Temperatures dropping in NW PA - have had a beautiful August and September. First frost cannot be too far away. Like both your candidates - but partial to the first one.

Hi all,

We finally got a killing freeze a few days ago. My outdoor zinnias are dead, but I am still saving seeds from them. Will be re-starting my indoor zinnia project soon. I am attaching a few pictures from my South Garden before the frosts and freezes occurred.



The white stuff on that first picture was some sort of "spider stuff " that was floating in the air, and just settled there. Still lots of zinnia hobby stuff to do.

ZM

I've been collecting seeds also. Garden is dried out but not frozen yet. Still it looks like heck so it's fun to plan for next year.

Hi, enjoyed/enjoy reading and learning here. I usually grow commercial zinnia seeds every year for cut flowers. I noticed a comment from someone that the largest came from a California giants mix. I have usually been somewhat disappointed with the California giants mixes that I have purchased in that I was not only looking for large flowers, but with those that I would call fully doubled, or with many petals. I also like to just direct sow my zinnia seeds. However, based on the price of some, I start them indoors. This year that included Benary's Giant mix and Zinderella. Although I wanted to put in the ground and least 12 plants each, I ended up with four (4) Benary plants and three (3) Zinderella due to root eating gnat larvae. (FYI, my State inspector says they are NOT fungus gnats ??, but another type fly gnat, and he named them, but I forgot the name as I was going to verify that he was in fact giving me correct information.)

The Zinderella are supposed to be the crested or powderpuff types. Only one of the three produced the powderpuff type flowers; the others only produced single flowers, which was very disappointing to me. I also direct sowed about a 7' or 8' row of what is called 'Candy Mix' and was supposed to be the crested type, but all produced single flowers. I think this frustrated my plans and hopes of doing a little manual pollinating and saving of seeds, and so I gave up hope this year.

I usually also grow a mix of the Cactus type. So first question, I noticed I could get the Cactus type in a tetraploid version. I'm guessing this will not cross with the other types? Either way, should the tetraploid version cross with itself or be a seed producer from open pollination?

On a like note, so then you mentioned in one of your posts that the Zahara series (Zinnia marylandica) will not cross with the others. But from any knowledge here (since you ZenMan, made an indication that you do not grow them); are seeds easily harvested from the Zahara series to produce like?

But my actual and most important question is regarding color? ZenMan, from what I understand from reading the posts here, is that you don't always isolate, nor save specifically, your seeds in recording individual plants and colors, etc. But from what you can recall, do you have any knowledge input about resultant seedling color?

Why I ask this, and would love to know more about color breeding, is because out of those four (4) Zinnia Benary mix, I got one absolutely beautiful red. For the last four years I've grown the Giant Cactus mix, but have yet to see a red of that color, or any red for that matter. Most of the Cactus mix I've grown seem to be orange, with some pink, lavender, yellow and white. I would love to breed into the Cactus mix a red. ZenMan, (or whoever has done some breeding and growing out of the Zinnia seedlings) how would you go about it? Do you think that using for instance an orange Cactus flower as the seed producer x the Benary Giant red would be the best method? From breeding daylilies with respect to color, a RED x ORANGE usually produces one or the other of those two colors or sometimes throws a yellow. Or PINK x RED should also produce reds. Does anyone else often see RED in their Cactus mix. I feel like I can purchase Benary individual color RED, but I haven't seen the Giant Cactus in individual colors.

So then also, which, in your opinion, gives most to the flower form, the seed producer plant; or the pollen donor?

Here's the Benary red:

Hi Teresa,
First of all, welcome to this message thread on breeding your own zinnias. You have covered a lot with your first message, made many good comments, and posed many relevant questions. I will address at least some of them, in no particular order. Your red Benary picture is a somewhat light rose red, which is a delicate cool red. Zinnias are capable of many subtly different colors, including many subtly different reds.

" For the last four years I've grown the Giant Cactus mix, but have yet to see a red of that color, or any red for that matter. ... I would love to breed into the Cactus mix a red. "

You are right that commercial cactus mixes seem to be predominately oranges and pinks. Bees pollinate randomly, and orange and pinks seem to be dominate zinnia colors.

