Zm, I just read one of your posts (Zinnias - part 15). I feel like I just asked a world famous chef which is his/her favorite TV dinner with my question above. :-)
Bob

Bob,

I'm hardly "world famous", but thanks for the compliment. I am a zinnia nut, and I have been for several years. Cut flowers aren't my specialty, since I tend to go more for landscape uses. However, I plan to grow some of the Benary strain next year to incorporate some stronger stems into my gene pool, by cross-pollinating with them. I hope that my zinnias will be dual purpose, cutting and landscaping.

"Here is a list of zinnias that are offered by the catolog that I order from. Any that you experienced as favorites for a cutting garden? "

That looks like a GeoSeed list. They must have some sort of history with Park's Seed. You can eliminate all of the short ones (Button Box, Dasher, Distance, Dreamland, Magellan, Magizzle, Profusions, Short Stuff, Swizzle, Thumbelina, Topolino, and Zinnita.) They are all too short, unless you don't mind really short stems.

The Knee High Profusions and Pulcinos are kind of border-line at 20 inches.

It has been many years since I grew the non-branching Yogas. Non-branching is too specialized for my taste. One flower per plant is not my cup of tea.

The description of Candy Mix as "large" is stretching it more than a bit. Their flowers run in the 1-inch to 2½-inch range, with 1½" being more typical. Also, less than one half of them will be "on type" (I got about 20% keepers in my Candy Mix this year.) That said, they and the other scabiosa flowered zinnias, are among my favorites for breeding, because of their unique flower form and their strong, very branching plants. Cook's Gardens describes their Scabiosaflora strain as "Primarily shades of rose, with a bit of orange, yellow and white. At transplant time, pinch back to encourage bushy growth. Once the summer is in full swing, production can reach two dozen stems per 3 foot plant." I have had hybrids involving scabiosa flowered zinnias crossed with cactus types that had plants over 4 feet tall and with many dozen flowers. They reminded me of those giant tree-like West Texas tumbleweeds, except with lots of flowers.

I like to grow the Whirligigs for their bi-color and tricolor color combinations. The Whirligigs also have several flower forms, and occasionally will entertain you with a mutation like this.

{{gwi:14962}}
I like to buy seeds from several different sources, because I get more genetic diversity that way. Some sources offer a strain of Whirligigs that has "run out" to mostly single or semi-double flowers (they can be quite pretty, though), while other seed companies offer "fully double" Whirligigs. I prefer the fully double.

Since zinnias are bee-pollinated, you will actually get some differences depending on which grower's field yours came from, even if the picture on the seed packet or in the catalog is the same. That is why I don't mind buying seeds from several sources. Good luck with your zinnia cut flowers. You've got lots to pick from there.

ZM
(not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

This is a great thread. Zenman, I am so grateful for your willingness to share your expertise. I grew the tall benary's giants this last summer for the first time. They were wonderful in every way except they had to be staked. I wonder if you can recommend a strain that's 2.5 to 3 feet tall that gets full and bushy and doesn't flop.

Donna,

"I grew the tall benary's giants this last summer for the first time. They were wonderful in every way except they had to be staked. I wonder if you can recommend a strain that's 2.5 to 3 feet tall that gets full and bushy and doesn't flop."

I'm not sure there is such a strain. From Bob's list, the description of Uproar (32" spreading to 2ft) sounds encouraging, but I grew some this year and their color was more of a medium plum purple color, and the flower form was a classic dahlia form. They impressed me as not very different from some of the 10-cents-per-packet purple zinnias that I grew many years ago, so I culled all of my Uproars out. Their plants were fairly good, but they didn't stand out as extra special in my patch of recombinant zinnias.

Incidentally, the Uproar Whirligig entry in Bob's list seems to be some kind of typo. As far as I know, there is no such thing as an Uproar Whirligig strain. If there were, I would want to grow it.

The description for Zowie! (2ft spreading to 2ft; Robust bushy knee-hi plant...) also sounds good, but Zowie has a tall pollen cone that I don't like the look of. I realize that my subjective personal preference is not shared by many people, because Zowie won an AAS award! However, I prefer the Zowie three-color combination in a more conventional flower form, like this one:

{{gwi:20917}}
As an amateur zinnia breeder, I would love to get your "strain that's 2.5 to 3 feet tall that gets full and bushy and doesn't flop" but, so far, I haven't seen that. This last Summer we had a lot of days with winds in the 30mph to 40mph range, and several storms with gusts over 50mph. A lot of my tall zinnias went down, and had to be propped back up and staked. (I had several zinnias over 5 feet tall and a few 6-footers.) Some of my big "West Texas tumbleweed" specimens were already in zinnia cages (like tomato cages, but re-purposed for zinnias) so they came through relatively unscathed. But you can't put all of your zinnias in cages.

