Beautiful, including the Zinnias

Love it! You must keep your garden very fertile and happy to get all those volunteer zinnias. And there's that Filled to Overflowing again - really like that plant, and will add it to my growing wish list.

Alex

Wish I could get my zinnias to drop seed. You are very lucky. Love Filled to Overflowing and Mom's.

The gold finches are dropping the seeds for you. Lucky you.

Alex, the reason I asked Kate if it had happened to her was that we both live in the deep south, and here, everything tend to grow to excess. actually), for the first couple of years I had to spend an awful lot of time pulling zinnias out of iris and to a lesser extent daylily beds....they would be as think as hair on a dogs back (colloquial expression. If it weren't for the butterflies and birds, they would be as annoying as weeds, pretty or not, because they do come up everywhere. I noticed a volunteer butterfly bush today, and my snowball bush is constantly putting up new bushes...the Japanese maples set new little trees in spring but not lace wing ones. I pulled them up and planted and gave them away for a while. And the WEEDS!!! They are overwhelming.

kay

Kay, sorry I am late to be responding but I have been doing exactly what you have today-putting down mulch, pulling out weeds, and, of all things, trying to avoid knocking over lily scapes!!!!! In answer to your question, YES, zinnias come back by the loads and I have transplanted them to lesser areas of the garden. I keep them because I do love them for the late color and because of the butterflies and hummers. And strangely, I still have lots of hummers (most are usually gone by this time and come back through in September). Ironically, one year I bought a package of "Green Envy" zinnias and not a single one appeared!! Here are mine from last year and also from this year-I downsized a lot this year!

Kate

Love the zinnias, they used to reseed for me, but I started mulching more. I keep meaning to plant more but haven't so far. We got some rain & I'm finding more reblooms scapes. It is nice & cool & really wanted to move some daylilies around, but don't you know the ones I want to move are the ones starting to rebloom.

Try lavender Kate. Mosquitos supposedly don't like it and oddly enough, they don't bother me much, but the stinking little gnats make up for it....they LOVE me! And yes, of course the scapes would be on ones you want to move. I think I may buy a pack of zowie zinnias for next year. I notice that the one color I don't have is in the yellow family. Nancy, mulching doesn't bother those zinnias nearly enough....but they aren't in the very front....so far. I envy the cool, but we aren't as hot as usual, so that is a blessing.

kay

Kay - ha! Yes, I hail from the deep south myself, south TX, that is! But it was pretty variable there as to whether one was in an area hotter and drier than the Sahara or muggier and swampier than the Louisiana bayous. We were mostly windy, muggy, and alternately hot with baked soil or just muggy with mosquito and polliwog-filled waters. :)

I haven't escaped the mosquitoes being up north. Typically I walk around with a broad brimmed hat that has mosquito netting fixed over the top of it, so I can let it down to cover my head completely. It's a pain and makes me hotter on the warm days, but is so much more preferable to the buzzing and biting on my face and head.

I get many volunteer seedlings of other things in the garden, but generally the zinnias aren't included - not sure why, since I've had big beds of them now for the past 4 years. Here's a portion of this year's batch in my overgrown corral garden. It's a little wilder than usual since I'm kinda hampered with this boot-cast on my foot:

Alex

Kay, I must give you a mosquito update! Now, remember I am that person who would attract the last surviving mosquito in the world!! The person that mosquitoes bite through my clothes! One of my searches for homemade remedies (as I abhor chemicals on the body) led me to a mix containing vanilla extract. As I did not have the other oils available, I just put pure vanilla on my wrists and dabbed on neck (like perfume). Although they swarmed the lower part of my body, no bites above the waist!! I will try this again to see if my experiment results are valid!! And I smelled like cake batter!! Well, sweaty cake batter!

Kate

Love the pics of the zinnias. I planted two seedling pots from from the local greenhouse this year and they have huge blooms on them. Would love to have them reseed next year.

I used to grow a lot of different Zinnias, favoring the tall types for cutting. Loved the candy striped ones especially. So much variety to choose from in Zinnia form as well as color. Like Sam however, I never had them reseed. I finally gave up on them because the foliage would look so ratty towards the end of the season from various fungal diseases. In a less formal setting as Kate and Kay have I think that wouldn't have mattered as much. Love each of your pictures. I still like Zinnias even though I don't grow them any longer......What did amaze me was how much the butterflies and even the hummers were attracted to them. They often favored my Zinnias over my other "butterfly" magnet plants.....This is an interesting post on other things in the garden........Maryl

I agree, great post. Lovely photos everyone. As far as the daylilies, Rocket Booster and Coral Majority are my favorites.

Lori

I love the zinnias .!!! like happy dancing faces in the gardens . The rudibeckia triloba however is one of the banes of my garden and reseeds itself prolifically , much too prolifically i have been ripping them out by the basketful this year .

Love the zinnia pictures! I haven't grown them for many years, but they sure do draw the butterflies. Maybe next year I'll grow them again. I used to grow cosmos for late color too.

Hi Debra, they were working like crazy today...even monarchs and the large yellow swallowtails made an appearance. These are volunteers every year...I pull a lot of them, but let some grow. There aren't any yellow ones, but all other colors are there.

kay

Some of the newer zinnias are pretty fungus resistant. I like Burpee's 'Cut and Come Again' zinnias.