" ...but I haven't seen the Giant Cactus in individual colors. "

Hazzards sells Giant Cactus zinnias in the separate colors red, orange, purple, pink, white, and yellow.

http://www.hazzardsgreenhouse....

Unfortunately they have the wrong picture at that link (I just emailed them about that), and the actual picture of a red cactus zinnia seems to be at their listing for an orange cactus zinnia.

http://www.hazzardsgreenhouse....

Despite the picture mix-ups, red cactus flowered seed is available commercially, and would be a good starting point to select out and perfect a good strain of red cactus flowered zinnias. As you have already discovered, many (perhaps all) commercial zinnia strains are in serious need of purification and selection for better on-type specimens.

" So then also, which, in your opinion, gives most to the flower form, the seed producer plant; or the pollen donor? "

I don't think it matters. What does matter is which genes are dominant and which genes are recessive. Dominant genes can come from either the seed producer or pollen donor, as can recessive genes.

" ...you don't always isolate, nor save specifically, your seeds in recording individual plants and colors, etc. But from what you can recall, do you have any knowledge input about resultant seedling color? "

I do keep a detailed journal of my zinnia breeding, and each breeder zinnia receives a unique "code" consisting of a letter denoting the year of the designation (my designations for 2016 all begin with the the letter "J") and a number starting at 1 and incrementing for each new selected breeder specimen that year. Each breeder specimen gets a page in the journal, telling several details about that breeder, including the code for its maternal (seed) parent, the date it was planted, physical properties of the plant and bloom including petal color(s), petal form, bloom form, plant habit, and which breeder or breeders it was pollinated with. So when I plant a bunch of breeder seedlings I do know the color of their seed parent. The colors of the seedlings will certainly be influenced by the maternal color, but recombinations of the maternal genes and recombinations of the paternal genes have the potential for creating a variety of colors in the seedlings.

Their is really a lot of "meat" to this zinnia color subject, including the nature of the organic chemicals that produce the zinnia colors, and recombinations of genes that occur in the cellular processes of meiosis that produce the egg cell and the pollen grain that united to form the embryo of the seedling.

There are many points in your message that I haven't gotten to here, but this is starting to become rather long, so I will pause for the time being. More later.

ZM

The last of some of mine Gone after the third frost in a row night before last , Had a few reds that were nice this year , ZenMan , love the special Zinnia .. still and always

jimard8 said: The last of some of mine Gone after the third frost in a row night before last , Had a few reds that were nice this year , ZenMan , love the special Zinnia ..

Hello JIm,

Great zinnia pictures. So, are you saving seeds from any of your zinnias? I will be busy saving seeds from some of mine today and tomorrow. Friday a serious cold front is scheduled to roll in here, with some possible precip, so my guess is that I will be doing some indoor zinnia prep work then. This freaky warm Fall has kept me busy working outdoors when I would normally be setting up my indoor zinnia project. But I am getting a head-start on next Spring's outdoor work, so it is all good.

In previous years I have usually had some serious damage to my zinnia seed-heads from seed-eating birds, like finches and such, but last year I put up a bunch of pinwheels in my zinnia garden to see if the Sun flashing off of them would scare the birds, and it seemed to work. But it could have been just a coincidence. So this year I repeated the pinwheels thing, using even more pinwheels, and once again -- no significant zinnia seed damage from birds.

Once again, it could have been just a coincidence. But you can bet that next year the pinwheels will be up again in numbers. They are much easier to do than string up bird netting.

ZM

Hello Teresa,

I am about to go out in my garden to save a few more zinnia seeds, but I do want to comment on this:

" I usually also grow a mix of the Cactus type. So first question, I noticed I could get the Cactus type in a tetraploid version. I'm guessing this will not cross with the other types? Either way, should the tetraploid version cross with itself or be a seed producer from open pollination? "

First of all, I am totally impressed that you even know about the availability of commercial tetraploid Cactus zinnia seed. I wouldn't know about them if I didn't have the GeoSeed catalog.