For the time being, if you plant your zinnias fairly close together in beds, they will sort of support each other. Otherwise, stakes and/or cages seem to be needed if you have high winds. I don't know of a strain that's 2.5 to 3 feet tall that gets full and bushy and doesn't flop over in our Kansas winds. Maybe something like that will come out of my planned crosses between scabiosa-like specimens and Benarys or Blue Points next year. I also plan to grow some Cut-and-Come-Agains, some Sun series, and a few others to look for good-branching genes. The old original Burpee Burpeeanas were pretty good in that department, but I am somewhat disappointed by the "re-invention" of the Burpeeanas. Burpeeanas may be a little shorter than what you are looking for.

ZM

ZM,
Thanks. You provided great information which is very much appreciated.
You are right, it is from Geoseed and yes, I should have hit return after the Uproar line.:-) Whirlgig is separate.

I think I will try the Benary's Bluepoint Mix and Sun series Mix.
Do Zinnias bloom all season or, if not, can they be planted every 2-3 weeks to stretch the blooming season? I assume they are day light neutral if you get so many generations in one year.
Thanks,
Bob

Thanks, zm. That's just what I needed, though not what I wanted. Keep working,and if you get it, I'll be your first customer! :)

In the meantime, I'll stick with the Benary's giants. They were absolutely flowering machines from May to November, oblivious to our hottest summer in years, deer resistant, and butterfly magnets. I was delighted with them, except for the flopping. I like the idea of caging. I have a whole stack of those in the basement.

Bob,

"Do Zinnias bloom all season or, if not, can they be planted every 2-3 weeks to stretch the blooming season?"

They do bloom pretty much all season, but as they age they seem to lose some of their disease resistance. Also, they set seedheads which you should remove, for the sake of the seeds and for the sake of the appearance and health of the plant.

I do make successive plantings for several reasons. First of all, I cull my zinnias aggressively, which opens up free space in which I can put more plants. Secondly, younger plants have more disease resistance, and they also keep the zinnia patch looking better and they provide an on-going supply of nectar for the butterflies and hummingbirds.

And thirdly, if that is even a word, I plant some of the seeds from the first generation that year. That's one of the big advantages of the fast life cycle of zinnias. If you start your first zinnias a few weeks early under fluorescent lights, then outdoors you will have time to cross-pollinate them, and plant their seeds for a second generation. That same year, you can see the results of your crosses, self or re-cross them, and save seeds from those for a very interesting third generation zinnia patch beginning the following year, with fourth generation results coming later that year. If you can't wait that long, you can play the indoor zinnia growing game for a non-stop hobby.

"I assume they are day light neutral if you get so many generations in one year."

Actually, Zinnia violacea (Z. elegans) are classified as facultative short-day plants (FSDP), meaning that they will flower under any photoperiod, but their flowering is hastened by short days. They have an irradiance indifferent (II) response, meaning that increasing irradiance does not hasten flowering.

Zinnia angustifolia are day neutral plants (DNP). Right offhand, I don't know how the Profusions and other Z. marylandicas are classified. So far, I haven't included Marylandicas in my zinnia growing.

In order to get good looking plant specimens in the garden, you want to keep your zinnia plants vegetative as long as you can. Pinching flower buds is one way to do that. But for quick "turnaround", don't pinch. Next year, in the interest of appearances, I am going to forgo some of the quick turnaround, and pinch.

Fall zinnias bloom quickly, and there isn't much you can do about that. And, unfortunately, any cuttings you take in the Fall are already in the flowering mode, so the cuttings will flower prematurely despite the day length of your fluorescent lights. I am experiencing that problem right now in my zinnia cuttings.

If I knew of some plant growth regulator to suppress zinnia flowering, I would use it. I'm still learning about growing zinnias, myself.

ZM

ZM, I will try to wrap this up. I don't want to tie you up answering all my questions. So here is the last one (hopefully):
The Sun Zinnia is an F1; wouldn't that guarantee new and different plants from succeeding generations even if it self pollenated. Or are the subsequent generations mostly weaker plants.
With roses, the genes were so scrambled from years of hybridizing, that I could let the roses self pollenate and always come up with some unique plants. The difference is that roses are vegetatively propagated so a breeder could lock in the new rose immediately and not worry about trying to achieve seeds that reproduced true consistantly.
Thanks,
Bob
Also, Donna, thanks for your info.

