growing point to encourage side branching. And, when those lateral branches form, you can let them develop a few leaves and then pinch them to get even more branching.

In past years, I have always been so impatient to see what my hand-hybridized specimens will look like that I have skipped the pinching to get a quick look at that first bloom. I will still do that when I anticipate a high cull rate, but I plan to exercise a little more patience and start pinching for better branching on many of my zinnias this coming year.

"...except one thing, it was very compact. May have just been the variety, but I wonder if trimming the roots would be something to look into."

That compactness may have been the variety. There are several varieties of compact growing zinnias (Magellan, Dream, Swizzle, Zinnita, Gem, Peter Pan, Pulcino, Thumbelina, Profusion, Zahara, and Pinwheel for example), and they are compact below ground as well as above ground.

Moles "accidentally" damaged the roots on several of my outdoor zinnias last year. I say "accidentally", because moles (unlike gophers) are carnivores and they are just looking for grub worms and such. But in a few cases they tunneled directly under a zinnia and destroyed the main root and enough side roots to cause the death of the plant. In other cases they just seriously "stunted" the plant. I, for one, hope to avoid inadvertent root pruning, by myself or other creatures, as much as I can. I usually manage to set my early-started zinnias out into the garden without disturbing their roots, by letting them get a little rootbound so that the rootball hangs together when I invert the pot and flex it a bit (I use plastic pots) to drop it out into my hand.

I don't know that anyone has ever experimented with Bonsai techniques on indoor zinnias, but root pruning could be a useful technique there. There are plastic pots that are designed to do "air pruning" of the roots.

I quit growing and breeding compact zinnias because I don't like to kneel or stoop to pollinate them. That wouldn't be a problem indoors, but I figure that my zinnia varieties will wind up outdoors eventually. The Burpeeana class zinnia plants are about as low as I like to work.

ZM

Here's hoping that you suffer no ill effects from eating that Thumbelina zinnia cutting. It's possible that zinnias have some sort of herbal "benefits", and if I run across any relevant info out in the World Wide Web, I will post it here. Hopefully no one will dare you to eat anything really gross.

I understand that at one time in the very distant past that people thought tomatoes were inedible, and even poisonous. I think they were called "Love Apples" at that time. It would be interesting to know what intrepid person decided to take a bite of the poisonous red fruit.

Grin. Now you are going to have to check back in here from time to time to assure us that you are still OK. More later. I need to ready a few more pots to plant some more indoor zinnias. But I have no plans to eat any of my zinnias.

ZM

Hello All -- Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I want to post some results of odd experimenting today.
First up, the result of a vanilla "cutting back," or "pinching."

If you look closely, you might notice that something somewhat odd happened (at least, it was odd to me):

Growing from where the real stem meets the hypocotyl and where the cotyledons once were, a pair of axillary buds (on either side) are present. Before this winter I have never seen these become active, so I foolishly assumed that they weren't there in the first place. Cool!

Unfortunately my next experiment/observation turned out as I expected (for now) and that's a bummer.
I let one zinnia grow to about the same stage as the one pictured above, and then decided to cut both of the stems growing from the top at the same place as I cut the original stem.

The little brown area at the top left is where my scissor tweezers slipped and cut open a little bit of the leaf.

I was thinking that maybe the two stems would have developed enough to carry a pair of axillary buds on their own, so when I cut them the hormone would be released and they would be activated, resulting in four separate stems from one node. I might just not be seeing it yet, but to me it looks like there's not enough space. Perhaps they will actually nudge their way through in a couple weeks... if they are indeed there.
Regardless, the hormone that was released resulted in a lateral branch forming directly above the cotyledon that was facing the window. If I rotate it, another will form. I'll use these two branches as plan B and plan C for continuing the life of this zinnia.

As for the zinnia that I showed a couple posts ago floating in the water, I moved it to a pot filled with spare dirt and it recovered nicely. They are resilient plants, thankfully.

ZM, I'm curious to see some of your seedlings. I'm going to be planting another batch (4 or 5) zinnias in a couple months. Early February is when my notes from last year show that I started my spring batch, and from memory they were just about ready to bloom when I set them outside a bit before the last frost. So starting them late February to early March should prove the best timing for our zone.

Hi Telescody,

I am glad we are communicating again after a time-out for the holidays. Those are interesting pruning experiments on your zinnia seedlings. On that first one, the emergence of a shoot from the seedleaf junction is a nice "bonus". Occasionally you can get a shoot from each seedleaf, and sometimes none at all. In that last picture, I don't expect that you will get any more branches from that node. Are there any nodes below that one in your picture?

Your comments about hormones show that you have a good understanding of the developmental processes at play here. As I understand it, as long as there is a central growing point or bud, it releases growth regulators inhibiting the growth of shoots from the nodes below it, and removing that central point removes the source of the inhibiting regulator so that side branches can arise from the nodes below. Apparently the growing points of the side branches do the same thing to inhibit the growing points on their leaf nodes. However, there appears to be considerable genetic variation in the severity of the branching control process in zinnias. Some cultivars branch freely even while the central bud is present and still developing.

There are probably a lot of interesting experiments that can be done on growing zinnia plants, including the use of various plant growth regulators. In previous years I have used plant growth regulators to control the height of my indoor zinnia plants to keep them from growing too tall for my shelves. Those PGRs work by being antagonistic to the naturally produced giberellins in the zinnia plants. The dosages and timings of the PGR applications are still things I am learning to do by trial and error. My past errors have been mainly not applying enough soon enough.

"I'm curious to see some of your seedlings."

At the present time all of my zinnia seedlings are part of my experiments to determine the phytoxicity of various concentrations of Physan 20 in the growing medium of zinnia seedlings. I took this picture a few minutes ago.

From left to right, the concentration of Physan 20 in the growing medium, in tablespoons Physan 20 per gallon, are 0 (the control), 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, and 8. As you can see, the concentrations of 2, 4, and 8 tablespoons per gallon are quite phytotoxic, and I expect the 4 and 8 seedlings to die in the next few days. The 8 seedlings are mostly dead now.

A flaw in this experiment is that I made up stock solutions at those respective concentrations, and continued to apply the solutions as the plants needed water. It is likely that the concentrations of Physan 20 in the growing medium are building up as I do that.

During the first two weeks of the experiment the seedlings in the extremely high concentrations seemed to be alive and green, but with very arrested development. I used commercial white cactus zinnia seeds, 16 per pot, and they probably didn't have any seed-borne diseases. I think the commercial seed producers sterilize their seeds in some way, perhaps by a brief controlled exposure to hot water or some other treatment. My home-saved zinnia seeds may contain any number of seed-borne organisms, and that is one reason I am doing experiments on seedlings. I haven't done my hydrogen peroxide experiments yet.

As a result of this experiment, I won't hesitate to germinate seedlings at the higher concentrations of Physan 20, but I won't add any more Physan 20 after they germinate. I plan to start some of my hybrid zinnias soon.

ZM

Woo-hoo!
Not long now! My random mix and the Thumbelina are both at this stage. I can't wait. Really curious to see what came from the bugs pollinating for me.

"I'm not sure which one you mean, but I cut all of them above their first true leaves leaving that node and the node from where the cotyledons were (which I didn't think existed before this winter)"

If I understand what you are saying, I think you may have been too severe in pruning your zinnia seedlings. In my opinion, there should be at least two pairs of true leaves below the cut-off point, and possibly three or four pairs of true leaves would be better. Since we now know that the cotyledons can also be a node, that could give as many as three up to five nodes below the cutoff point.

An odd thing happened in my Physan 20 tolerance test. The plants in the 2-tablespoon/gallon pot were marginal, and many of them succumbed, but a couple survived and one even seemed to
thrive after I quit dosing them with the Physan. I don't know if its success is due to some random happenstance, but I am going to keep it as a "breeder" based on how differently it did compared to the other seedlings in the pot.

It may be time for me to pinch this specimen. In the past I have frequently let the main stem grow until it formed a terminal flower bud and then simply pinched that bud. You usually get at least one pair of newly forming leaves when you do that because the bud and that leaf pair are so close together on the stem.

I now think that waiting for a flower bud to form before pinching may not be a good idea, because the plant has transitioned from vegetative to flowering at that point, so I am going to modify my "zinnia bonsai" techniques to pinch before the flower bud forms. Except in those cases when I am culling first flowers, I want to keep the plant in the vegetative mode as long as possible, and I haven't been very successful at that so far.

So, what did that bud in your last picture look like when it opened? If it was a Thumbelina, the flower would have been quite small. More later. I am in the process of planting some "breeder" zinnias for indoor culture.

