Rosie, "How can I control all the volunteers?" If it is convenient, I let the volunteers bloom, to see if they might possibly be anything special. When I was gardening in Maine I actually had a couple of "breeder" quality zinnias appear among my volunteers. In Maine, the volunteers had already proved that they could survive as seeds in solid-frozen earth for several months. However, from my viewpoint, as soon as a volunteer has bloomed with an "uninteresting" bloom, it is a weed, and I remove it. I also "cull" the zinnias that I have planted myself. I want my garden space to be occupied by exceptional zinnias and by selected "breeder" zinnias. "I'd also like to know what you recommend re spacing. Mine that are crowded now are getting leaf diseases." Crowding promotes leaf diseases, because it denies the lower leaves their needed sun exposure. As the weather gets cooler you can spray your zinnias with something like GreenCure to delay the onset of foliage diseases. We had a rain last night, so I am going to spray my zinnias with GreenCure later this morning. As for spacing, the more sun exposure the better. I would like to have my zinnia plants three feet apart or more (for easy access for pollinating them), but that isn't always possible. Occasionally two good zinnias will come up close to each other and I just leave them and try to clear away all the zinnias that aren't "good" in their immediate vicinity. When I "cull" my zinnias, I just pull out the "bad" ones as if they were weeds, except in the case when the bad zinnia is close enough to a good zinnia that pulling out the bad zinnia will damage the root system of the good zinnia. In that case, I use a hand pruner to snip the bad zinnia off at the ground level. In previous years I had a big compost pile just for zinnias, but zinnia compost can contain disease organisms, so now I just package my discarded zinnias to discard them in the trash pickup as garbage. I am doing the same thing with tomato vines in case they carry tomato diseases. But I must confess that I have a lot of zinnias that are too close together right now, and their lower leaves, the ones that can't get sun, have already died off. Maybe I will do better next year. I would like to have by best zinnias at least three feet apart. I enjoy looking through my zinnias to see what characteristics they have. You might want to look at your zinnias closely today, because you might have something interesting out there right now. If you intend to save seeds from a zinnia plant, mark it in some way so that it will stand out after all the zinnias are dead and brown. Also, you can save seeds from zinnias before the heads are completely brown. Just bring them in and spread them out on an old newspaper to dry. You can leave the flower on the zinnia plant and just pluck out the petals with the "ripe" green seeds, like in this picture. With some practice, you will learn to tell the seeds that contain a baby zinnia plant embryo from the seeds that are just empty shells. I use Ziploc Snack bags and 3x5 cards to store my dried seeds. I write descriptive information on the 3x5 card for my own reference at a later time. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I and others will be glad to help you. Zinnias can be very interesting, and a lot of fun. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

extremely poisonous.. in every aspect ..... the leaves.. the roots.. the berries... etc.. if you have kids that stick things in there mouths.. get rid of it ASAP ... spanish women used to rub some version of it in their eyes.. bella donna ... ken ps: and even if you dont have kids.. the birds will plant a million of them for you ... if you do let it go to seed.... pps: part of the potato family.. and it always amazes me.. that all of the potato is also poisonous .. but for the spud.. whats that all about ... who was the first guy.. to work his way down all that poison parts ..... to get to the edible part.. 8 inches underground.. i suspect.. it was a number of dudes in the same family ... and son #4 ended up inheriting..l ol...

Seriously? So would say a cucumber plant I grew last year (I know some cucumbers went to seed) have been perhaps pollinated by a pumpkin plant...and though last year they looked like cucumbers their spawn grew into this this year? I've heard of hybridization but never thought it was occurring in my little garden patch! I'll have to chop one open and see what we have inside.

Don't be afraid, let them go to seed. You will have them spread nicely among the other flowers in the coming years. Sometimes there will be more of them, the colours will be different, another year they will almost disappear. But they will never try to take over and smother other plants in the bed. This I know from experience.