I use 2-3 foot sticks with a Y at one end that I save when pruning.

tj

^^ Do you wind twine around the sticks to make a hoop of sorts, or tie the zinnia stems to the stakes?

In the past, I used Tomato Cages to brace my taller zinnias against our Kansas winds. I usually placed the cages fairly early in their growth.

ZM

Same as the centaureas - canes with string tried between them, making a sort of lattice of criss-crossing twine. Since I grow a lot of them (easily over 60), individual staking would be a nightmare, but planting close, with stretched twine does the trick, while becoming invisible once the plants get to around 60cm tall.

Mkx3- no twine. Just push them in the ground leaning the stakes against the stalk. If the top parts of the Y are long enough it will keep the plant upright.

tj

Yep, if you can prune off enough woody growth, peasticks are absolutely the best, most invisible supports. I use loads of hazel cos you get quite really terrific branches with lots of laterals, but all growing in a nice flat 2d plane. I grow sweet peas up obelisks, filled in with hazel branches. Willow is also great, and really amenable to bending into hoops. For annuals which grow in a drift, a little forest of upright bamboo canes works better, as each plant is more or less butted up against the next one so the bamboo is just extra insurance on the edges of the bed, to stop the whole swathe going on the lean (we get east anglian winds here).

Would pinching the cr*p out of them when they're in the seedling stage prevent the need for staking? I pinch maybe once when they're under the lights, maybe I should be pinching frequently - ?

Repetitive pinching of zinnias sounds like a good idea.