ZM

Looking at your latest picture, I'm not sure why that plant outgrew the others, either. The one that it's barely covering on the left also seems to be doing well. I'm not sure if either of them are truly unique or just lucky compared to the others- I probably wouldn't designate them as a breeder based on this test alone, given the random nature of it. I'm thinking that if you had scattered the seeds in any different way those two seedlings probably would appear the same as the smaller wilted ones. Of course, if you grow them out and the flower turns out to be very nice, that's definitely a plant to go with.

P.S. Should we start another thread for the new year now that this page is getting long?

"Would you happen to know by looking what is going on?"

I would indeed. Those are classic phosphorous deficiency symptoms, in a rather advanced stage.

"It's not happening to all of them; mainly the Thumbelina."

It happened to the Thumbelina simply because it bloomed first. Blooming requires extra phosphorous, which is why the "blooming formulas" of commercial nutrients contain extra phosphorous. Phosphorous is one of the elements that is mobile in a plant, so your blooming Thumbelinas "robbed Peter to pay Paul" by taking phosphorous from the lower leaves. Plant cells can't live without phosphorous, so the cells in areas of the lower leaves literally gave up their lives to supply the blooming buds with phosphorous.

This brings us to an important subject for indoor zinnia growing, or any indoor plant growing for that matter, namely plant nutrition. Although we usually don't think of it that way, indoor growing in sterile media or other soil substitutes is very similar to a form of hydroponic growing, in which the media merely serves as an anchor for the plant roots and we nourish the plant roots with what amounts to hydroponic nutrients in their water.

For that reason, I recommend that you purchase some urea-free complete formula plant nutrients and use them on a continual well-diluted basis.

The formula should be urea-free because, in many indoor growing media, there aren't enough, or any, soil microbes to break down urea into usable nitrate ions or ammonium cations. In that case, in prolonged use, urea could build up to harmful levels in the growing medium.

The nutrient formula should also include magnesium and sulfur and a complete assortment of soluble trace elements, including iron, manganese, copper, boron, zinc, and molybdenum.

I use Better-Gro Orchid Plus and Better-Gro Orchid Bloom Booster as my primary indoor nutrient formulas. I can usually find both products at a local Lowe's Home Store.

I have discussed indoor zinnia nutrition in more detail buried back somewhere in previous parts of this series, but there is one thing I should revisit here, because it is important. Namely, calcium. Calcium is a macronutrient, which means it is needed in greater quantities than a micronutrient. Yet is absent in most soluble nutrient formulas, for a variety of reasons. Hydroponic growers almost always supply calcium as calcium nitrate, and so do I. Some potting mixes, like the Premier ProMix BX that I use, supply some calcium in the mix, but in small quantities sufficient to grow seedlings for a few weeks. I learned about calcium the hard way, with severe calcium deficiency symptoms showing up as I brought my zinnias up to the blooming stage indoors. So, you might want to buy some calcium nitrate and include it in your dilute nutrients. My source of one-pound packages of it seems to have "gone away", so 5 pounds of it should last you forever. I also use it in my outdoor garden as a foliar feed for tomatoes, eggplants, summer squash, melons, gourds and such, to prevent blossom end rot and other similar calcium deficiencies.

With respect to the dilution rates on the product labels, I usually dilute my solutions to about one quarter, or less, of the label strength, but then use that weak solution instead of plain water every time I water my plants.

In the past, we have usually gotten into the neighborhood of about 100 messages in each "Part" of these "It can be fun..." messages, and we are less than half way there with this segment. But if you are having load time problems, let me know and I will start a new segment. It's not hard to do. More later. If you have any questions about the details of indoor zinnia nutrition, let me know. I am always trying to learn more about it, myself.

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

I haven't found time to post recently but here's the random cross flower that emerged a couple days ago:

I rather like the petal shape. They're sort of jutting out at weird angles.
It's a temptation to cross this with the Thumbelina but I'm pretty sure it'll just give me 75% dark purple and 25% pink flowers or vice versa, with not much else recognizably different from the parents.
I have two more on the way in the next couple weeks that I'll share when they open - I hope they're not some shade of purple as well.

Hi Telescody,

"I wonder if we could put together a sort of ailment/deficiency compilation with pictures and descriptions for common Zinnia issues - or if such a thing exists already."

I don't know if such a thing already exists for insect and mite problems or for disease problems. But such a thing exists for nutrient deficiencies. I use the book, "Nutrient Deficiencies in Bedding Plants" because it has a chapter on Zinnias, with many pictures of specific nutrient deficiencies in zinnias. It describes the Phosphorus (P) Deficiency in Zinnias on page 351. Phosphorus-deficient zinnias are initially smaller than well-nourished zinnias, but otherwise normal looking. As the deficiency progresses, the lower leaves develop a slightly darker color. The symptoms ultimately advance to a brown necrosis along the lower leaf margins, with a black speckling in the necrotic regions, and the leaf tips eventually begin to pucker downward. The picture for that stage is a close match to the picture you posted.

If you use a balanced nutrient formula, including soluble calcium and a little (very little) extra boron, you aren't likely to see any nutrient deficiency symptoms in your zinnias. Of course, you can still have disease and "bug" problems.

I like that last closeup picture. I agree with you about the petal shape looking good. I had a big zinnia with large petal shapes a few years ago.

Oddly, it had scabiosa flowered heritage. I had a couple of others with similar large petals, almost like rose petals. I should start looking for more like that, with the idea of creating a strain of zinnias like that. I am looking forward to your forthcoming zinnia bloom photos. You are getting really good closeup photos.

ZM

Can you please work on breeding a zinnia that is unattractive to japanese beetles? We love zinnias but don't grow them because they attract the dang beetles. I'm going to grow them this year anyway because I miss the butterflies.

Hi October17,

"Can you please work on breeding a zinnia that is unattractive to japanese beetles?"

I doubt that it would be possible to breed zinnias that are unattractive to Japanese Beetles. And since we don't have Japanese Beetles here in Kansas, I would have to import some to test the JB resistant zinnia candidates, and I think that importing Japanese Beetles would make me mighty unpopular with the folks around here. You might try some of the darker colored zinnias, because Japanese Beetles seem to prefer lighter colored flowers. This is a semi-dark purple "breeder" zinnia that I grew last year.

I crossed it with an interesting tubular petaled specimen, and I am curious to see the results of that. There are several commercial varieties of zinnias that have dark colors.

We lived in Maine a few years ago (I went under the forum name of MaineMan back then), and the Japanese Beetles were bad there. They didn't eat just flowers. They also ate the new leaves of blackberries and wild grapes. I was breeding zinnias in Maine, too. I like all the different colors of zinnias, and had no intention of letting JBs dictate to me what color of zinnias I would grow. I aggressively hand picked the JBs into a jar of soapy water and killed them by the hundreds. By doing that, my zinnias suffered only minor cosmetic damage from the Japanese Beetles. If I had "let Nature take its course" the JBs would have devastated my zinnias.

The Japanese Beetles in Maine were only a problem during a definite "season". I always spared the beetles that had the little white eggs attached to them. Those are the eggs of a parasitic fly whose larva hatch and feed on the beetle internally. Sparing those beetles helps enhance the population of the parasitic flies.

By the time the beetles have eaten enough insecticide to kill them, they have already devastated your flowers, so at best that approach only gets revenge on them after the damage is done.

If I lived in Japanese Beetle territory and wanted to grow prize roses, I think I would construct a screened-in garden area, using dark-colored nylon screening to physically keep the JBs out. That would keep mosquitoes out as well.

If someone comes up with a good Japanese Beetle repellent that you could spray your plants with, that would be a more convenient approach. If that repellent were systemic, meaning that it would be absorbed into the plant and wouldn't be washed off by the rain, that would make it more effective.

Presumably the plants that the Japanese Beetles won't eat already have such a repellent naturally in them. I think that a systemic Japanese Beetle repellant would be the best approach. Hopefully it would repel the beetles, but not the butterflies. It might be something simple like garlic or peppermint oil. You could grow some light colored zinnias to attract the Japanese Beetles into your JB repellant testing areas. And post some pictures here of your zinnias and Japanese Beetles.

ZM

I once grew some huge hibiscus on the deck. I sprayed them with a garlic/soap solution. The whole place smelled like garlic. It worked and I only had to respray after a rain. I sprayed every single leaf top and bottom.

That same garlic/soap solution might protect your zinnias from Japanese Beetles this year. Go easy on the soap. Too strong a soap solution can harm zinnias and some other tender plants. You might want to experiment with some other repellents as well. I would prefer a minty smell to that of garlic. And if you could find something that was systemic, you wouldn't have to reapply it after every rain.

When we lived in Maine, the blackflies were a serious pest for humans and pets. I always rubbed on a repellent to keep them off of my exposed hands and arms and wore a headnet to keep them off of my head. DEET did not work against the blackflies, but I found a repellent that did. In Maine, we had blackflies by day and several species of mosquitoes at night.

