Viewing post #1279383 by ZenMan

John_fender said:I took a few pics of that zinnia you mentioned it changed quite a bit in colour and form with time. It looked like a zowie bloom at the start ! What do you think of those changes ?

Those changes look like natural aging changes to me. It does look something like a Zowie, which is a good thing, because Zowie is an expensive F1 hybrid zinnia.

John_fender said:Yes those were the whirligigs (stokes seeds) direct sown in june that the earwigs munched on Until August and now made a come back. I found that when flowers started blooming in the garden, the earwigs stopped eating the leaves and were instead eating the pollen which I didn't mind.

I really detest earwigs. I quit mulching my zinnias with compost and other organic material because I discovered that the earwigs lived in the organic compost. I now mulch my zinnias with sand to avoid the earwig problem. Earwigs don't like sand. The sand falls in the category of a "dust mulch". Pillbugs also can't stand sand, which is another advantage of the sand.

ZM