did you check if they were sterile.. many very fancy types are ...

and i do not believe.. they come true from seed.. even if they werent..

better go buy some new ones.. and sow them fast ... plenty of time left

ken

I sowed a packet of 100 candy stripe zinnia seeds, and have only 5 plants from that packet... they haven't bloomed yet but the buds don't even look candy striped. :( They look plain red.

Candy Stripe is not a foo foo hybrid, but considered an heirloom plant. It can interbreed with other zinnias if exposed, but the second generation of seed should present a good number of Candy Stripe zinnia. Each generation after will decline in those particular characteristics if other zinnia's genetics come into play.

But we don't know a thing about your seed collecting, storing, and planting. Lots and lots of things can go wrong.

Desirai, you can't tell about the pattern and color of this zinnia from the buds.

thanks everyone so far for the input. rhizo_1- Yes they were in a bed with other zinnias so interbreeding is a possibility. I let the seed heads dry on the plants so i didn't collect them too early or anything, I stored them in plastic sandwich bags in my basement inside of a small plastic storage bin i have for all my seeds and supplies. I planted them in a nice 6'x8' raised bed with good soil and drainage and planted the seeds roughly 1/4-1/2 inch deep, i loaded this whole bed up with seeds collected from last years plants which were grown from the purchased seeds which grew extremely well and all true candy striped. Wanted to make this bed a cutting area for my wife and almost nothing germinated.I even added more seeds in after next to nothing happening after a month of the first seeding. Really stumped as to what went wrong, I just made a new temp bed to sow some more to test more of the seeds so we'll see what happens with those. Just thought i'd ask if there was any known history of people having trouble growing collected seeds from this variety, again appreciate the input, thanks, jason

Hi Jason,

It may be that the seeds you saved are not viable because they were not pollinated. Do you remember if you had a lot of bees on your candy cane/candy stripe zinnias last year?

A 6' x 8' bed is not very large. Assuming you want your zinnia plants to be about a foot apart, that would require a total of only 6 x 8 = 48 viable seeds. Each seed could be at the center of its own square foot. You could get that many zinnia seeds in a single packet. You could avoid the uncertainty of whether your saved seeds were viable or not by simply buying another packet of the same seeds.

"I let the seed heads dry on the plants so i didn't collect them too early or anything,"

I am a zinnia hobbyist and I breed my own zinnia hybrids, so I do a lot of zinnia seed saving, shucking, and packaging. I use Snack sized Ziploc bags and I enclose a 3x5 card containing specific information about the seeds in that bag. A 3x5 card fits nicely in a Snack sized bag. It sounds like you may have done something similar. However, I usually save my seeds as green seeds and dry them for a week or more before packaging them in the Ziplocs. The green seed technique has several advantages. You minimize the risk of seed eating birds and you avoid the risk of rains causing water damage in dead brown zinnia seed heads. Brown zinnia seeds can get wet enough in the flower head to cause them to sprout in the head, Any pre-sprouted brown seeds won't grow.

It's worth while to learn to successfully save and grow your own zinnia seeds. You might find a special zinnia that you would want to grow as your very own zinnia variety. But for the time being, with just a 6 x 8 raised bed, buying another packet of seed is doable. Incidentally, have you considered the Peppermint strain of zinnias? It has a wider color range than the Candy Cane/Candy Stripe zinnias.

ZM

Hi again Jason,

You might be interested to know that occasionally a striped zinnia shows up in "regular" zinnia packets. For example, this specimen showed up in a packet of Whirligig zinnias in my garden a couple of years ago.

{{gwi:6206}} Those surprise striped zinnias look significantly different from the commercial striped varieties. Incidentally, you can see a larger version of that picture when you click on that picture. When the larger picture opens in its own window, you can hit the F11 key to hide that window's heading, which makes the entire window available to the picture. When you are finished viewing the picture, you can hit the F11 key again to reveal the window's heading, making it convenient to close the window so that you will be back here. The larger pictures show considerably more detail than the smaller 550-pixels-wide pictures that we are limited to here in these GardenWeb forums.

ZM

Awesome, ZM! What a great zinnia! I was hoping that you'd jump in to help Jason.