Actually, it never occurred to me to try a repellent against the Japanese Beetles. But they flew in each morning and I gathered big bunches of them in my soapy water and there were only a few stragglers left for the rest of the day. I did exploit their tendency to drop when disturbed and frequently I would get a cluster of a dozen or so of them to drop into my soapy water without losing a single one. And the surrounding blackberry patch served as an effective decoy plant, so that removing them from my zinnias was a second line of defense.

I found and killed several Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs in my zinnias and tomatoes last year. The BMSB's aren't a serious pest here yet, but I anticipate that they may become so. They have the same drop-when-disturbed reflex that Japanese Beetles have, so catching them was fairly easy. We didn't see any BMSB's try to enter the house last Fall. That's a good thing.

ZM

My final two winter zinnias opened up. Nothing spectacular, unfortunately.


The white one is actually the seedling I showed far above floating in water. I didn't trim it and it grew about 2x taller than the rest.

Hi Telescody,

"The only pests I've really encountered are Hornworms, some sort of stink bug and some sort of gnat-like creature."

If the stink bugs were brown, they could have been the Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs. Were the gnat-like creatures like really giant mosquitoes? Crane Flies look like giant outlandish mosquitoes, and we have a few of them around here. We also have a smallish gnat that hovers together in impressive numbers in the afternoon and evening. I have no idea what they are, but fortunately they don't bite.

We have three species of mosquitoes, including the spotted tiger mosquitoes. Ours aren't so aggressive, but occasionally one will follow you into the house and be really annoying with their high pitched humming. I must be allergic to mosquito bites, because they make an impressive welt on me. We have a few chiggers and a serious tick season, including some deer ticks as well as the more common dog ticks. I'll probably wind up with Lyme Disease some day, despite my precautions. Hopefully our Guineas will control our ticks this Spring, if they will just get "out and about". They tend to stay in the chicken run with the chickens.

Both of your last indoor Winter zinnias seem to have rather wide petals. I wonder if indoor zinnias tend to have wider petals, or if that is "just the nature of the beast". Some of my indoor zinnias are starting to bloom out now. This is a few of them.

It is really too soon to see what they are going to look like. That picture was taken this afternoon, with the afternoon sun kind of dazzling the picture. I will try to take some more pictures in more subdued light in the next few days.

I am pleased with the response of my zinnias to the nutrition I have been giving them, although several have managed to get a "burn" by touching a fluorescent bulb. Overdriven fluorescent tubes are distinctly warmer to the touch than the "regular" ones. More later. Today was warm and Spring-like, so I spent some time outside putting part of a compost pile through my shredder/chipper's hammer mill.

The weather tomorrow won't be so hospitable, so I will spend more time inside with my indoor zinnia gardening. And probably take a few pictures.

ZM

Hi Telescody and all,

This is the first of the progeny from my trumpet-petaled mutant from last year to bloom out indoors. It seems to be rather true to its parent, except for that odd side-branching flower bud. These pictures were taken about an hour ago of zinnias growing within a foot or two from my computer.

I'm not too wild about that side-branching bud, but otherwise I like this, because the trumpet petals seem to be a stable genetic factor.

Now it still remains to get these trumpet petal genes recombined with other petal genes to get a more spectacular open trumpet. This scabious bloom opened recently and has some receptive stigmas which are getting some of the pollen from the current trumpet-petaled specimen.

Like its maternal parent, the trumpet-petaled bloom is producing pollen, which I used a few minutes ago on this scabious bloom. I am going to split the trumpet petals to get access to the stigmas inside. As a result of that, the trumpet-petaled bloom will soon look like a hurricane hit it. But it is all in the interest of getting an interesting new zinnia flower form.

It is really quite convenient to pollinate and cross-pollinate zinnias that are growing right next to my computer chair. I can remain comfortably seated, and move the plants around for convenient access. And I don't have to worry about bees stealing my zinnia pollen. I really enjoy indoor zinnia gardening. More later. I'm sleepy.

ZM

Same about the indoor gardening part. Although, I think I just selfed half of mine by bumping into their stand. Blah.

"Is it going to open with the same style as the developed one beside it?"

It has developed far enough now that I am sure that it is. I have a second plant from the same parent that is also showing trumpet petals for certain, but in a slightly different color. I will post a pic of it in a few days.

I also like the second one that I posted the best. I, too, like the crinkled wavy guard petals and its mound of matching florets. This marigold-looking specimen came from the same parent and, as is frequently the case with zinnias, differs quite a lot from its siblings. I have also been doing some violence to it since I took its picture a couple of days ago, opening florets to access stigmas and pollen. Based on its floret structure and my journal notes, I think there is some chance that it was pollinated with trumpet pollen, but just isn't "showing it" much, although its florets are somewhat unusual in structure. For that reason, I am back-pollinating it with the trumpet specimen.

I have several non-trumpet specimens coming into bloom now that I suspect have a trumpet male parent. The trumpet trait apparently does not "show up" well in an F1 context. If it were a single Mendelian gene, you would say that it was recessive. I am hoping that it will recombine better in an F2 generation or in F2 crosses. A lot of zinnia traits seem to be controlled by multiple genes, which makes for a lot of interesting results during recombination. More later. One of my fluorescent shoplight fixtures went bad yesterday (its cheap ballast burned out), so I will be refurbishing it today with a new, somewhat better, ballast. While I am at it, I think I will add a second ballast to overdrive it.

ZM

So glad that spring is coming! Prematurely coming, maybe, but still, makes me want to start looking for some new zinnias or at least look at the catalogs to see what all there is. I see that Burpee has put out a new Peppermint Stick, or maybe it's bigger, in yellow and red..and, besides all the marylandica variations, I see nothing too new!

ZM, I am so happy your trumpet petals are moving onto the next generation!! I don't believe that has happened for me, but I don't use quite as a controlled environment. I think that two-flowered stem is really different..I wonder if that may be hereditary, too? Breeders got that trait to work in tulips. I think it is more interesting than attractive, but still!

Anyway, hello for now, and looking for everyone's posts!

JG

Hi JG,

Glad to have you back. I think Burpee's Pop Art Red and Yellow is bigger than a Peppermint Stick. Its height is listed as 2 - 3 feet, same as Peppermint Stick, but it flower size is listed as "large" while Peppermint Stick has 2-inch blooms. There was a time when I would have been enthusiastic about Pop Art, but as I have said earlier, stripes and spots aren't something I am going after now.

"I am so happy your trumpet petals are moving onto the next generation!!"

Me too. This ia a picture taken today of the fourth trumpet petaled specimen that is blooming indoors in my study by my computer.

I moved it up from the basement when it showed trumpet petals yesterday. My code numbers are in the "F" series for 2012. Time flies. I am very encouraged that they breed true. The colors are a bit different. I have a red, a scarlet, a rose, and a pink specimen. I am intercrossing them and backcrossing them to some probable F1 hybrids between last year's original trumpet petal (E2) and other breeder zinnias.

I think I have several F1 hybrids with E2 as the male, but I was surprised that the trumpet petals seem to be recessive, or nearly so. One F1 does have a few partially tubular petals. As I mentioned above, I think that marigold flowered specimen has the original trumpet petaled zinnia as its male parent. One thing that makes me believe that is that it has a lot of three-armed stigmas. One of the interesting features of the original trumpet, E2, was a lot of three-armed stigmas. You wouldn't see them until you split the trumpets to expose the stigmas to pollinate them. In the card game of Poker, if you unconsciously give some kind of clue, they call it a "tell". The three-armed stigmas are acting as a "tell" for trumpet male parentage. I am back-crossing some of my current trumpet petaled specimens to the suspected hybrids, with the hope that something interesting will shake out in the recombinations.

Even though I haven't as of now gotten any "payoff" from the trumpets, I intend to persist in growing recombinants involving the trumpet petals. My rose colored trumpet has somewhat shorter, broader trumpets, so it may well be that the trumpet petal features are controlled by more than one gene. I hope so, because that gives more recombination possibilities. More later. I am not too enthusiastic about the two-flowered trumpet. That looks a little freaky. But if that wants to show up again, I will let it. I won't cull it. With some improvement, it could look good.

ZM

"...besides all the marylandica variations, I see nothing too new!"

Same here. In fact, Burpee appears to have dropped their Burpee Hybrids Mix from their paper catalog, although they may still offer them on their website.

I ordered a couple of packets of Burpee Hybrids Mix from Burpee's website, just to grow a few more of them this year. And I think I may have a packet or two of them left over from previous years. I am really bad about ordering more seeds than I have room or time to plant. But I have nearly doubled my garden size this year, so I will probably deplete my inventory of seeds.

