Zinnia help

I am a veggie gardener for the most part, but this past summer after I picked my onions I decided to fill this one onion bed w/ Zinnias. I have never grown zinnias before, so I thought I would give it a try. I was quite surprised that they are so easy to grow. I prepped the bed w/ compost, and fertilizer, and planted approx 5 plants my wife purchased at the local box store. I also purchased some seeds of various variety. I planted the seeds w/ the 5 plants I planted. After a couple of months the bed was in full bloom. I noticed that the flowers do not seem to fade. It seems other flowers I have planted around the yard bloom then the bloom falls off after a while. Zinnias won my affection. Just plant and water, and enjoy the view. Very impressed. I do not know what variety I planted so after the recent freeze I tried to collect the seed from the dead plants. I want to plant more zinnias in the spring. I have recently raised an older bed in my front yard tomato bed. The bed is 3 ft. by 20 ft. I want to plant the zinnias between the bed boards, and the side sidewalk. The bed runs east to west. Please see picture, and I will continue the post in my reply to myself.

Questions:
1. Are the seeds I collected still good after they froze?
2. When do I plant the seeds this spring?
3 Will there be enough sun where I want to plant the zinnias. The box will have tomato plants. The plants will get over 6 feet high. In the picture above there is a 6 foot tomato plant due west of the zinnia bed so it was shaded from the hot afternoon sun. This now situation will be different. As the morning sun comes up the bed will be in full sun, but as the sun moves across the sky the zinnias will be shaded by the tomato plants. Thanks for your help. I hope this makes sense.

One more picture before I raised the bed. Left is west, and right is east.

hornstrider,

Zinnias are a favorite of mine, and I grow and breed them as a hobby.

"Are the seeds I collected still good after they froze?"

Freezing does not kill all zinnia seeds. It may kill some of them, although I haven't done any experiments to determine whether freezing even hurts them. I have had zinnias come up volunteer after winters in which they had to survive sub-zero temperatures. I don't hesitate to save zinnia seeds that have frozen, although I usually collect them long before a frost. We have a lot of seed-eating birds in this area that will eat zinnia seeds, so I either protect my zinnia seedheads with "hairnets" or gather them early in the green seed stage and dry them out. There are still a few dead zinnias with seedheads on them in my garden right now, and I plan to harvest them on some dry sunny day. But my choicer seeds were gathered considerably before our first frost.

"When do I plant the seeds this spring?"

Certainly not until after the last killing frost. Zinnias can't take frost. I usually start some zinnias indoors and set them out from mid-May to Memorial Day. Your Austin area climate is considerably warmer then mine, so you could probably plant zinnias at least a month earlier than I could. My zinnias planted outdoors in-ground usually come up quicker and better if I wait until about June 1st or later to plant them. Zinnias germinate faster in warm soil. I grow quite a few zinnias, so I find it convenient to make successive plantings, stopping before the end of July. You have a considerably longer growing season than I do.

"Will there be enough sun where I want to plant the zinnias?"

Probably. Zinnias prefer "full sun", but that is open to some interpretation. I have grown zinnias in nearly full shade, but they were very susceptible to powdery mildew in that situation, and I had to keep them alive by drenching them with a systemic fungicide. You don't want any systemics near any kind of edible plants. Green Cure is a safe non-systemic non-toxic spray for Powdery Mildew and many other foliage diseases. However, foliage diseases are rare in zinnias in warm sunny conditions. If you are interested, these are links to some information about Green Cure.

http://www.greencure.net/why_is_greencure_fungicide_better.asp

http://www.greencure.net/what_is_greencure.asp

http://www.greencure.net/plant_diseases.asp

East-West is a good bed orientation for good use of the sunlight. But since tomatoes generally grow taller than zinnias, it would be better for the zinnias if they were south of the tomatoes. The zinnias would cast less shade on the tomatoes than the tomatoes would cast on the zinnias.

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

Zen man...thank for the imput...i am posting from a new phone, and I dont quite have the skill to complete a sentence....I will ask questions later...thanks

Hornstrider,

I'll keep an eye out on this thread for your questions.

ZM

Hello Zen Man,
I wonder if you would answer a few more zinnia questions. Can you tell me which types are the best for cutting flowers? I grew some year before last, I think they were Benary; they got extremely large and needed staking. Next year, I'd like to grow large, vibrant zinnias but not the type that would need staking. Any advice?
Also, how do you breed zinnias?
Thanks Much,
Marlene

Hi Marlene,

Benary's Giants are bred for the cut-flower Florist trade, and have long strong stems for that purpose. Oklahoma is an improved strain of Cut-and-Come-Again zinnias that are meant for cut flower use, but on lower bushier plants and with medium-sized flowers. Burpee's Burpeeana Giants are large flowered zinnias on a medium height plant. Burpeeanas are one of my favorites.

