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Saving zinnia seeds?

9 years ago

I have the most glorious crop of zinnias this year ever. All colors and shapes are in a bed south of my garage. If I save seeds off these plants, will they be true to the plant they came from or will I have a mixed up mess??

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Comments (6)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
9 years ago
i am going to bet my shiny nickle.. that zenman is going to say... that finding out.. is half the fun ... if not all the fun... lol ...

OP ... open pollinated .. plants rarely come true from seed... as such is part of the definition of a species... and your individually colored plants are not species by definition ... they are culitvars ...

regardless.. go for it ...

ken
zen_man
9 years ago
Hi flowergirl70ks,

Ken knows me too well. With zinnias, finding out is half the fun. Ken is right, open pollinated zinnias do get a significant amount of cross pollination by the bees.

" If I save seeds off these plants, will they be true to the plant they came from or will I have a mixed up mess??"

I wouldn't say they will be a mixed up mess. If you save seeds from just those zinnia flowers that were your favorites, you could actually have a better zinnia patch next year.

When you stop to think about it, the zinnia seeds that you planted last Spring had also been pollinated by bees, so a significant fraction of them were already F1 hybrids, courtesy of the bees.

Some people say you shouldn't save seeds from F1 hybrids, because the resulting F2 generation can vary wildly with various recombinations of the genes in the F1 hybrid. But variety is "the spice of life" and you might like some of next year's zinnias even better than those this year.

If you know which zinnias you liked best, just save seeds from them. We haven't had a killing frost here yet, and if the same holds true for you, you now have an opportunity to mark which zinnias are your favorites, so that you can save seeds just from them.

You don't have to wait for the zinnia heads to die and turn brown. You probably have a lot of plump mature green seeds in some of those heads right now, and you can pull those seeds out by their petals and dry them for a week or two on a newspaper.

Saving green seeds from zinnias has a couple of advantages. You avoid rain causing pre-sprouting of brown zinnia seeds in the flower heads, and you beat the seed-eating birds (like finches) to the seeds. Just let your green seeds dry out before you package them.