I have grown the Burpee Hybrids Mix off and on for the last several years, and the specimen pictured here, which is blooming in our basement now, has at least a couple of grandparents or great-grandparents selected from a packet of Burpee Hybrids Mix. More recently it has picked up some "Dinosaur Zinnia" genes, and possibly some "Medusa" genes. This specimen has freakishly long stigmas, which kind of appeals to me. And I like its wild "bed hair" look. I will be crossing it with a similar specimen, possibly with similar heritage, which is also coming into bloom in the basement. These unusual specimens feed my enthusiasm for zinnia breeding.

Anyone who wants to equate local weather with climate change would have a field day right now. We have essentially missed Winter, with less than an inch of total snow fall, and these last few days, including today, have been in the 80's. The fruit trees are in full bloom, with hundreds of bees actively gathering nectar. When you are near a tree, the loud humming sound can be kind of scary. If we do have a hard freeze now, it is going to have serious effects on the fruit crop. Our apricot tree and cherry tree are in full bloom, and the plum tree has already dropped its petals. I am hoping the fruit trees make it, because last year was so hot and dry that we got no fruit crop at all. Next week cooler weather is supposed to return.

Regardless of how the weather goes, it is time for me to make indoor plantings of those zinnias and tomatoes that I intend to set out in the garden after our "safe" no-frost date. I am going to have to do a bit of research to figure out just what that date is for this rural location. I have some more indoor zinnia pictures to post, but it is time for me to wash some pots and plant some seeds. I kind of enjoy doing that, too.

ZM

If you don't mind me asking, both ZM and JG, how do you start your outdoor zinnia gardens in detail?

From my own experimenting, I've had the best luck germinating seeds indoors and then moving them individually to holes I poked with an old pencil. I don't have a decent spot built up yet for zinnias specifically, so I'm hoping to get that figured out this year as well.
I'm thinking to maybe scrape the grass off with a tractor, spread a little compost, germinate and grow the seeds a bit and then mulch with a newspaper and wood chips for each plant. I'm 100% positive that a lot of weeds and composted veggies would sprout if I did that, but it seems like the best idea I can come up with right now.
I'd like to be able to cast the seeds out scattered at random, then have them germinate like that and pick what I don't like out, but I've never tried it. Perhaps waiting until a rainy forecast well after last frost and hoping for the best would work.

On a different note, I threw out the zinnias I posted above because I didn't particularly like any of them. Right now I'm germinating a ton in a large pot so I can give a nice gift to my mother next month, with the added bonus that I can pluck any seedlings I want out of it.
I'll probably start another one for an early bunch to pluck and place outside where I can.

One thing that I'm definitely going to change next winter will be to either move my light from my room or do away with it. It has really messed with my psychological well-being having a light on 24/7 every day and night non-stop. I like sleeping in the dark after I've turned off all of my computer things, my TV, etc. The fans whirl down and I crawl under the blankets... I let out a sigh of relaxation and let the day fall away; I close my eyes and it's no use. Orange.
I can see the light through my eyelids, so I push the blanket up over my face to block it a bit. It sucks.

Thankfully, the days are extending and I don't have to have my lights on constantly anymore. I'm a happy camper with the bugs chirping outside, the cool breeze rolling in, and best of all, the darkness. Spring is the best time of the year.

As a final thought, you can call me "TC" if you want.

"...how do you start your outdoor zinnia gardens in detail?"

I start a bunch of them a few weeks early in the 3.25-inch clear square pots like those that I pictured above in the Physan 20 phytotoxicity tolerance experiments. Zinnia seedlings can actually grow to the blooming stage in one of those pots, but that isn't a good idea. It is better to re-pot them to a bigger pot before they get to the flowering stage. When it comes time to set them out, or to re-pot them, it does help to let them get a little root-bound. That way, when it comes time to get them out of the pot, the root ball can fall out of the pot and keep it shape, almost as if it were in a peat pot, but without the hard shell.

The roots actually suffer no disturbance at all by dropping the seedling out of the pot into my hand. When setting them into the garden, I use a trowel to open up a little hole for the root-ball, set it in, push dirt snugly up to it, and with the trowel, score a little moat around it to hold water around it.

I get 18 pots per tray, and I will probably start about 8 or 12 trays for my early starts. The vast majority of my zinnias are sown directly into the ground in rows in beds that run east and west. I try to make as much use of the Sun and my garden space as I can. There is a trade-off between crowding in a lot of zinnias and leaving path space for easy access to my plants. I like to do my pollinating while seated on a rolling tractor seat or on a portable kneeling seat. So I need to leave a system of paths among the zinnia beds.

I know that I am going to cull my zinnias aggressively, so I do space them closer together than would otherwise be good, so that the culling leaves me with reasonable spacing between my "keeper" zinnias. I open up little furrows about an inch deep and drop the seeds in individually about 4 to 6 inches apart, and cover them about a half inch deep. And then I sprinkle the seed beds every day until the seedlings emerge. They are usually up in force in less than I week.

I don't plant them all at once, partly because I couldn't plant them all in one day, and a succession of plantings lets me distribute my efforts better. If all of my zinnias bloomed at once, I would be swamped with a culling task and a pollinating task. I will stretch my plantings out over two months or so. I'll stop planting zinnias about the middle of July. For here, that will still leave them plenty of time to develop many flowers per plant and to set viable seeds before frost.

I have used my Merry Tiller to nearly double my gardening space this year. In addition to zinnias, I will be growing a vegetable garden including tall sunflowers for seed, corn, tomatoes, eggplants, and a few other things. Zinnias will still get the "lion's share" of space, though.

We are having cool wet weather this week. No sign of a frost in the immediate future, but our "safe" no-frost date is still several weeks away. Although, with this weird weather, we actually may have had our last frost, and just don't know it yet.

I am lucky enough to have a study separate from the bedroom, so the lights don't interfere with sleep. I just close the bedroom door and let my zinnias be night owls. Their lights shut off automatically at 1 am.

We wish you good luck with your upcoming zinnia venture or adventure. I'll bet you will be posting some pictures of some interesting specimens this Summer.

ZM

A few more indoor zinnias have bloomed out, and this specimen may be a hybrid between the trumpet petaled specimen and a scabious specimen. In this closeup you can see that the central florets are rather unusual, in that they are "open", with accessible stigmas. I am back-crossing it with some of my trumpet petaled specimens. More later. Got to do a little lawn mowing before the rain hits again this evening.

ZM

You both mentioned the strange weather. We are having that in Indiana, too. We've had a very mild winter, and an incredibly early spring. I can easily say we are a full month ahead of the usual growing season (so far!); that is, the trees are leafing out; the forsythias, crocuses, daffodils are past their peak; the tulips, redbud, crabapple, dogwood, plum, pear and cherry trees are in bloom; and the lilacs, apple trees, and peonies have buds.
I have never in my life seen such warm weather this far north so early! And I see that the new USDA hardiness zones are out, and in Indiana, zone 6 has migrated northward from near the Ohio River up to the central part of the state. I think in general, this is happening throughout the country.

I am weeding the gardens now, and am seeing that there are volunteer zinnias coming up and that many of my annual plants have overwintered!

I noticed in the T&M catalog that there is now a Queen Red Lime zinnia in addition to the the Queen Lime, but I will stay with the mixed offspring of the Queen Limes I had started several years ago. I haven't started any zinnias indoors this year. I usually do that when I have bought expensive seed (like 10 seeds in a pack) and I want to make sure I get as many as possible to grow-- so I set out one seed per peat pot under 14 hours of fluorescent light and a heating mat underneath--for transplanting outdoors. I have raised zinnias to maturity indoors, but not with 1/100 of the success of ZM, so I will be content to follow his postings! The last flowers, the golden and the pink, are very pretty! ZM, you have many lines of pretty, non-type zinnias!

TC, usually I till up my garden really well as early as is possible and when it is dry. Then, before it's time to plant the zinnias, I till it up one time again. I always incorporate lots of leaves and grass clippings to make the soil softer and easier for sowing and growing every year.
I stake out rows with twine then with a weeding tool draw a shallow line under the twine, sow the seeds in the rows, and cover with maybe a sixteenth inch of fine soil. I have other beds that are smaller, and there I set out the more expensive zinnias in their peat pots one at a time. If I plant seeds in more clay-like soil, I break it up as well as possible, spread out the seeds and cover them with a thin layer of vermiculite to avoid getting hardpan, and making it easier for them to emerge.

There is another way to start a new flower bed, as I have for vegetables this year....I don't really have a dedicated vegetable garden; I usually mix vegetables in with my flowers. But this year, I decided to start a new plot, not by breaking up sod, but by putting down 4-5 layers of black and white newspaper on top of the sod, wetting the paper down, then placing on top a 40 pound sack of topsoil (which has many holes poked into the bottom for drainage). I open a hole on top of each sack before planting, and leave about a two inch margin around the top, like so:

You can put the seeds directly into the soil. When the season is over, remove the plastic of the bags; the ground has been mulched all season, and you can plow in topsoil, newspapers and soil beneath to create your new bed. Probably this soil is rich for zinnias, but it's a way to quickly start a garden and make the creation of a more permanent bed easier.

