Hi WoodNative, "That red scabious specimen you posted above......I think you posted that flower or a similar one previously." Actually, at one time or another, in one message thread or another, I have posted all of those pictures previously. The one with the two bees on it was maybe 2006 vintage. The "scabious" one just above it was this last Fall. The intense red one with matching florets was probably the Fall of 2009. At that time we were in a different place in a nearby town and I was attempting, with some success, to grow zinnias in a back yard that was mostly shaded by a number of trees. That zinnia's long guard petals are characteristic of the scabious recombinants that I refer to as "Echinacea flowered". The red spider flowered one above it was grown in that same dappled shade backyard, and a small bit of sunlight is responsible for the overexposed white patch on it. I had pruned the trees as much as was feasible to get as much sunlight into the yard as possible (which wasn't a lot), and made extensive use of foliar sugar feeding to compensate for the limited amount of photosynthesis. That seemed to help considerably. My zinnia growing conditions here in this rural area are much more favorable, although occasionally I still toss a little sugar into my foliar feeding mix. Julie Andrews would approve of that. "I will order some "Candy Mix" this year and hope I can recreate something like that." I am not prepared to share seeds at the present time, but I wouldn't rule that out at some future time. Candy Mix is currently probably your best bet for scabiosa flowered zinnias, although Thompson & Morgan also offer a second scabiosa flowered strain. None of the scabiosa flowered seed sources are 100% true to type, and some of them have a fairly low percentage of actual scabious blooms. Be prepared to cull your Candy Mix aggressively at first bloom. The most common "off type" scabious blooms are small singles in a variety of solid colors. For landscaping purposes, they aren't too bad. The scabiosa flowered strains, and the Whirligig strains, are both very "interesting" commercial seed sources. I say "strains", because your results may vary, depending on which actual seed grower's field your zinnia seeds came from. Seed companies rarely grow their own seeds any more. ZM

HZ, "I had never used PhotoBucket because I understood that I would need a digital camera, and then I had been told by our librarian that I could not bring the card from a camera here to use on the computer because "that is how viruses destroy everything that our county has tried to provide". Let's see what I've learned without destroying anything:" Apparently your phone takes some very small pictures. The picture you have linked to is only 160 x 120 pixels. That is not very big. I experimented with increasing your picture size some but, as you can see, the result is rather blurry. There isn't a lot of image detail in a 160 x 120 pixel picture. Does your phone have an option to take larger pictures? I'm not criticizing your phone pictures. Please, do continue to share them. But since you are a gardener who appreciates flowers, in my opinion you would enjoy an entry level digital camera. And, when you get your own computer, you would enjoy an entry level picture editor, like Adobe Photoshop Elements. In the meantime, your phone and the library computer seem like an excellent enhancement to your ability to communicate about your zinnias. Your flower does seem to have become a bicolor, or was a bicolor to start with. The effect looks good. Actually, with that petal shape and the light color at the base of the petals, your zinnia kind of reminds me of a rose. Do you happen to know what variety of zinnia it is? I have to wonder why your librarian thinks your phone pictures might somehow transmit a virus to the library computer. I don't know anything about computer viruses, but I never heard of one starting in a phone picture. But our digital world does have its marvels, so maybe it would be possible, somehow. MM

Susan, "How do you feel about transplanting zinnias? I started them in little pots this year instead of direct seeding. I enjoy the starting/transplanting process, but had always read this can result in smaller blooms, or single ones." Transplanting zinnias, by digging them up from one place in the garden and moving their "root ball" to another place in the garden does disturb the roots a lot and most likely loses a significant amount of the root structure. That is traumatic for the zinnia plant and does set the plant back. It could cause the blooms to be smaller, and the whole plant to be smaller. However, starting zinnias in pots and setting them out in the garden does not necessarily disturb the roots. I sowed a lot of zinnia seeds directly in the garden this year, but I also started some in 3-inch square pots under lights. That lets me get a head start on the season and get zinnias blooming in the garden at least a month before the ones that are direct-seeded in the garden. As zinnias grow larger in the pots, the pots become root-bound enough to form a cohesive root "ball" (actually more like a cube in my square pots) that falls out of the pot intact, so that setting the zinnia plants out from the pots doesn't disturb their roots at all. The roots, in effect, form their own peat pot. So I grow my zinnias both ways, early from pots and later direct-seeded in the garden. But next year, I hope to start a lot more early in 3-inch pots than I did this year. ZM

I know this is an ancient thread, but I’m so mad at Park Seed that I’m searching for an alternative source for the sponge plugs. I have every size of biodome, the 60, 40, and 18 cell floats, and lots of single and double trays and domes. They just made me so angry by providing the worst customer service ever (for some starter pots where they substituted an obviously inferior product and want me to return them at my expense, and they refuse to post my negative review — at this point they’ve paid someone more to argue with me than the items are worth, and I’ve been a customer for nearly twenty years!). I actually have always had excellent results with the sponges — pretty much 100% germination with a huge variety of seeds (using bottom heat), so I’d rather not sub a soil or similar mix. Has anyone found a supplier of the sponges? One year I thought I did, after seeing some sort of identifying mark for the manufacturer, but I’ve lost it.