Thank you zenman, thats a great looking zin!
I have many more beds and gardens around my property other than the one i mentioned with just the saved candy seeds. So I do have much more of an "operation" going on besides the single bed otherwise yes buying one packet of new seeds would solve my problem.
I have the candy seeds and many other zinnia varieties all over my property, I enjoy growing from seed and try to grow and collect seed as much as I can thats why this issue was very upsetting for me, I was hoping to make the one dedicated bed with the saved candy seeds just a cutting area.
I actually did purchase both peppermint and candy stripe last year, I thought they were the same just called one or the other. From the pictures they look like the same strain to me, glad to know now that there is a difference!

I have these seeds and gardens at my "project" property that i'm only at and working on occasionally, not a full time residence yet, but now that you mention it i didn't notice a whole lot of bee activity when i was there, so that very well could be the problem.
I'm also glad to hear saving green seed is ok, I believe I read that in your "it can be fun to breed your own zinnias" posts, enjoyed reading through some of those, have alot more to look through!

Thanks very much for your help & suggestions, its much appreciated, i'd love to be just like you and grow/breed some interesting new zinnias! Good luck with yours this year!

Hi Jason,

" I enjoy growing from seed and try to grow and collect seed as much as I can that's why this issue was very upsetting for me, ... I'd love to be just like you and grow/breed some interesting new zinnias! "

Since you are already growing quite a few zinnias and saving seed from them, you are already doing the main things necessary to be breeding your own zinnias.

If your seed sets are sparse because of insufficient bee presence, you can "be the bee" and do the self-pollinating and cross-pollinating yourself. When my zinnias are in bloom, I am "busy as a bee" picking pollen florets and applying their pollen to likely female recipients. You can get some heavy seed sets of viable seed that way. Arm yourself with the necessary tweezers, twissors, or forceps necessary to pick florets and apply their pollen to petal stigmas. Find a way to label the blooms that have been pollinated or cross-pollinated. (I use green Velcro tape and permanent markers for that.)

You might want to get some sort of notebook or scrapbook to record details from your day-to-day zinnia activities. It could be a water proof three-ring binder with water proof paper (I use something like that because I got caught in rain or the sprinkler several times while using a regular three-ring binder.) I plan to make a scrapbook of my breeder zinnia pictures.

Keep a close eye on your zinnias, noticing as many details about them as you can. Zinnias can differ in some very subtle ways and in some ways not so subtle. Form you opinions about them. You might want to discard some zinnias that you don't like. Pollinate or cross-pollinate the ones that you do like.

By picking green seeds from your favorites and immediately planting them, you have a shot at getting two generations in a growing season. It is always exciting and suspenseful when zinnias of your own creation start blooming out. This could be the year that you adopt zinnias as a hobby. I will try to answer any questions you might have about this zinnia hobby, but if you communicate over in the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" message threads, you can have the benefits of the viewpoints of several people. I am learning more about zinnias all the time. Zinnias are full of surprises. Experimenting with them can be fun.

ZM

This post was edited by zenman on Mon, Jun 16, 14 at 15:24

Hi ZM, thanks very much for taking the time to share that information, I will definitely be pollinating a bunch myself this year! We can't be having this disapointment of seeds not growing!!
If you could just clarify for me on picking the green seeds, are those ready as soon as the bloom is in full bloom or do you wait for it to fade?
Thanks again

Hi Jason,

"...clarify for me on picking the green seeds, are those ready as soon as the bloom is in full bloom or do you wait for it to fade? "

The green seed is usually fully developed about 3 weeks after the seed is pollinated. You can tell when the seed is pollinated by the appearance of the stigma. The stigma will die and shrivel when it is pollinated. If it is not pollinated it will stay yellow and keep its shape. You have a window of maybe a week in which to get a stigma pollinated.

A zinnia bloom can develop over a period of weeks, in which new petals appear above the older petals. For that reason the green seeds aren't all ready at the same time. The lower ones will be ready first because they were the first petals to appear with receptive stigmas.

My original motivation for picking green seeds was to get a new generation of zinnias started as soon as possible. So I would pick the lower petals first, breach the seed coat, and plant the seed. In that scenario, the seedlings from the first row of petals could be getting a set of true leaves while the original bloom was still putting out new petals.