JG

That no-till gardening scheme is fascinating. Have you done that before? I would be concerned, however, that my plant roots couldn't "find" the holes in the plastic bags. You may have made enough holes that it won't be a problem. Zinnia root systems can go down much deeper than the depth of the topsoil bags. The depth and spread of the roots is roughly equal to the height and spread of the above-ground plant. That is one reason why I quit breeding dwarf zinnias. They have comparatively wimpy root systems, which can be a disadvantage in a dry spell.

I continue to be encouraged by the results than show up in scabious-cross hybrids. This recombinant has more than one scabious ancestor, and it is a little different from "regular" scabious zinnias. It reminds me a bit of a carnation, and the dense center reminds me of some peonies I have seen. Many of its florets are partially open with accessible stigmas. I won't know if those stigmas were receptive to external pollen until seed-set time, or perhaps until I see its progeny.

I am starting to examine some of my older blooms for possible viable green seeds. I hope to be germinating some second generation zinnias soon, for setting out into the garden.

It was in the low 80's here today. It felt like early Summer. I really wonder if we haven't had our last frost already. One of our apple trees is now in bloom, and the pear trees as well. I have a few indoor zinnias that are kind of culls. I think I may set them into the garden in the next day or two as a kind of experiment.

ZM

Earlier I posted "Right now I'm germinating a ton in a large pot [...]," and it's funny how that one pot turned into four or five pots of seedlings. I guess you can never have too many zinnias if you're willing to take care of them.
Each of the pots has a mix of spare dirt (mostly standard Miracle Gro and the citrus/cacti-oriented sort), a layer or two of compost (mostly ash from our wood stove, egg shells, other misc. stuff), and finally some dirt that was left outside to fill the pot some more. I figure they should be fine for the growing season in that mix, and I am happy to use up the rest of those bags of dirt.

My ultimate goal is to emulate what a "commercial" pot of flowers may look like as well as figure out what the golden plant-to-pot ratio is for my lineage of zinnias. That way I can start somewhat smaller pots as gifts.

On the topic of transplanting the seedlings, I found that moving them asap after germination works best for me.
First I drill a small hole with whatever small twig I can find, then I pour a sip of water into the hole, then I pluck the zinnia seedling out as delicately as possible and lastly I clear the opening if needed and gently pack the seedling in. I then pour a little bit more to top it off and prop the seedling with the dirt as needed. I found that the zinnias will be very brittle and downright flimsy directly after this little switch, so it's best to do this operation late in the evening on a partly cloudy day and/or shade the pots until the sun goes down. By the morning the seedlings will be pointing to the sunrise like nothing even happened.
In an extreme case I once transplanted about 10-20 seedlings in this way at noon on a July day in the scorching heat and humidity. I shaded them with a board but even then it must have still been 90+. They slouched over completely and I just assumed they probably wouldn't make it. Came out later to check on everything and noticed that they were already perking back up in a matter of hours. By the next day it was like they were never even bothered.

Mostly by coincidence the pot that I used to germinate the seedlings has a completely different soil composition that seemed to work well for this use. I believe it was at one time a commercial mix that by now has weathered through many seasons outdoors and a couple indoors. It's mostly sterile by now, maybe a bit of nitrogen left over.

They started sprouting indoors, and I moved them outside as soon as the weather allowed.

These are the leftovers and more continue to sprout.
You can see that I really packed them in there. Makes for an interesting experience plucking them out but it does work if you pluck early. If you wait too long and let them grow, their roots will tangle and pulling them out unharmed becomes impossible.

ZM, the latest zinnia that you posted is absolutely stunning. If it were mine I would baby it as long as possible and try to get multiple clones from it. Then again, all of your results have been really nice. But I especially like this latest one.

Cheers to the nice weather.

Your zinnia starting methods seem to be working for you, and that's fine. I prefer to start my zinnias directly in 3.5-inch square pots to avoid moving tiny delicate seedlings. I used to sow them in rows in flats of starting medium and transplant the seedlings to pots in a scheme rather similar to yours. But I am not that skillful handling delicate seedlings, and I accidentally killed a few seedlings doing that. I think they say to hold them by their seed leaves, and not by their stems, and I tried that, but either way I managed to snap a few stems or pull off the top part of the seedling. With seed packet seedlings, that is not so traumatic, because each seedling is not particularly "special". But with hand-hybridized seedlings, you have more "invested" in each seedling, so I adopted what I consider to be a safer methodology for me.

"Mostly by coincidence the pot that I used to germinate the seedlings has a completely different soil composition that seemed to work well for this use. I believe it was at one time a commercial mix that by now has weathered through many seasons outdoors and a couple indoors. It's mostly sterile by now, maybe a bit of nitrogen left over. "

It is interesting that you are successfully re-using some starting medium. With the scheme I use, all of my growing medium winds up going into the garden with zinnia plants that are being set out. So I have to buy more growing medium each year. I use one of the Premier ProMix BX products. I am currently using the "plain" version, but last year I used their "Mycorise Pro" version that contains a beneficial mycorrhizal inoculum (Glomus Intradices). They have a third version that contains a natural biofungicide that I haven't tried.

I share your admiration of that last specimen. I don't think I have ever had one with such a tightly-packed center. This is another specimen that is in bloom now that has a kind of carnation look. It, too, has scabiosa-flowered ancestry.

The commercial scabiosa flowered varieties all have a problem with purity of their strains. Some are much worse than others, but typically only one in two dozen will be "nice". For a person who just wants to buy a packet of seeds and grow a nice patch of zinnias, that could be "a deal breaker". I expect to cull a lot of zinnias, so pulling up a lot of off-type scabiosa flowered zinnias is acceptable to me, in order to get the few good ones. Scabious zinnias have some good traits besides their unusual flower form. Their hedge-style plants are very branching and floriferous and their stems are long enough to be used as cut flowers. I will continue to grow them, looking for that occasional extra good one, which I will use as a "breeder". Crosses with them continue to yield happy surprises.

ZM

Since I have spent a fair amount of time cross-pollinating my trumpet petaled zinnia specimen, a big part of my suspense in growing zinnias this year will be how well those "trumpet petaled" genes perform in combinatioin and recombination with other zinnia genes.

This indoor zinnia specimen gives me a lot of hope that the trumpet petaled genes can have a favorable influence on flower form, even when they don't appear in F1 hybrids as trumpet petals. I think it is possible that the trumpet genes have potentialities other than the trumpet petals, which by themselves aren't particularly desirable.

As I mentioned before, one of the "tells" of trumpet heritage is a preponderance of three-armed stigmas. The female parent of this hybrid was a scabious specimen that received trumpet pollen, and this zinnia has a lot of three-armed stigmas, so I think there is a high probability that it had my original trumpet-petaled zinnia as its male parent. Besides the three-armed stigmas, it has other subtle changes. The individual florets have a more open tulip-like shape, which exposes their stigmas to pollination.

Both blooms in this picture are on the same plant. The young bloom in this stage consists mostly of modified guard petals, which give it the look of a marigold. Those guard petal modifications may be the work of the trumpet genes. The mature bloom has increased in volume with many rows of florets to a nearly spherical shape. It seems that the trumpet genes have produced rather subtle changes to the individual scabious florets. But rather small changes in petal form or floret form can have a serendipitous combined effect on flower form. This nearly spherical zinnia bloom is just one example of what is possible.

I am growing offspring seedlings from several probable trumpet hybrids indoors, and I plan to start setting them out into the garden in about three weeks. As usual, I expect a high rate of culls, but I am also hopeful about possible new petal traits and flowerforms from the recombinations with the trumpet-petaled genes. More later. I can hardly wait to see those second generation zinnias start to bloom.

ZM

I stumbled upon this site while looking for information about how to breed your own zinnias. I have five of them. The largest one has a bud waiting to pop and I can't WAIT till that happens. Then there are three medium ones that have 5-7 layers of leaves and are considerably shorter then the tallest one. Then there is my fifth one.

There MUST be something wrong with it. It has 5 sets of leaves and looks perfectly healthy HOWEVER it is only about as tall as the index finger. Could it be a genetic mutation? Could it simply be that I planted it in a smaller pot? Just wondering what you thought about it.

"It has 5 sets of leaves and looks perfectly healthy HOWEVER it is only about as tall as the index finger. Could it be a genetic mutation?"

First of all, welcome to GardenWeb. And we are glad to have you here in this zinnia message thread. In answer to your question, your short zinnia could be a genetic mutation. There are also cultivars of zinnias that are naturally short. They probably started as mutations. For example, Thumbelina starts blooming when it is only about 3 inches tall and their plants fill out to produce little bushes only about 6 inches tall. You can get some interesting results by crossing Thumbelina with giant zinnias.