I became very interested in tetraploid zinnias a few years ago when it occurred to me that the tetraploid zinnias, with 48 chromosomes instead of the usual 24, might be resistant or immune to Powdery Mildew. So I inter-planted a bunch of tetraploid zinnias (Burpee's Tetras and State Fair) with "regular" zinnias in a semi-shade spot that was highly susceptible to Powdery Mildew. I expected the tetraploid zinnias to at least show resistance to PM, if not be completely immune. Sadly, they were just as covered with Powdery Mildew as their diploid companions. No PM advantage from tetraploidy at all. So I gave up on tetraploids. If that experiment had worked, all of my zinnias today would be tetraploids. But that was not to be.

But in answer to your question, you or the bees can cross tetraploid zinnias with diploid zinnias to create triploid hybrid seeds. And the triploid zinnia seeds grow nicely to produce admirable triploid zinnia plants. The triploid zinnia plants can even set apparently good seeds. I inadvertently grew a triploid cactus zinnia plant, apparently a bee cross from my Powdery Mildew experiment, and I got a huge seed set from it because it was a huge plant, but none of those hundreds of triploid set seeds germinated. I got zero seedlings out of maybe a couple of thousand apparently good triploid seeds.

I gave up on the idea of triploid zinnias because I didn't want to find myself in the situation of getting a fantastic new zinnia with no way to propagate it, other than from cuttings or tissue culture. But there are possible reasons why you might want to produce and grow triploid zinnias, and I will go into that in a subsequent message. My zinnia seedheads are calling to me to come and get them. More later. This triploid zinnia thing deserves full consideration.

ZM

ZenMan said:
Hello JIm,

Great zinnia pictures. So, are you saving seeds from any of your zinnias? I will be busy saving seeds from some of mine today and tomorrow.

ZM

Sure ZM, I will save several ( I usually do ) some of those I have been growing since the early 2000's . This years Candy Cane I will save also . The next two days I have several seeds to collect and save ,
Then cold ,cloudy wet weather sets in permanent for fall and winter .

I harvested all my dried zinnia flower heads and was disappointed that most seeds were dry and hollow. Some mixed in were hard and appear viable, but do zinnias usually have low seed rates, or perhaps the giant zinnias I grew don't produce much viable seed given the amount of energy used for those blooms. Either way I got some seed but I was hoping to share some and now I barely have enough for myself

Hi Keith,

Next year, "be the bee" and hand-pollinate your favorite zinnias. And while you are doing that, you might want to try a few cross-pollinations of your choosing.

ZM

ZenMan said:Hi Keith,

Next year, "be the bee" and hand-pollinate your favorite zinnias. And while you are doing that, you might want to try a few cross-pollinations of your choosing.

ZM

I did that and they had so much pollen. I only did it for two days, so maybe only a few seeds got pollinated.

Thanks ZM, for all your input!

So is there any advantage at all to growing tetraploid zinnias? Are they larger, produce better or more clearer colors?

And thanks for the info regarding Hazzards. I'll have to remember to check them for a source for individual color zinnias.

I bought some large organza drawstring bags at Walmart found in the gift/wedding department area, to cap off (hopefully) a few breeder zinnias next year.

I forgot to plant some Whirligig seeds this year. I loved them last year; and hope to plant more again upcoming 2017. I was looking at your photos, ZM, in the database. I see that there are no details with respect to that variety. I've seen them also listed as Whirlygig. I too think that breeding with those would be fun.

Hi Teresa,

" So is there any advantage at all to growing tetraploid zinnias? Are they larger, produce better or more clearer colors? "

The following is a quote from page 347 of the book Flower Breeding and Genetics, edited by Neil O. Anderson. The quote is in Chapter 12, Zinnia by Dennis Stimart and Thomas Boyle.

" Relative to diploids, tetraploid zinnias have larger flowers and thicker, stronger stems but also have poorer seed germination, less branching, delayed flowering, and fewer capitula. Difficulties also occur with producing autotetraploid lines with a uniform phenotype due to additional alleles affecting ligule color and plant habit. "

By way of explanation, capitula = bloom and ligule = petal. My own experience growing both tetraploid zinnias and diploid zinnias is that I prefer the diploid zinnias. Those "larger flowers" and "thicker, stronger stems" advantages didn't seem that significant.