If you are picking the green seeds to dry them and store them, then you don't need to be in so much of a hurry to pick the original row of petals. You may want to wait until maybe two thirds of the bloom have ripened green seeds before you harvest the green seeds from the head to dry them for storage. If seed eating birds are present, you may want to pick the seeds as soon as they get ready, in order to beat the birds to the seeds. If you see a bunch of zinnia petals on the ground under a zinnia plant, it's likely that the birds beat you to the seeds. Sometimes I put a "hairnet" over a choice breeder bloom to protect the bloom from the birds.

It is fairly easy to distinguish "good" green seeds from "bad" green seeds that won't or can't germinate because they don't have an embryo inside.

{{gwi:6263}} The "bad" green seeds are the ones which are empty and do not contain a viable embryo. If you want really quick turnaround getting a next generation seedling from a green seed, you can actually remove the embryo and plant embryos instead of seeds. I planted two flats of embryos indoors last Fall in order to get a quick start on my indoor zinnia growing project.

I grew two generations of zinnias last Winter and planted seeds from that second indoor generation outdoors this Spring. Some seedlings from those seeds are budding out and a few of that third generation are now in bloom. All of that thanks to green seeds.

ZM

Thanks again ZM, I appreciate you taking the time to explain in great detail

Hi everybody, for the first time, I'm growing different types of zinnia in my garden ( I wanted more ! ) : Benary's purple, lime, white & salmon - Oklahoma Ivory - Zinderella peach - Queen red lime - some dahlia giants and some scabiosa. I would love to save the seeds. What is my chance to see the same flower next year ? What can I do to avoid cross breeding ? I was thinking to put a bag around a flower of each varitie but then, if I understood well, they'll not be polinised and the seeds won't germinate. Am I right ? So ? What should I do ? ( I'm living in France and I'm French : sorry if my english is not good enought AND it means that it's hard for me to find the great types you got in USA....I had to order mine from your country ( and from UK ) and it was a bit of money for me ! )

Have a nice nice day

Hi ZM,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
I'm very glad to know somebody like you who share is knowledges.
Especially about this special flower !

I'm a bit used to pollinating job as my zucchinis don't make viable fruits in the early season.
I guess somebody is missing and I do his job until he takes over.
So, each morning, I walk around the garden with my watercolor paintbrush and pollinate.
It's very easy with zucchinis because males looks like males and females...like females.

But as I remember zinnia florets, I guess that they have the both in the same flower right ?

Can I use a paintbrush as I do with the zucchinis ? ( a special for zinnia )

I feel so much better since I know I can save my seeds !

I will do it on my cutting patch and grow a sample of each one in a pot, far from each other and do it too.

I'm very excited to cross pollinate some flowers too and I'll be very excited to share the pictures with you !

Again, thanks a lot ! I saw you pictures and I understand why you so much in love with those flowers !

Have a great end of spring

best regards,
Céline

oh... Do you pinch your plant to get them more bushy and have more flowers ? If yes, when do you do it ?

Hi Céline,

" But as I remember zinnia florets, I guess that they have the both in the same flower right ? Can I use a paintbrush as I do with the zucchinis ? ( a special for zinnia ) "

Yes, zinnia blooms all have the female parts (stigmas) and frequently also have the male pollen bearing parts ( pollen florets). The stigmas are attached at the base of each petal, which is attached to the seed jacket, which is attached to the central cone of the bloom. Botanists sometimes refer to a zinnia bloom as a capitula. and the petals as ligules. But we are not botanists, so we will talk of blooms and petals. The pollen-bearing florets arise in the center of the bloom. You can use an artists paintbrush to transfer pollen from the florets to the stigmas, thus accomplishing pollination or cross-pollination. You can load your brush simply by touching the pile of pollen that appears in the center of a floret.

Then touch the brush to the stigmas to apply pollen to them. Not that you have control over it, but a single grain of pollen can be sufficient.

A successfully pollinated stigma will shrivel and die within a day or two. Un-pollinated stigmas will remain yellow and receptive for over a week, so you will have several opportunities to get them pollinated. After the stigma dies the embryo in the seed jacket starts to grow and matures as a green seed in about a month. You can pick green seeds and plant them immediately to start a second generation of zinnias, or you can dry them and then store them for use at a later time. If you choose to start a second generation of zinnias immediately, you will need to "breach" the green seed coat, because it is still alive and impervious to water. You can use a hobby knife or scalpel to provide a water entry route to the green seed in several ways.You can remove the embryos entirely and plant just zinnia embryos. I have planted as many as a flat of zinnia embryos at a time, and the embryos will emerge in a day or two for a really fast start of a second generation. By also growing zinnias indoors during the Winter, I get as many as four generations of zinnias each year, which speeds up my zinnia breeding goals.