Bob,

"The Sun Zinnia is an F1; wouldn't that guarantee new and different plants from succeeding generations even if it self pollinated?"

The F2 generation from an F1 will recombine the genes of the two parents in many ways. Many, if not all, commercial F1 zinnias make use of male-sterile female plants (sometimes called "feminas") and carefully inbred male pollen-bearing strains. Frequently the feminas are apetalous (have no petals). For F1 seed production, the feminas and male plants are grown close to each other so that normal bee pollination does the actual pollination. The F1 seed are harvested from the feminas.

You will see considerable variation in the F2s from Sun, as recombination occurs in many ways between the genes of the two different parents. You might even see some femina traits. But, because the male line is so purified, the chances are that they will all be the same color as the F1. The variation will much less than what you would see in the progeny of a hybrid rose (or a home-hybridized zinnia).

I breed my zinnias in much the same way as rose breeders breed their hybrid roses. I hand pollinate, rather than rely on bees, so I can cross any specimen with any other specimen that I please. And I don't hesitate to cross hybrids with hybrids, so I don't spend generations inbreeding the parent lines. As a result of that, I will see an order of magnitude more heterozygosity in my progeny than I would in the progeny of a commercial F1 hybrid zinnia.

I wouldn't hesitate a moment to grow the seed from a commercial F1 hybrid zinnia. In fact, I will be doing that very thing next Spring. I have some old seed of the Japanese-bred Silver Sun F1 hybrid (one of the Sun series separates that seems to have become unavailable in current catalogs). It's not pure white, and that may be why it fell out of favor. I don't have many seeds (a packet contains nominally 25 seeds) but I will plant a few inside, probably next month. And I will save a few seeds from the better specimens (even F1 hybrids vary some) for planting in-ground next Spring.

I intend to cross some of the F1 hybrid Silver Suns with other indoor zinnias. If you think about that, there are some interesting implications. When I take pollen grains from an F1 Silver Sun, those grains aren't actually Silver Sun pollen. They are F2 recombinations pollen grains. And the egg cells in the female plant aren't that plant either, but recombinations from the heterozygous female. So we don't know what any of those recombinations would look like if we grew them. They all represent virtual zinnias that we never see (unless we grow haploids and double their chromosomes to diploids, but that is another story). So rose breeders and hobbyist zinnia breeders are doing pretty much the same, crossing virtual recombined pollen grains with virtual recombined egg cells. Each pollen grain and each egg cell is a separate recombination, so there there could be tremendous variety in the pollen grains and tremendous variety in the egg cells. That is why there is so much suspense in watching a new hybrid rose bloom for the first time, or in watching a new hybrid zinnia bloom for the first time. They have "virtual" parents that we never see.

"...Or are the subsequent generations mostly weaker plants?"

I would say, mostly not as good. But "good" is subjective, and there might be some little "weaker" progeny that people would marvel over as "cute". Sturgeon's law says that, "Ninety percent of everything is crud." (The last word is frequently misquoted as "crap".) Actually, I think of it in that second form.

I cull my zinnias with Sturgeon's Law in mind. Actually, if I get 5% "good" from a zinnia grow-out, I feel pretty good, because I am going to save seeds from them and discard the 95% and things get better faster that way. I think that Sturgeon's Law will definitely apply to the progeny from your F1 Sun zinnias. But think of it in a "glass is half empty/half full" way. That 10% or even 5% can make it all worthwhile. I discard a lot of zinnias at first bloom, and I think that rose breeders do the same thing with their rose crosses.

"The difference is that roses are vegetatively propagated, so a breeder could lock in the new rose immediately and not worry about trying to achieve seeds that reproduced true consistently."

Very true. I have had some success growing zinnias from cuttings, and I am experimenting with Tissue Culture now as a possible more effective asexual micropropagation method. I don't anticipate that zinnias will be commercially propagated asexually, but I understand that some femina zinnia strains are increased by tissue culture. My idea is that if I get a really good zinnia, that if I increased it asexually to a lot of plants, I could get a huge seed yield which would be a step toward getting a stable seed strain. That would be a sort of "brute force" approach, that would involve growing a lot of zinnias, and selecting seed from only a few.

ZM

Truely the most informative, educated reply I ever read.
Thanks!
Bob

Thank you.