In my opinion, the main reason for growing tetraploid zinnias would be that you wish to use them to cross with diploid zinnias to produce triploid zinnias. I will go into the advantages and disadvantages of triploid zinnias in a subsequent message. More later.

ZM

Hi Teresa,

It is a little cool outside this morning, so I will discuss triploid zinnias now. I think there actually is, or was, a commercial triploid marigold. Its "claim to fame" was that it didn't set viable seeds, so it didn't need deadheading and could grow bigger better plants with more blooms and longer lasting blooms, because it didn't waste its energy producing seeds.

In the case of zinnias, triploidy can produce some notable results. A case in point is my "shrub zinnia". It appeared in a bed of my cactus flowered zinnias in 2011 as a medium sized orange cactus bloom. At first I didn't notice anything unusual about it, but by the end of August I couldn't not notice it, because its plant had become a sprawling bush covered with blooms.

The plant was still a growing expanding thing at the time those pictures were made. It got considerably larger. At that time triploidy hadn't even entered my mind about it, and I considered it as a mutant zinnia with a very unique shrub-like plant. It was producing a sparse amount of pollen, but I used it every morning, and pollinated its many blooms with pollen from a wide variety of my breeder zinnias at that time. I do that for any notable zinnia mutant. Incidentally, its breeder designation was E13 and that Fall I collected several thousand seeds from E13's over-a-hundred seed heads.

I discard my zinnia plants to our local landfill each Fall (I have two contractor bags full and taped and waiting for our trash pickup tomorrow) to cut down on spreading zinnia diseases, and when I was pulling up E13 for Fall cleanup I discovered that it had many branches lying horizontally on the ground and each of them had sprouted its own root system along a considerable length of each branch. Zinnias can develop an extensive main root system off of their taproot, but the root system on E13 was almost tree-like. I wondered if I had the potential for creating a ground-cover zinnia.

I also had serious misgivings about growing shrub zinnias indoors, because a single plant could easily overflow one of my plant shelves. But I thought, worst case, I could put the pot on the concrete floor of the basement and put an HID lamp on the ceiling over it. So I planted a tray of E13 seeds along with many other trays of indoor breeders that Fall. I was almost relieved when none of them germinated. I planted a few of them in subsequent years, also with no germination. So I was becoming suspicious this year, and I planted my entire supply of several thousand E13 seeds in outdoors beds this Spring. Not a single plant emerged. That is when it finally dawned on me that E13 must have been a triploid.

My E13 triploid zinnia raised questions of whether a shrub zinnia or a ground-cover zinnia was even a good thing. But triploid zinnias are "a thing", and you might want to consider them as a source of cut flowers. A hundred zinnia blooms from a single zinnia plant is a definite possibility. But it is probably easier to just grow a hundred zinnia plants.

ZM

I read a question here about zinnia marylandica. I don't know anything about tetraploids but I saved seeds in 2015 from zinnia Zahara Sunburst. These are short branching, xeric and they bloom like crazy all summer long.
The 2016 plants that I grew from those seeds seemed identical to the parent plants. So I saved seeds again this year and will grow them in 2017 since we had such great results.

Hi Judy,

" The 2016 plants that I grew from those seeds seemed identical to the parent plants. So I saved seeds again this year and will grow them in 2017 since we had such great results. "

You are smart to save seeds from your Zaharas. Unfortunately, a lot of people are afraid to do that, because of their hybrid origin. But the seed companies save open pollinated Zahara seeds and sell them to you. So why shouldn't you save your own seed? Considering how expensive the Zahara seeds are, you are saving a ton of money by saving your own seeds. And you can afford to plant them generously, for better looking displays.

Feel free to post pictures of your zinnias here.

ZM

Here are the Zahara zinnias I grew from saved seeds. I forgot to take pictures when they were at their peek in summer but I took some last month when they were attracting migrating monarchs. Amazing plant that blooms nonstop.

I am joining this conversation late, but I wonder if you use any heat source on your indoor zinnias?

I use a seedling mat for mine because they are in the basement and we are expected to be 14° below zero (-14F) for the next couple of nights.

It is obviously warmer in my basement because it is an enclosed space connected to my house but I don't want to take my chances.