Hi Loretta,
" You have inspired me to buy zinnia seeds this year but I never planted them unfortunately. "
Fortunately zinnias are easy to grow. I plant the seeds 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep, sometimes a little deeper if the soil is sandy, and sprinkle the seedbed every day until they germinate. Sometimes they come up as quickly as in 2 or 3 days, and usually they are up by 6 days. Warmer temperatures favor faster germination.
" I didn't do the heirloom thing though. "
Some of the zinnia packets on the seed racks identify the variety as an heirloom variety. The California Giants and Giant Dahlia Flowered are two old varieties that fall into that category. But any zinnia variety can benefit from you picking the best specimens and saving seeds from just those. This is an earlier stage of development of one of my "Allium" flowered zinnias.
Quite a few of the Razzle Dazzle strain can approach spherical blooms. They start out looking more like the Razzle Dazzle strain of Gaillardias. This is one of my zinnias that resemble the Razzle Dazzle Gaillardias.
The Razzle Dazzles and their Allium flowered variant both owe their star-pointed petals to genes from my original Star Tipped mutant. Crossing different zinnias can lead to interesting results, and cross-pollinating zinnias is relatively easy to do, because the pollen-bearing parts (pollen florets) and the pollen-accepting parts (stigmas at the base of the petals) are easily accessible and large enough to handle easily. I hope to improve my Razzle Dazzle and Allium strains by adding a complete color range and larger blooms. And I hope to make some progress on that this Summer.
ZM
