Thanks for the eye candy, I'll be looking for some of these :)

Terry

Those are some beauties. I really like the Zinnia Zahara Rose Starlight.
Thanks for the info!

Kat

Zinnia Zahara Rose Starlight looks like a must-grow for me 2010. I am itching to cross it with something.

ZM

Great pictures, I like your Cora vinca!

I just bought new disease-resistant Cora vinca at my local Walmart in central Louisiana, $2.98 for 6 inch pot with 3 plants, though 1 dead in each pot. From www.goldsmithseeds.com according to the label. Only magenta was available, other colors may have been sold out. I had found the new Cora and Nirvana series available on internet for much more money, so I was delighted to get these cheap locally and wanted to share about it!

Texas A&M info on Nirvana and Cora vinca:
http://flowers.tamu.edu/Overton%20Field%20Day%202008%20PRelease.pdf

Mississippi State University info on Cora vinca:
http://msucares.com/news/print/sgnews/sg08/sg080228.html

You don't need to wait until 2010 for these. Those seeds were available to growers this year, at least through my broker. I am growing Zahara this year, and almost did the shock wave denims. I love the Shock waves, btw, they did well for me last year, and really did well this year.

Yep, right now they're all available and I'm already growing petunia easy wave plum vein and burgundy star, shock wave denim, vinca cora cascade cherry and lilac and zinnia rose starlight. I'm also growing all the colors in the opera supreme series (previously only pink morn and lilac ice were available).

I agree that the shock waves are great, and so are the opera supremes. Purple looks very promising and is growing faster than everything else.

I just planted several coleus 'Chocolate Splash' today. Got from Pasquesi Garden Center in Barrington, Illinois. They were in a quart container and approx 8 inches and very full. GORGEOUS!

Westy

I trialed the Zahara zinna series this spring. Thumbs up! They are gorgeous.

Those Phytopathora resistant Periwinkles really interest me. It is a major problem here, and once in your soil it lasts forever making any plant susceptible to it a goner shortly after planting. I haven't seen Periwinkles with specific name of Cora at the stores yet, but hopefully in the future.

My package of Zahara Starlight Rose seeds produced flowers that look nothing like the pictures. When they first started blooming there was a very faint rose ring on some of the flowers but now the flowers are uniformly cream colored! I was very disappointed to say the least!

Zahara Starlight rose produced nearly all cream colored blooms this summer however a few which were grown earlier in the last winter season (same packet) bloomed very similar to the pictures in catalog... so it might have something to do with temperature and day length...

Izhar

The ad copy for Starlight Rose indicated that heat stress would cause the plant to produce all white blooms. Maybe when we get below 90 degrees here for a week or so they will improve.
I wonder how much heat is too much for them? If temps over 80 are too high then this variety will have a very short window to produce the desired effect, at least for many.

I'm growing Zahara 'Starlight Rose' and they started to produce nice, colorful striping when temperatures stayed below 90F.

{{gwi:7036}}

That must be the problem with my Zahara Starlight zinnias. The temperatures here are setting records with several triple digit days. Maybe this fall I will see blooms like the picture above. I wish I had known about this characteristic because we generally have hot summers here.

My Zinnia Zahara Starlights were also mostly a cream color. Not much pink in most of them. Not very attractive at all or what I expected. I did have them in a pot with morning sun until about noon. Then I had some in the ground that got afternoon sun from about noon until 4:00. Our weather is mostly in the 80s, sometimes reaching 90 degrees. I water my pots every day, and every other day or so for the ground if it doesn't rain. If it's in the 90s, I water the ground every day. I use Miracle-Gro potting soil mixed with some Miracle-Gro potting mix in my pots and plain old dirt in the ground. :) Neither were any different with their blooms. Not sure what I can do differently this summer except maybe try another spot and use manure or something in the ground where they're at. :)

Franeli - how did you get them to be so nice!? Yours are beautiful. My weather is always in the 80s, except maybe a week or so here and there throughout the summer. I'm in Zone 5 (PA). I'll keep trying, I guess. I just would like to know what I should do differently. Did yours get sun from morning until evening? Maybe that's where my fault lies.

This is the best one I got. :) The rest were creamy in color with very little to no pink in them. (Sorry for the huge picture. Don't know how to resize it.)

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How did everyone else plants theirs? Did you use fertilizer, full sun all day, what are your average temps, etc.? I'm determined to have some pretty ones this summer!

Thanks,
Alicia

Here is a link that might be useful: My flower pics

lady alicia,

I quickly looked at your flower album and see a fair amount of blooming flowers. Not sure what cultivar the cleomes are but they seem very stunted.
You might look at your soil and add lots of compost. I plant in compost amended with some soy bean meal(or alfalfa) and a little kelp. I feed annuals in the ground more compost every 4 weeks or so and make sure they get watered.
Zinnias need full sun,adequate moisture and nutrition. Mine get 10hours around the summer solstice and toward fall,about 5-7.