Just out of curiosity, what variety of zinnias did you plant to get your five zinnia plants?

Also, if it isn't too much trouble, we would be interested in seeing pictures of your zinnias. There are several ways of presenting pictures here. I upload mine to Photobucket and insert links to them here. There are several other ways of showing pictures here. But for the time being, verbal descriptions are just fine.

You are lucky that you got a possibly unusual zinnia in only five plants. And it is good that you are observant. Like you, I am curious about how that one whose bud is about to open will look.

ZM

Well then... let's see if that will work...

If it DOES work then I'm sorry about the bad quality of the photo... I was using a terrible camera.

So... If you can see the photo, then you probably notice that the tiny zinnia is in a tiny pot. Besides its possibility of being a mutation, that is my second guess on why it might be so small. Also, you'll notice it only has four sets of leaves instead of five. Well the fifth set was on the very bottom (the baby leaves I guess) and they shriveled up and fell off. Since this happened with all of the zinnias, I'm assuming it's normal?

I really don't know what kind of zinnias they are. At school we were having a go green week and they gave everyone a pot and a choice of seeds. At the time, I picked the zinnia seeds because they looked so pretty on the bag. I stuck like five seeds in the hole I made with my finger and then carried the pot home.

When five little seedlings poked out of the ground, I decided to do some research about them. I transplanted them each into their own pot, using the meager supply of pots available. (well, that's not true, three of the plants SHARE a pot... but they are spread out so...)

I'm not really sure what I want to do with the middle sized ones that share a pot, but I think I am going to try and cross the tiny one and the big one together like you suggested. I can hand pollinate, right? (I did research on that too, seems easy enough)

Also, on that subject... My grandmother told me that scientists are developing some seeds that will only produce once, and then they just die... like they don't make new seeds or anything. She said you could still buy un-tampered with seeds, but if a bee with some of the tampered pollen mixed with your plant, the plant still wouldn't produce. I was just wondering if that was actually TRUE and if it is something I should worry about.

Judging from the picture, which is quite adequate for our purposes, I think the small one is small just because the pot it is in is so small. It's small root volume will keep it stunted. I doubt that it is a mutation. You seem to have done well with what you had available to you. Your zinnias are a little stretched, which means they probably don't have as much light as they would like in the window. But they seem to be growing OK so far.

"...the fifth set was on the very bottom (the baby leaves I guess) and they shriveled up and fell off. Since this happened with all of the zinnias, I'm assuming it's normal?"

That usually happens eventually. The new growth of zinnias sometimes "steals" nutrients from the older leaves, and the little seed leaves are the first to contribute. The mere fact that only the seed leaves have been affected so far means that your soil is pretty good. If zinnias have a nutrient problem, a lot of the lower leaves can be robbed of nutrients and die.

"My grandmother told me that scientists are developing some seeds that will only produce once..."

That is true. Seedless watermelons are a good example. You can buy seeds of seedless watermelon varieties, but since the watermelons are seedless, you obviously can't save seeds from them. Those seeds are produced by crossing a diploid (two sets of chromosomes) watermelon with a tetraploid watermelon (four sets of chromosomes) to produce triploid seeds (three sets of chromosomes). I grow seedless tomatoes (from Burpee) and obviously I can't save seeds from them. They are triploids. Anything with an odd number of sets of chromosomes is generally incapable of setting viable seeds. Commercial bananas are triploids, and hence seedless. Banana breeders work with diploid and tetraploid bananas that have seeds, and they have many odd bananas that have seeds. But people don't want to be spitting banana seeds, so the grocery store produce sections only get seedless triploid bananas. There are a few triploid marigold varieties that don't have viable seeds. Since they don't set seeds, they can produce more flowers without "going to seed".

After the danger of frost is passed where you live, you might want to transplant your zinnias outdoors to a sunny spot where their roots and they will have more room.

"She said you could still buy un-tampered with seeds, but if a bee with some of the tampered pollen mixed with your plant, the plant still wouldn't produce."

That is not something you need to worry about with your zinnias. Most zinnias are diploids, although there are a couple of tetraploid zinnia varieties (State Fair is the most common tetraploid zinnia). Let's say that a neighbor is growing some State Fair zinnias and a bee comes over to your diploid zinnias and accidentally dumps some State Fair pollen on them. If that happened, your zinnias could set some viable triploid seeds. Those seeds could grow into triploid zinnia plants, which could have pretty flowers, but couldn't set any viable seeds. They couldn't "go to seed" but they could continue to put out new flowers. You might even think that was a good thing.

Actually, we aren't sure that your zinnias aren't State Fair tetraploids. In which case, the bees could bring in some diploid zinnia pollen from a neighbor and create some triploid seeds that way. But either way is rather improbable. As far as I know, there is no seed company that produces triploid zinnia seeds. They would be expensive, and your grandmother would regard them as "tampered with" (grin). Triploid zinnia plants might be pretty good, though, for the same reason that triploid marigolds are good.

Keep us posted on your zinnia project. You have done quite well so far, transplanting successfully and growing inside successfully. Both of those things are not necessarily easy with zinnias. Your picture is quite helpful. Maybe you can find a spot outside where you can plant some more zinnias from seed planted directly in the ground. The more zinnias you can grow, the better your chances are of finding something especially good. Zinnias can be full of surprises.

ZM

"I don't have much hope for them."

They might pull through, especially if you don't let their remaining roots dry out. They might not have choked themselves to death if you hadn't separated them. Sometimes, when I have more than one zinnia in a pot, I snip out all but the best looking plant. And sometimes I let them all grow until they bloom and pick my favorite bloom and snip out the competing plants.

Multiple zinnias in the same pot do suffer from the competition, and some may succumb from the competition. Occasionally all survive. Sometimes you will see several of the compact type zinnias growing well in a window box or a container that is bigger than a pot.

If you were able to dig up a small spot in your backyard, you could transplant your potted zinnias into it or possibly plant a few more zinnias. But you know your situation better than I do. I am fortunate to have a big space that I can garden in, and zinnias get a large part of it. Keep us posted on your potted zinnia project. I am currently transplanting my indoor zinnias into my outdoor garden.

ZM

I had a bit of bad luck with the potting experiment because it turned out that 3/4 of the pots didn't have any holes drilled for drainage. The one that did drain is growing well. I lost a lot of little seedlings and a couple hours of work, but there's plenty more seeds and still time in the year. I'll get to planting more soon.

"Frustratingly, it looks exactly like the last few that I've grown. "

Just out of curiosity, what variety of zinnias are you planting? Those small single zinnias don't "ring a bell" with me as to a particular variety. I guess they could be Profusions, only the leaf in your picture looks more like a Z. elegans (aka Z. violacea). I can see why you could feel frustrated with them. Although, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

I usually consider single zinnias as culls. However, I can make an exception when a single zinnia appeals to me. I took this picture a few minutes ago of a single that reminds me a bit of the one in your picture, except the petals on this specimen are a little bit like small Pitcher Plants. Ironically, a tiny insect appears to be emerging from one of them. This zinnia is a recombinant from a hybrid between a descendent of my original trumpet-petaled mutant and one of my "regular" zinnias. I hope to get some better recombinations of the trumpet genes and other zinnia genes.

I think you should purchase some new zinnia seeds that appeal to you more, and plant them outdoors. Since you are also in Zone 5b, you should have a lot of growing season left. I make succession plantings of zinnias up until the middle of July. I think you have plenty of time to shop for zinnia seeds more to your liking and start over.

ZM

This one is the one that I said earlier was "getting ready to pop". Well it did. And after many technical difficulties, I finally managed a prettyish picture. However, this zinnia has a "minor" problem. It won't "stand up". What could be causing that? Is it fixable?

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This is my second flower. It started opening a couple of days ago. Despite it's drastic curve in its stem, I think it is beautiful as well... but its petals are kinda funky... Is that normal? Or is it a defect?

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Here is another one of my zinnias. I think it is doing pretty well and is likely to open any day now, but I do have a question about its leaves. If you look really closely, there are parts of them that are white. And these parts have purple veins. I think it looks quite pretty, but I'm worried its not simply a defect, but a disease or lack of nutrition or something as well. What do you think?

Just wanted to know what your opinion was, please write back.

"...it's a mix of a lot of different varieties from last year."

That last bloom is looking much larger. The structure of its center looks a bit unusual.

I still think you might enjoy growing some "new blood" with a packet or two of commercial zinnias. I plan to grow some commercial Whirligigs, and some Burpee Hybrids and Burpeanna Giants from Burpee, just to add to my zinnia gene pool.

