Are you sure birds, like goldfinches, aren't plucking them off? Or they aren't just aging and falling off?

tj

Are they falling of themselves? Or do you have goldfinches around? They love plucking of the petals. This one was going at it not even an hour ago in my yard.

The blooms are not old / spent blooms.

I see petals in the dirt but I can't rule out it being a bird, which I don't have a problem with if that is the cause.

I recall seeing a yellow bird in my yard a few months ago but they are not a common sight.

Pictures:

Birds pluck off the petals to hasten seed ripening.

Hello Annie,

As tj and Iris have suggested, it is most likely that a seed-eating bird or birds, like finches for example, have been plucking the petals, eating their attached green seeds (which are nutritious), and dropping the petals to which the seeds were attached. Keep an eye out on your zinnias, and you might see the culprit in action.

You might as well go ahead and remove the zinnia blooms that have been stripped of petals. That is almost like dead-heading them, anyway, and that will cause your zinnias to put out new branches and new buds to form new blooms.

" I see petals in the dirt but I can't rule out it being a bird, which I don't have a problem with if that is the cause. "

If you wish to use your zinnias as bird feeders, that is your prerogative. If you wish to thwart the birds, we can discuss various ways of doing that. It is not OK with me if birds eat my zinnias.

ZM

"If you wish to thwart the birds, we can discuss various ways of doing that. It is not OK with me if birds eat my zinnias."

It's not bothering me at the moment but how can I thwart them if I do change my mind? I like zinnias a lot but I am growing them for pollinators so if they are interfering with bees and butterflies visiting then I have to address that.

Hello Annie,

" It's not bothering me at the moment but how can I thwart them if I do change my mind? "

Some people protect a fruit tree from birds by throwing bird netting over the tree. You could do the same with your zinnias. You can also cover individual blooms with "hairnets" or you can cover an entire plant by draping nylon screening over it. I have not used the bird netting yet, but I have experimented with "hairnets" and nylon screening.

However, for the last three years I have been using reflective pinwheels. Birds are possibly "scared" by flashing light, so I currently use pinwheels at the top of poles. This is a current picture of my South Garden, which contains mainly zinnias. There are some big tomato plants in it, too.

The pinwheels are at the top of the poles. A few were blown off by a recent storm, but several remain at the top of the poles. I will replace the ones that blew off. This is a closeup of one of the pinwheels.

You can get the pinwheels at a Dollar Store, or possibly a Party Store, and I think we even got some from Walmart. They usually cost less than a dollar each. As the wind turns a pinwheel, the sun reflection flashes off of the shiny part of a pinwheel. It looks almost like a strobe light at a distance, and it implies something moving to the birds. I admit that this method sounds a little "iffy", but it seems to work and it costs less than most other methods.

ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

I love the little finch...... wish I could entice them to come to my yard....... I use to see them when I lived in Missouri.... I haven't seen any here in Florida but I hear they do come...... now that I am growing zinnias, maybe they will come to my yard too.

You might as well go ahead and remove the zinnia blooms that have been
stripped of petals. That is almost like dead-heading them, anyway, and
that will cause your zinnias to put out new branches and new buds to
form new blooms.

I removed the petal-less blooms. If I let them dry, can I harvest seeds or are the seeds not going to be viable?

The seeds need time to ripen on the plant. The flowerheads turn brown when the seeds are ripe. The seeds won't be viable if the flower is picked early. You can continue to deadhead for more blooms, and let the flowers you wish to take seeds from remain on the plants to ripen, later in the season.

Hi Annie,

" I removed the petal-less blooms. If I let them dry, can I harvest seeds or are the seeds not going to be viable?"

You don't even need to let them dry. The green seeds can become viable as soon as 3 weeks after pollination. So it is possible that some of your zinnia heads already contain viable seeds. Shuck them and see what you have. There are basically two kinds of zinnia seeds. The petal seeds occur at the base of petals. The floret seeds occur at the base of pollen florets. These are some fairly mature green seeds.

The next photo shows some greener green seeds. If you gently pinch a zinnia seed between your thumb and forefinger, you can feel whether there is an embryo inside. Be gentle, the embryo is a baby plant.
My graph paper is ruled 10 lines per inch. You can remove the embryos from green seeds and plant the embryos, if you want to do that experiment. The bottom row shows the steps in removing an embryo from a green seed. A sharp X-Acto knife if handy for that. I have started whole flats of zinnias indoors by planting embryos. However, I usually stop after the second or third stage of surgery, because that is enough to give the embryo inside the green seed access to water. If you just plant a green seed without surgery, the green "skin" is alive and impervious to water, and it has to die and dry some to become pervious. That can take a week to ten days, and I am usually in a hurry, so I do a little surgery on a green seed to speed up the germination process, to somewhere between two days to six days. Don't be afraid to experiment with your zinnia seeds.

ZM

Wow, Zen man. Floret seeds and petal seeds and viable green seeds. I have just learned something very new. Thanks!