"Next year, I'd like to grow large, vibrant zinnias but not the type that would need staking. Any advice?"

My advice would be to grow some Burpeeana Giants and to space the plants farther apart. However, any zinnias will stretch up tall to compete for light if they are crowded too close together. Also, pinch the central stem to encourage branching. Some people wait for that first flower bud to form and then pinch it out. It may be better to pinch a bit before that, after three or four sets of true leaves have formed. And you can pinch the lateral branches, if you wish, for even bushier plants. By trial and error you can develop the pinching technique that works best for you.

As a hobbyist who breeds zinnias for fun, I am frequently so impatient to see what a hand pollinated zinnia bloom will look like that I don't pinch the central stem. And I am trying to grow a lot of zinnias to get the advantage of numbers, so I usually plant my zinnias too close together, with the idea that I will thin them at bloom time by culling out the disappointing ones and keeping the "good" ones, which I call "breeders". But that leaves me with a problem, tall favorite zinnias with no surrounding zinnias for support, and of course those Kansas winds. My solution is to use hand-made tomato cages and/or stakes made of re-bars for support. This coming year I plan to expand my zinnia garden so that I can space my zinnias a bit farther apart and pinch some of them for bushier plants.

"Also, how do you breed zinnias?"

It can be quite easy, or it can be as advanced as you want it to be. I am still learning. Zinnias are naturally variable, so the simplest technique is to look your zinnias over carefully and pick your favorites and save seeds from them. That one simple thing can make a big difference, and repeating it can make a huge difference.

Sometimes a favorite zinnia isn't putting out a lot of pollen, so you can "be the bee" and pick some of its pollen florets and rub them on the stigmas of the bloom. And don't forget to look under the petals for stigmas that have been concealed by new petals. A zinnia stigma can remain receptive for several days, so you have multiple opportunities to pollinate it. A stigma will wither within a day once it is pollinated successfully. That can increase the seed yield of that bloom remarkably. The zinnia stigmas can be quite accessible, as you can see in the attached picture. They are the little yellow "forked tongues" at the base of each petal.

A zinnia bloom develops over a period of weeks, with new petals emerging daily, and by repeatedly pollinating it, you can get 50 or more seeds from a bloom and perhaps many hundreds of seeds from just one zinnia plant. Just one favorite zinnia plant could conceivably be the basis for an entire zinnia garden next year. And because of the natural variability of zinnias, that zinnia garden would have a lot of variations of your favorite plant, some of which, perhaps many of which, you would like even better than your original favorite.

You can get even better results by cross pollinating your favorite zinnias. Zinnias put out new pollen florets in the morning, and that is the best time to use them to pollinate or cross pollinate, while the pollen is still fresh. The florets are the familiar fuzzy yellow star-shaped objects that appear in the center of the zinnia bloom. You can pick them and handle them with tweezers, twissors, or forceps. Whatever is handy for you. My fingers are too big to handle florets with just my fingers. Zinnia pollen won't keep from one day to the next, and loses its potency in only a few hours. I like to pick the pollen florets just as the fresh pollen is starting to spill out, so that I get it before the pollen-gathering bees get to it. For really special breeder specimens, I sometimes place "hairnets" over their blooms to keep the bees away from them. I make those nets from inexpensive netting fabric. We didn't have a lot of bees last year, so I didn't have to do a lot of that. We had a lot of butterfly and hummingbird activity, but they don't bother the pollen much. They are just after the nectar.

And I don't obsess about the bees too much. Sometimes they can do you a favor by creating a cross that you didn't think of. Maybe even with one of your neighbor's zinnias. A significant number of seeds that are produced in an open pollinated zinnia field are actually from random F1 hybrids that were created by the bees, and the bees may even cross pollinate some of those hybrids to produce the seeds that wind up in your seed packet. That is one of the reasons that zinnias are so variable. The usual advice is not to save seeds from any F1 hybrid but, despite that "conventional wisdom", anyone who has grown zinnias has grown some seeds from F1 hybrids, and even hybrids of hybrids, courtesy of the bees.

That is because a percentage of the zinnias in any open pollinated zinnia field are already F1 hybrids (or even hybrids of hybrids) that were made by bee pollination of the seed stock seeds. The only really non-variable zinnias are the commercial F1 hybrid zinnias, which are created from bee pollination of isolated inbred males and special male-sterile "femina" zinnias. I don't think that any commercial zinnia seeds are actually hand pollinated. It would just cost too much. I look forward to growing seeds from my F1 hybrids, and even hybrids of hybrids. That is the way that rose breeders work, and many other plant breeders as well. So don't let any "conventional wisdom" hold you back. A hobbyist zinnia breeder is free to do lots of things that just aren't economically feasible for the commercial seed producer. You can hand cross any zinnia with any other zinnia in your garden.