One thing I have noticed is that I don't have any good big white zinnias, and I will be looking for cactus flowered whites, which I will mainly self or cross with other whites. White zinnias kind of intrigue me, because I know that many zinnia colors are based on natural dyes (magenta, violet, yellow, etc) that occur in the petals, but I don't know of any white "dye" or pigment that occurs in zinnias, so I am curious about what makes the white in white zinnia petals. It must be some specialized cells of some sort.

"The bugs around here seem to prefer pink to any other color."

Are any butterflies visiting your zinnias yet? I am seeing butterflies and hummingbirds in my zinnia patch. Anyway, keep showing us pictures of your zinnias.

ZM

That big yellow zinnia looks great. You might want to pick it in a few days and put it in a vase inside. That will let the plant develop side branches and more flowers.

"...but its petals are kinda funky... Is that normal? Or is it a defect?"

Zinnia petals can take on many different forms. Those upturned petals are just one form. I kind of like them, and do not consider it a defect. The participant JG has had some extremely upcurled petals in the last couple of years that really give her zinnia flowers a different look. I hope JG is able to establish that petalform as a strain, and she has had some success in that direction. You can find some pictures of JG's extreme curl zinnias if you look backward in this series of message threads.

"If you look really closely, there are parts of them that are white. And these parts have purple veins. I think it looks quite pretty, but I'm worried its not simply a defect, but a disease or lack of nutrition or something as well. What do you think?"

I think it might be some kind of mutation. Save seeds from that plant and see if its progeny have the same effect.

ZM

Donna,

"If you pinch them back, you'll get bushier plants..."

I totally agree with you, that you can get bushier zinnia plants by pinching them. Or you can pick the flowers to encourage more flowers. And, unless you deliberately want to save seeds, you should deadhead them to extend their blooming time. I like to give my zinnia plants room to grow, like in this picture.

I did not pinch these plants, because I wanted to see what their flowers would look like as soon as possible. I want to cull them if I don't like their flowers. But, as you can see, zinnias tend to be bushy if they have room to grow and don't have to stretch to try to get more light. However, I agree with you. Pinching out the central growing point even before it forms a bud will give you much bushier zinnias. If you pinch the side branches, too, you get some really nice zinnia plants. In the interests of speeding up my zinnia breeding, I usually want to see the central flower as soon as possible. If I like the flower, I can remove it to get more flowers on side branches. If I don't like the flower, I can remove the plant to make more room for the other plants, and more room for me to get in to pollinate and cross-pollinate my zinnias.

If you are growing any zinnias, we would like to see pictures of them. But you made a good comment.

ZM

Okay so I'm supposed to pick the flower? As a rookie zinnia breeder... how do I do that? (sorry if that sounds too... interrogative?

Andrearere123

Also, how exactly do I pinch the flower off... Do I just rip it off? Cut it off? Won't that kill the plant? If I take the flower off, will I still be able to harvest a couple seeds (which brings me right back to my previous question)

PLEASE write back. I'm dying to know these answers.

Hi Andrearere,

"Okay so I'm supposed to pick the flower? As a rookie zinnia breeder... how do I do that?"

I would cut the stem with scissors at a point about where the arrow is pointing in this picture.

Scissors will make a clean cut without damaging the plant. As an alternative to scissors, you can use a hand pruner if you have one. Some are actually made especially for cutting flowers. But almost any pair of scissors will do for cutting zinnia flowers.

"Also, how exactly do I pinch the flower off... Do I just rip it off? Cut it off? Won't that kill the plant?"

Scissors again. They won't kill the plant.

"How do I know if the seeds are ready? I've pulled out a couple petals in a vain attempt to see them for myself. I think its pollinated, but not sure if its matured."

Viable green seeds are noticeably fat and heavy as compared to unpollinated seeds, which are empty and light.

If you plan to store the green seeds for planting later, you should let them dry out for a week or two. If you plan to plant them immediately, they will germinate much faster if you open the seed coat in some way to give the embryo inside access to water.

The reason for doing that is that the seed coat of a green seed is alive and impervious to water. You can plant green seeds without breaching the seed coat, but they will take much longer to germinate because they have to wait until the seed coat dies and becomes permeable to water. That can take several weeks.

"If I take the flower off, will I still be able to harvest a couple seeds..."

Yes. You can display a zinnia flower or flowers in a vase for a few days, and then harvest green seeds from the flowers. I have done that on occasions. If you get a bouquet containing zinnias from a florist, there is a chance you can extract viable seeds from those flowers as well.

ZM

After examining my zinnia seeds... I think the plant is infertile... How do I fix that? Do I need two zinnia's flowering at the same time? I thought that a zinnia could self pollinate. Mentioning that... what are a zinnia's pollinators? I haven't seen any butterflies or hummingbirds like you mention in later strains... but there was a white spider for awhile and a couple beetle and/or fly looking bugs. And a wasp. I will cut the zinnia tonight, but how long will it take for the plant to start growing again?

Please write back soon!

Andrearere123

"...what are a zinnia's pollinators?"

As TC said, anything that can potentially knock the pollen from the floret to the stigma can pollinate a zinnia, including you. However, the primary pollinators are pollen gathering bees, including honeybees, bumblebees, carpenter bees, etc. The nectar feeders, like butterflies and hummingbirds, probably do a negligible amount of pollinating.

"Do I need two zinnia's flowering at the same time? I thought that a zinnia could self pollinate."

Zinnias can self pollinate, and the seeds that are borne at the end of the yellow star-shaped pollen florets are almost always selfed.

"I think the plant is infertile..."

It is not producing a lot of pollen, but there is a pollen floret showing in your closeup picture, near the center at about the 4 o'clock position. It is not showing up too plainly because the floret is yellow and the petals are yellow. Later flowers on the plant may produce more pollen. TC has answered your question of when you can expect a new flower after cutting this one. There is a variety of zinnias called "Cut and Come Again" that goes along with the idea that zinnias can product new flowers after you cut off the current flowers. Some varieties are better at that than others. I have had zinnia plants with 50 or more flowers open at the same time. However, most zinnias aren't so floriferous.

ZM

It looks like the center of that zinnia has subdivided into three different centers!!! That could be a mutation. I definitely would save seeds from that specimen to see what you get. There is plenty of time left to grow those seeds this year and save seeds from the progeny this Fall.

Right now, I would be rubbing some of those pollen florets on the stigmas at the base of the petals to maximize the number of seeds that you get. The pollen is freshest and most viable in the morning. And if you have bees, you have to get to the pollen before the bees do.

More later. I am putting together a butterfly feeder to put in my zinnia patch. That zinnia is getting interesting. Keep us posted on what it does.

ZM

Andrearere

"I'm afraid I might lose them, what should I do?"

Move the pots to a spot that is sheltered from the wind. If you can find some larger containers, repot them to larger containers. The problem may be that your zinnia's root systems aren't large enough to support the upper plants.

ZM

That is an unusual pale pastel pink. And the darker color of the center coordinates with the petals. I would be tempted to cross that with a white cactus flowered zinnia, to get that combination in a bigger flower with cactus-style petals.

I continue to be amazed at how many different colors zinnias can show. A few decades ago, Burpee introduced a strain of pastel colored cactus zinnias. It was named Luther Burbank in honor of the plant breeder, who, I have heard, supplied Burpee with his zinnia seed stock.

Like many good zinnia strains, Luther Burbank zinnias are no longer in the marketplace. I suspect that Luther Burbank zinnias were created by crossing various zinnia colors with good white zinnias.

Which reminds me, that I don't have any good white cactus zinnias at the present time. I am considering planting a separate bed of just white zinnia strains, in search of some extra good white specimens to intercross. I have some white cactus zinnia seed that I got from Hazzard's. I am hoping that, by having that bed at least 100 feet from my main zinnia garden, there will be only a small amount of contamination of the white zinnias with colored zinnia pollen by bees. Time will tell if that works. I assume you are going to save seed from that zinnia in the picture.

ZM

Hi all,

I have quite a few zinnias in bloom now. I am glad that some of the progeny of the trumpet-flowered mutant are coming true to the type.

I have several other progeny of the trumpet flowered mutant in bloom. I feel fairly confident that it is "in my gene pool" and that I will be seeing more progeny in the future. So far there has been no "knock your socks off" recombination involving the trumpet-style petals, but I am optimistic that if I grow enough recombinations with the trumpet genes that I will get something good. More later. This is a busy time for me.

ZM

I discovered a unique coloring in one of my zinnias recently:

I had no multi-colored zinnias last year, but this one came from the saved seeds. I liked it a bit more a few days ago when the pink gradient was more prominent. I think it's a mix between the "Red King" zinnias and my own random pink sort from last year. I did plant a few different types last year... random/unknown, Red King, a couple Zahara, and a couple Purity.

Hi TC,

It's interesting that you got a bi-color zinnia from apparently non-bicolor parents. Zinnias are full of surprises. I may have an unjustified prejudice against single zinnias, because I frequently cull them. Actually, single zinnias can look quite nice in the landscape. And butterflies and hummingbirds appreciate their usual abundant presentation of pollen florets.