Even if you aren't growing a quick second generation, the green seed technique has several advantages, including that it helps avoid losses to seed-eating birds.

" oh... Do you pinch your plant to get them more bushy and have more flowers ? If yes, when do you do it ? "

If you aren't in a hurry to do a first-bloom culling, as I usually am, pinching zinnias is good cultural practice. Be sure to have at least one pair of true leaves before you pinch the growing point. You can get different effects by pinching after the second or third pair of leaves, or even more. You could wait for the appearance of the central flower bud, and pinch it. And, for even bushier zinnia plants, you can also pinch some or all of the lateral branches that form.

I do invite your participation and pictures over in the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" forum.

ZM

Hi ZM,
again, thank you for your very clear and helpful answers.
I do not have proper time to read it right now because I'm in a hurry in the garden, but tonight, I will take the time to do it.
I just wanted to thank you.
I'll write you back if I don't understand some points.. But I think it will be fine.
.....quick quick, must go ! Snails and slugs are back since the rain is back too in my village !!
and as I don't use anything to fight them...I have to go for a collecting session.
I guess you know how much they love young zinnias !!!

See you
Céline

Hi Céline,

" Snails and slugs are back since the rain is back too in my village !!
and as I don't use anything to fight them...I have to go for a collecting session. "

You are right, slugs can be very damaging to zinnias. Snails are fairly rare here in this part of Kansas, but slugs can appear in number when conditions are wet for a period of time. When slugs become a problem, I scatter some slug bait in the area. The product I use is called Sluggo, and its active ingredient is iron phosphate. It is safe to use, and not a danger to pets, either. I don't know if Sluggo is available to you in France, but if it is, I recommend it as a time-saving alternative to hand collection.

ZM

Hi ZM,
How are you ?
Thank you again for your reply.

Ouuuh, I know, what a job ! Having collecting kilos of them for few days...
We have a similar repellent to Sluggo in France called Ferramol.
It's
organic and safe for us and pets and has the same things inside than Sluggo.
But I don't want to use anything against them ( except those little trips that I forced them to do )
I'm into a Natural Farming way.
You may know Masanobu Fukuoka.
He wrote this very important book about the intelligence of Nature and the way of Letting do : "The One-straw revolution "

My sensibility fits a lot with this special approach of farming.
It doesn't mean that I just walk around my garden of course.

But I trust Nature and... I mulch with the adventices and others wild plants growing on my rised bed right after that I cut them . I noticed that slugs and snails love fresh, fragile plants, so if I manage to do it well, they will eat those freshly cutted ones instead of my crops.

My husband who is gardening this way for 12 years now doesn't have any problem with slugs or snails. They are here, but don't make any problem.
A whole ecosystem is running his garden :
They are those funny little bugs that we call "carabe" in French - Carabus auratus - they love snails and slugs !
Little frogs, hedgehogs ( but infortunatly my cats scare them and they hide a bit far... ), snakes and other guys that I don't know in addition to the fresh mulch !

My garden is not that old than his ( only 2 years ) and the ecosystem is not well anchored yet.
It's pretty close to his garden but the latest owners used to till and plow a lot outhere...and to tear off everything that was not eadible..

But this is all about feelings and experiences.

An other funny thing I want to share is that, recently, because me and my husband eat a LOT of bananas, we mulched our salads with the skins and it made its job because it seems that they don't like to crawl on it.
And as my roses love banana's skins ( i cut them into little pieces and mulch their feets with it ) and seems that they flower even more ! I'll try to do it with my zinnias too.

About the pinching : I'll do it when they'll reach about 18".
For now, because I was waiting soooo long for my seeds coming from US and that I was sowing them late, they are only about 8".....but nice ones.



I got few other questions to you if you don't mind :

How many varieties did you create since you've started ? I'm curious.

Does your plant remain the same years after years ?

What will happen if I save the seeds from a F1 variety such as Uproar rose ?
( If I pollinise them or not )


I hope I'm not bothering you... but you know... when we're passionated...

Be sure that I'll share my experience ( and pictures ) of cross breeding with you.