ZM
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Hi Chipeony, " I took out seeds from dry flower head last week and found out not only the petal had seeds, there were seeds everywhere. " Yes, you are seeing "seeds everywhere" because the petals are not the only flower part that bears a seed -- the pollen florets (small five-armed fuzzy yellow "starfish") also set seeds, and since they contain both a stigma and an anther bundle (which contains pollen), they can set seeds in the absence of bees. The pollen seeds are always selfed, but the petal seeds receive pollen from a pollen floret, which could be in the same bloom or a bloom on another zinnia. So the petal seeds have the possibility of being hybridized, while the floret seeds do not. " So, which was empty? " If you plant you flower beds by just scattering seeds on the soil and raking them in, you dont need to separate the good seeds individually. If you go to the trouble to plant seeds in rows (I do) then you want to separate out the good seeds and plant them,The empty seeds do not contain a developed embryo, so they can't germinate, and there is no point in wasting your time planting them. But it also takes time to separate out the good seeds, so you might just want to plant the contents of the seed head in your rows and just let the good seeds come up and the remainder rot to improve the soil. I choose to separate out and plant just the good seeds, partly because I am breeding my zinnias and frequently I select the best seeds to plant as an improvement step. Big seeds tend to produce bigger flowers. Longer seeds tend to produce longer petals. With a little experience you will be able to spot the viable seeds visually, but until you get that experience you will need to detect the embryo-containing seeds by feel. If you pinch the seed gently, you can tell by feel in your finger tips that it contains something. If you gently try to bend a seed, it will resist being bent if it contains an embryo. Use a limited amount of bending force, because you can break an embryo, and that will most likely kill it. Each seed, empty or viable, is accompanied by a chaffy scale, and they contribute "chaff" to the mix of viable seeds and unviable seeds. The chaffy scales look more like thin paper-like structures, and not a seed, so you probably won't confuse the chaffy scales with seeds. I separate out my good seeds from a head by pulling the head apart over a sheet of white typing paper under a bright desk lamp (or near bright fluorescent lights). The Zinnia elegans that I grow have considerably bigger heavier seeds than the Zinnia marylandicas have. so my seed sorting task is easier than yours. That is one of the minor reasons I prefer Z. elegans for my breeding hobby. But the main reason I don't grow the Marylandicas (Profusions, Zaharas, Pinwheels) is that they can't cross successfully with the Zinnia elegans (violaceas). Another reason is that the plants and flowers of the Profusions, Pinwheels, and Zaharas are much smaller than the zinnias I grow. I prefer bigger flowers and bigger plants. ZM
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Seed Saving has its own forum. It is linked on the front page of this forum for you. If you check the FAQs there I think you'll find one on zinnas. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Seed Saving forum
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Charlie, I've linked Wildseed Farms below. It sells some zinnia seeds and you can buy the seeds by the packet, ounce, quarter-pound or pound. Just click on 'options' to the right of each description to see the package amounts and pricing. If you want some of the newest, fancier hybrid types like the relatively new Zahara line, HPS sells them in quantities of various amounts ranging from a packet to, I think, 5000 seeds. You can see HPS's zinnias at hpsseed.com. I saved zinnia seeds the first few years we lived here, and then discovered if I just didn't deadhead at the end of the growing season, they'd reseed on their own any way. I haven't saved zinnia seed in years, but the zinnias come back every year. I have really dry winters though. Those of you with pretty wet winters might not have successful reseeding since the seeds might rot in cold, wet soil. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Zinnias at Wildseed Farm
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Hi all, I have been doing a bit of research about Profusion zinnias, because I plan to grow some this year, and even try to make some crosses with them. My previous messages about Profusions were, uh, "uninformed". That's nice talk for "wrong". The new Profusion series are tetraploids of interspecies crosses of Z. angustifolia with Z. violacea (formerly known as Z. elegans). They are produced by the Sakata Seed company. The Pinwheel series from W. Atlee Burpee Company was introduced before the Profusions, and they arose from the same sort of interspecies crosses followed by doubling their chromosomes to produce a true-breeding new species. That new species has been named Zinnia marylandica, in honor of the University of Maryland, where a lot of the original research leading up to the successful crosses was done. Both the Pinwheels and the Profusions come true from seed because of their tetraploidy, and both are considered to be members of the new species named Zinnia marylandica. At the very minimum I plan to cross different colors of Profusions with each other, and different colors of Pinwheels with each other. And I also plan to attempt crosses of Pinwheels with Profusions. And maybe some other experimental crosses as well. Let the fun begin. MM
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flowergirl70ks
Original Author
9 years ago
OK, I'm going to give it a try. I may have to do a couple of rows in my vege garden.
I think I have to save the present patch for new seed-I even had people come in from the street to see this years crop.
I grow about everything you can think of, iris, peonies, daylilies, clematis ect: and what was my favorite thing this year-the lowly zinnia. My friend and I ordered $40 worth of seed, and have certainly got our moneys worth, can't wait for next year.
Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it.
zen_man
9 years ago
Hi flowergirl70ks,

"OK, I'm going to give it a try. I may have to do a couple of rows in my vege garden.
I think I have to save the present patch for new seed-I even had people come in from the street to see this years crop. "

OK Flowergirl, just so we are on the same page -- When you say "I may have to do a couple of rows in my vege garden. I think I have to save the present patch for new seed..." it sounds like you intend to plant those green seeds right now, or in the very near future. I am not suggesting that.

Since we both are in Kansas, we can't plant zinnias outside until next Spring. The green seed thing was presented as a possibly desirable alternative to the "regular" way of letting the zinnias die and then saving seeds from the brown dead flowers.

As part of my zinnia hobby, I am now planting some green seeds inside in pots under fluorescent lights, but I was not suggesting that you plant the green seeds before next Spring.

"My friend and I ordered $40 worth of seed, and have certainly got our moneys worth..."

Just out of curiosity, who did you order those seeds from?

ZM
flowergirl70ks
Original Author
9 years ago
Oh, I know I have to wait until next year to plant the seeds I'm going to save. As a matter of fact, I usually wait until June to plant zinnias. An old gardening friend told me if I wait until then, they will escape getting mildew. So far it's worked.
We got the seeds from Swallowtail.
Isn't gardening the best hobby ever?
mister_guy
9 years ago
I am not sure how it goes in Kansas, buy mildew is a possibility with any warm rain. I wouldn't wait until June unless that's weather appropriate next spring. Rinsing flowers after a wet day with clean hose water is supposed to help. As is making sure that you clean up fallen leaves and debris over the winter so mildew has no warm rotting organic material to overwinter nearby.

Zinnias may be the easiest seed I know of to save. You just play She Loves Me with the petals. Flimsy and white means that floret loves you NOT.

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