I do like multicolored zinnias, and a quick way to get some multicolored specimens that you like is to grow some Whirligig zinnias. The Whirligigs at Stokes Seeds are an economical source of multicolored zinnias with a preponderance of double flowers. The Whirligigs at Parks are a good source of multicolors with a preponderance of daisy-like singles. From either source, you are getting a field-grown mixture, so some of them are random F1 hybrids, courtesy of the bees. Happy surprises are almost guaranteed.

I prefer the doubles, so I purchased a quarter pound of the Whirligigs from Stokes, and I am still "working on" that package of seeds from last year. I intend to plant the rest of them this year, and select for flower forms that I like. I will be looking for specimens with long narrow petals, like this one.

Crossing selected Whirligigs with other zinnias is a fun thing to do. I guess the bees enjoy that, too. This year I hope to renew my search for good "spider flowered" zinnias. I hope to get them in bicolor and tricolor forms as well.

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

This is another example of a Whirligig from last year that had a flower form that I liked.

This one didn't have nearly as much upcurl to its petals as jackier_gardener's "extreme curl" specimens, but it is a step in that direction. JG's extreme curls have inspired me. Whirligigs have a variety of flower forms, and this year I hope to select a few good ones for further development.

ZM

I've not been too active on this thread, but enjoy reading all the posts here! I have been holding my breath as far as rain goes....I planted my zinnias on May 16, and we've had a total of 0.05 inches of rain since! I watered the seeds finally with a watering can to get them germinated...and they have been on hold ever since...I think they live on what condensation appears early in the mornings! I finally watered the plants two days ago in anticipation of this very hot spell. I've been conservative with the water because we are on a well. On average, the plants are about 5-6" high now with some trying to put out buds. This is the worst gardening season I have ever seen!

The bags of topsoil I had used earlier worked fine for the early season crops, but when the dry weather took hold, I took the majority of the soil out of the bags, as I could see my first several tomato plants were struggling. You were right, ZM, the bags just don't cut it when hot, dry weather sets in. I'm finding, too that the topsoil I had in those bags is a terrible absorbant for water...I'll take my garden soil over that any time! Water actually rolls off the growing mixes, too, when they are hot and dry. I wonder why some sort of wetting agent isn't added!
Damping off surely isn't a problem now...

Those trumpet flowers are very interesting, ZM! I am so glad you have a hereditary trait there! Please keep posting those photos! I've got a number of Extreme Roll progeny coming up..it will probably be some time before I see any flowers or can show any photos! And there, I am optimistic...

JG

Hi JG,

It's good to hear from you again, JG. Please forgive me for referring to your "Extreme Roll" zinnias as "Extreme Curl". The word "roll" is much more appropriate for the geometry of their petals than the word "curl". I should have referred back to your messages instead of relying on my memory. Let's have a drum roll for Extreme Roll. Maybe that can serve as a mnemonic for me.

"I've got a number of Extreme Roll progeny coming up..it will probably be some time before I see any flowers or can show any photos! And there, I am optimistic... "

I am very hopeful that you will get some more Extreme Roll specimens. I have never seen a zinnia like them and, because they are so unique, their flowers have a magical look. I hope they get a permanent place in zinniadom.

"I'm finding, too that the topsoil I had in those bags is a terrible absorbant for water...I'll take my garden soil over that any time! Water actually rolls off the growing mixes, too, when they are hot and dry. I wonder why some sort of wetting agent isn't added!"

I wonder, too. I have a bag of Peat Moss that I had intended to use for inside gardening, but when it gets dry, it is just like you described. Water sets on top of it in beads. It takes forever for it to absorb the water. I'm going to give up on it and incorporate it in some outdoor garden soil. There is a small flower bed at the front of the house that I think I will incorporate it into, along with a dose of fill sand.

I think that Miracle-Gro is advertising some growing mixes that are kind of foolproof, and I think they also have some of those water absorbing crystals and the mix also kind of expands when it gets watered. And it may have a plant-friendly wetting agent. The TV ads for it look kind of enticing. It probably costs too much to use on a large scale, but I can see how it would be appropriate for small high-value flower beds.

I am building another compost pile. Weeds and lawn clippings are an almost inexhaustible source of organic matter in this rural environment. Well rotted compost and sand are two of my favorite soil amendments.

I mentioned a plant friendly wetting agent. Obviously there are such things. In the past I have used small amounts of Dawn dishwashing detergent in some of my foliar sprays. I am not sure of the chemistry of Dawn, but I have seen them using it to wash oil slicks off of waterfowl, so it is at least "bird friendly". However, some detergents are phytotoxic to plants. Some detergents can act as herbicides. I suppose I should do some experiments with Dawn on zinnias. I currently have some Tween 20 and Tween 80 that I have used in my indoor gardening. They are food grade, so hopefully they are safe to use. But I haven't done experiments with them to determine at what levels they might be phytotoxic.

"I finally watered the plants two days ago in anticipation of this very hot spell. I've been conservative with the water because we are on a well. On average, the plants are about 5-6" high now with some trying to put out buds. This is the worst gardening season I have ever seen! "

Same here. I have been using a lawn sprinkler on my zinnia patch to keep it from "burning up". And we have a rural well, too, and it will "run dry". When I see the water pressure starting to drop off, I turn off the sprinkler. The well recovers in a few hours. But this heat wave is going to be a continual problem for our well capacity.

This close-up of a trumpet-petal recombinant shows the petals in some detail. It is a single bloom, and single zinnias are usually culls for me.

But I am keeping this one around because it has an unusual "look". The petals remind me a bit of pitcher plants. That little beetle peeking out of a pitcher petal confirms that this is not a carnivorous plant. I do wonder, though, if a variation of this flower form could develop nutrient absorption capabilities that could produce a carnivorous strain of zinnias. Admittedly, that would be a real "stretch". But zinnias continue to surprise me with their odd variations.

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

That "Pitcher Plant" zinnia has since become very floriferous.

It's really not very attractive, but I will save seeds from it, in case some of its recombinant offspring look better.

ZM

Your Pitcher Plant zinnia does have a lot of flowers! Good, because you'll also be able to collect more seeds from it. Selfing it shouldn't be too bad--you've got a lot of pollen, there, too. Will you be crossing different pitcher progeny, too?

Germination wasn't the best for me this year for the unusual crosses..all the seed coming from Extreme Roll outcrosses didn't make it, nor did any seed from my selfed, tubular, pitcher-like plants make it! That may be a result of them being less fit, or just random bad luck!

I had what I thought were a lot of Profusion offspring growing up, but I can see now that I am getting volunteers from last years' haageanas!

We still have no rain...gone are the days of taking rain for granted as I have in the past! We are now in a "severe drought" area. I have to say though that among all my plants, once germinated, the zinnias are real troopers. It's a welcome sign to see some of them start to bloom, while many of the other flowers are just giving up.

I tried blueberries for the first time this year, and I know they would rather be in Maine. The leaves are burning up, although they are getting lots of water, applied right at the base of the small bushes.

JG

"Will you be crossing different pitcher progeny, too?"

I will, and I will be crossing different variations of the trumpet petaled genes, and out-crossing them to non-trumpet breeders as well.

"...but I can see now that I am getting volunteers from last years' haageanas!"

I got a few volunteers, but only one of them made breeder status. It was an echinacea flowered specimen. I probably would have gotten a lot more volunteers if I had not graded my zinnia patch to make it more level. A lot of zinnia seeds probably got buried under several inches of soil during that leveling process. I am not a "winter sowing" enthusiast, but I think I will plant a few "volunteers" early next year.

"We still have no rain...gone are the days of taking rain for granted as I have in the past!"

Same here. I water my zinnias with a lawn sprinkler when they start to show signs of wilting. When I plant zinnia seeds, I don't depend on rain, even if the storm clouds are beariong down. Rain is just too fickle to depend on it. We are starting to string 100-plus days together now.

"I tried blueberries for the first time this year, and I know they would rather be in Maine."

I never tried to grow blueberries, not even when we lived in Maine and had a favorable climate for them. It used to be there were a lot of wild blueberries that were picked for export. I understand that now there are a few fancy hybrid-bred varieties of blue berries for commercial farming. If blueberries really "catch on", I think plant breeders will create different blueberry varieties for different growing conditions. That has been done for grapes.

I have "branched out" and planted some seed sunflowers, tomatoes, corn, watermelons, okra and muskmelons and cantaloups. They got a late start, but I guess some of them may be part of a Fall garden.

ZM

This message thread has passed the 100 mark, and is understandably somewhat slow to load, so I am continuing it over at It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 18 for a "fresh" start.

I look forward to seeing you all over there.

ZM