What happened to my zinnias

Last year I bought various color packs of double cactus and dahlia zinnias from the same company.
I started them in coffee filters and transplanted them right away. Every single one
was not double but single with a huge cone center. Did I do something wrong? Or was it the seeds?

BTW, Crossman's Seeds is an old company with great seeds and service. They carry older varieties but they are the ones that people love. The prices range from
.59 to .89 a generous pack.

This message was edited Feb 11, 2010 11:56 AM

Probably the seeds.Try buying the same flower seeds from a couple of sellers.Grow them and compare results.???Edge

Common problem.

Transplanting Z's without paying proper (too much) attention to their comfort kills 2X flowers. I did the same twice before somebody on DG showed me that transplanting is not nice to Zinnias!
Wishing you a much better year of Flowers.
Even though, right outside the window, there is nearly 2 feet of snow, lol!!

~Daniel

Looking Up Crossman's Seeds...

Gloria,

"Did I do something wrong? Or was it the seeds? ...The prices range from
.59 to .89 a generous pack."

It was probably the seed's fault. For a seed producer to produce high quality seeds, they have to hire people to go into the seed fields and "rogue" the plants. That means to destroy all of the plants that are substandard. It costs money to hire those people, and seed producers who are marketing cheap seeds don't hire anyone to rogue their fields.

Since single zinnias produce more pollen, they produce more seeds. Without human intervention, over a period of years, a field of zinnias will "run out" and become predominately single. This is another example of "you get what you pay for".

I think that Daniel is right, that the stress of transplanting can also cause a zinnia to be less double than it would be otherwise. I have seen that warning in seed catalogs, the Park Seed catalog, for example. I don't seem to have that problem re-potting my indoor zinnias, but re-potting a zinnia doesn't disturb its roots, because the root ball remains intact. However, digging up a zinnia plant in the garden and moving it to a new hole unavoidably causes a lot of root breakage. I was never able to do that without seriously stunting the zinnia, so I quit doing it.

ZM