Have a sunny day !
céline

Hi céline,

" I'm into a Natural Farming way. You may know Masanobu Fukuoka. He wrote this very important book about the intelligence of Nature and the way of Letting do : "The One-straw revolution " "

I am not familiar with that author or book. I will look into it. It might be compatible with my Zen gardening philosophy. But I will continue to keep my slug population in check if I can. And so far, I have been successful at that. I do toss banana peels and other kitchen discards onto a compost pile. I don't think we have any "carabe" Carabus auratus here in Kansas.

" How many varieties did you create since you've started ? I'm curious. "

I can't take credit for the tubular petaled or star-tipped mutants that appeared in my garden, beyond my perception that they were something special. Both of those appeared in commercial zinnia strains that I was growing. I did cross them to create my "exotic" strain. My Razzle Dazzle strain arose from hybridizations with the star-tipped mutant. And the Allium flowered strain arose as a variant from the Razzle Dazzle strain. My Echinacea flowered strain arose from crosses between selected Scabious specimens and various large flowered zinnias. My Aster flowered strain arose from crosses between selected Whirligigs and cactus flowered specimens. I started this hobby in 2005, so I have an extensive accumulation of selected zinnia genes to work with in my zinnia gene pool.

" Do your plants remain the same years after years ? "

Not really. There is a certain amount of serendipity involved in trying to stabilize a new zinnia strain by selfing it or intercrossing within it, in that slightly improved versions continue to appear to enhance the goal. And it is easy to improve an existing commercial strain simply by saving seeds from its best specimens from year to year. Commercial growers can't afford to do the extensive rogueing that amateurs can do. And amateurs can make F1 hybrids between any two zinnias in their garden, while commercial seedsmen can't afford to pay workers to do hand cross-pollination. The amateur zinnia hobbyist has a lot of advantages over commercial zinnia growers.

" What will happen if I save the seeds from a F1 variety such as Uproar rose ? ( If I pollinise them or not ) "

You will get significant variation in the F2 generation from the very uniform commercial F1 hybrids, whether you self them or cross pollinate them with other specimens of yours. A few will closely resemble their F1 parent. Some, perhaps a lot, of the variation may not be to your taste, and you can cull them (pull them up, or snip them off at ground level with a pruner) if you wish. Some of the variation may present new zinnia appearances that you like, and you can intercross them or self them to continue your zinnia adventure.

The invitation stands for your participation and pictures over in the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" message thread.

ZM

Hi ZM !

Time has run away since we got our last exchange ! and zinnias are all opened all over my garden ! what a pleasure !

Thanks for your previous reply.

I can only imagine the amount of the new varities you made appear from your passion !

It really give me the energy to do it too !

Tomorrow, if the weather is okay, I'll take some pictures of my own crop.

As I told you, I've ordered seeds from US as Benary's giants for example.

In one of the purple ones, i was very happy to see that there were a "mistake", a very old pale rose ! I really wish to save this seed !

I'll start soon this save seeding job as the cross breeding too.

I had so much work and so much fun to collect some for my bouquets for me and all my nice neighboors that I was not able to make it happening before. The first frosts are far from now, so I guess I'll still have time to do it !

I have little question about it... but will tell you later

a detail of one of happy bouquets !

have a nice day !

Hi Celine,

I am looking forward to more photos from you. I notice a green zinnia and a scabious zinnia picture in your bouquet.

" I can only imagine the amount of the new varities you made appear from your passion ! "

I am continuing to get new variations among my recombinant zinnias. You still have a standing invitation to participate over in It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 33

ZM

Hi ZM,

"I notice a green zinnia and a scabious zinnia picture in your bouquet."

Yes indeed ! the green one is a Benary's giant and the scabious is Zinderella peach which I love very much !

I'm still wondering how to pollinate them as there is so much florets on it ?

It seems like they are florets but maybe not.

Anyway, I would love to "create" more zinnias as this specimen !

Do you ever succeed to have some flowers like this one ?

By the way, I've sown scabious varities this spring and look what was bloomed:

( in between uproar pinks and orange dahlias one - the ones with big funny hearts and only single petals )

Nothing like the one pictured on the packet of seeds anyway......

"You still have a standing invitation to participate over in It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 33"

Don't worry, I'll be part of the trip ! when I will find time between my passion to roses...to English gardening....and the renovation of the old farm I bought !

coming back soon with new pictures and questions ! :)

Have a good day !