Breeding your own zinnias can be enjoyable in many ways. Picking your favorite zinnias gives purpose to just looking at your zinnias. You are the matchmaker when you are deciding how to pollinate or cross pollinate your zinnias. I never cease to enjoy the anticipation of waiting for a hand-pollinated zinnia bloom, or any zinnia bloom, to open for the first time. It can be fun to "be the bee."

ZM


This message was edited Dec 23, 2011 12:15 PM

I planted zinnias in my zone 5 garden for the first time last summer. I had also planted dahlias in the same bed, and the two flowers went crazy in my after-12:00-full-sun garden. We started this bed last year, and I have been adding manure and sand to try to break up the miserable clay soil, so it was delightful to see them thrive.

The zinnia flowers held their old petals, continuing to produce new ones, and held onto those till the end, when I harvested the seeds. I do not recall the variety, but they grew to about 30" tall.

Dr. zen man......you are awesome .....it is late here, but I just wanted to say thank you for your detailed advice to us newbys......I have many more questions, so please check back to this thread.......just a quick note....my father in law got me intrested in gardening....he used to grow zinnias, and sold them to florests in houston......he was a wonderful man, and I miss him. ......I would like to keep the zinnia legacy going for my five children....I am a tomato gardener, and trying to expand my efforts.....thank you sir.

Hi Hornstrider,

"I am a tomato gardener, and trying to expand my efforts..."

I grow a few tomatoes. My favorite variety is Burpee's Seedless Tomatoes. I have several plants of them growing inside right now. I have grown them ever since Burpee introduced them a few years ago. I prefer the eating qualities of the seedless ones.

I will probably wait a couple of weeks before setting my tomatoes into the garden. I think we had our last killing frost several weeks ago, but we have had three frost warnings in the last two weeks, and another cold night coming in a few days. Today was a Summer-like day, and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer. But cooler weather is in our forecast.

I expect to have my biggest zinnia garden yet this year. I planted several zinnias indoors last January and cross pollinated them and I have seedlings from those crosses growing inside right now. I'll be setting them into the garden in two or three weeks. They will be my second generation of zinnias this year, and I expect to cross selections from them to obtain seed for a third generation of zinnias outdoors. It's possible that seed from them will produce a fourth generation of zinnias indoors this late Fall and early Winter. You can make quite a bit of progress in four generations of zinnias. This is a picture of one of my first generation "breeder" zinnias that is still in bloom. I kind of like its "different" flower form.

ZM

I'll throw out a tip that works for my zinnias. Mine are only in a partly sunny spot, they get afternoon shade and so they are susceptible to powdery mildew. So now I spray them with a milk mixture - before they show signs of it. I just use any leftover milk that my kids didn't finish and mix with water - about 10 to 30% milk, the rest water, and spray on the plants. I do it maybe once a week and if I get any mildew at all, it's much later in the summer than I used to see it. It seems to work best as a preventative, once they get the mildew, the milk doesn't really seem to stop it.

Cindyeo, would this milk spray concoction be effective on phlox?

I think it works for any powdery mildew

Another "safe" control for Powdery Mildew on zinnias, and other plants as well, is a product called GreenCure.

http://www.greencure.net/why_is_greencure_fungicide_better.asp

GreenCure is based on Potassium bicarbonate (an ingredient in some baking powders) and is completely non-toxic. In addition to Powdery Mildew, GreenCure is also effective against a number of other foliage diseases.

http://www.greencure.net/plant_diseases.asp

The disadvantage of GreenCure is that Potassium bicarbonate is very soluble in water, so any rain, or even a really heavy dew, will wash it right off. Also, it is not systemic, so new growth that appears after you sprayed it on is not protected. For those reasons, you need to spray with GreenCure frequently for effective protection.

When possible, I prefer to use systemic compounds, because they are absorbed within the plant and are translocated in the plant sap to new growth, which is also protected. You don't need to worry about rain washing systemics off, because they are inside the plant, and you don't need to apply them frequently for continuing protection. Obviously you should not apply systemics to any edible plants. In those relatively rare cases when I need to protect my zinnias from Powdery Mildew, I use a product containing Tebuconazole. There are several such products. Tebuconazole is a systemic fungicide. It essentially makes my zinnias immune to Powdery Mildew.

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