Collecting zinnia seeds after a frost?
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years agolinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago) thanked ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years agolinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago) thanked ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5Related Discussions
Is it ready to collect Zinnia seeds?
Comments (3)LeahLu, "...can I cut the whole flower to save the seeds now?" I wouldn't cut off the whole flower, in case the seeds aren't quite mature yet. Instead, pull out a few individual petals and inspect them. This picture shows that you can have "fat" viable seeds attached to petals that still have color, but not all of the seeds will be viable. Some will be "empty". Discard the "empty" seeds. Put the "fat" ones aside on a newspaper or paper towel to dry. You don't want to package them "wet" or bad things can happen, like mold or even sprouting in the package. If you don't intend to store the seeds for next year, but want to plant them now, you could do that. I don't know what your zone is, but zinnias can bloom in six weeks from seeds and in some areas you can get two outside crops of zinnias in a year. The covering on "green" zinnia seeds is still living and, for that reason, it is impervious to water. That's why the seeds don't sprout in the zinnia heads during a rainy season. You could just plant them and they would probably come up in three or four weeks after the seed coat died and became water permeable. To get them to come up quicker, you can operate on the seed coat in various ways to expose the embryo to water, like in this picture. You can remove the embryos altogether and plant embryos instead of seeds. Incidentally, those missing petals on that zinnia in your first picture could be a sign that a seed-eating bird plucked those petals out and ate the seeds attached to them. Zinnia embryos are yummy to some birds. Be on the lookout for zinnia petals lying on the ground under your zinnias. Saving green seeds instead of waiting for the zinnia heads to get brown is one way to cope with seed-eating birds, and to avoid water damage in a brown seedhead. If you are shucking a brown zinnia seedhead and you see a little root sticking out of a seed, that seed is dead, killed by water damage. ZM...See MoreNeed advice on bringing zinnias in for seeds before frost
Comments (22)Hello MW, " Do you know of any botanical books that show with good pictures what to do exactly? " I don't know of any books that have pictures of the hand pollination of zinnias. Actually, for whatever reasons, very few people want to hand pollinate their zinnias. Zinnias do a fairly good job of self-pollinating themselves, so the primary motivation for hand-pollinating zinnias is to do controlled cross-pollinations. That consists of picking the pollen florets of one zinnia and rubbing it on the stigmas of a different zinnia. The pollen florets are the "fuzzy yellow starfish" and the stigmas are the Y-shaped tendrils at the petal bases. The pollen florets are a bit small to manipulate with just your fingers, so the use of tweezers or forceps makes it easier to pick and use them. Click on these photo thumbnails to see the full-sized photo. While holding the pollen floret you can rub it on a number of different stigmas. As a different technique, you can use an artist's brush to dip in the pollen and get some pollen onto the tip of the brush. Then you can touch the tip of the brush to the stigmas you want to pollinate. I have used both techniques successfully to create a lot of hybridizations between the zinnias that I have selected for breeding. I currently use tweezers or small forceps to pick and rub pollen florets on stigmas. My forceps have the advantage of "locking" so I don't accidentally relax and drop the floret, but my tweezers let me work a little faster. " I also want to let some plants cross-pollinate to see if I get new ones... " They won't cross-pollinate on their own. You have to "be the bee" and cross-pollinate them. Left to themselves, zinnias mostly self-pollinate, even when bees are at work feeding on the zinnia nectar. ZM...See MoreHarvesting Moonflower Seeds after Frost
Comments (1)i plucked mine before the first frost and after they dried the only ones that looked ok were the ones that were dried before i picked them. the others were shriveled and or moldy. oh well....See MoreCollecting Seeds after a Frost?
Comments (3)Yes, you can collect all through winter as long as the seeds are on the plants. Many plants don't finish ripening their seeds until well after frost....See Morelinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago)
3 years agolinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago)
3 years ago
Cathy Kaufell
3 years agozen_man
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoHi linnea,
" So I decided to just bag up all the heads in a paper bag and next spring just hand pulverize those those in the garden. "
There are at least two disadvantages to that procedure.
(1) It makes it difficult or impossible to treat your seeds to eliminate seed-borne disease. Several zinnia diseases are transmitted on the zinnia seeds. All commercial zinnia seeds are treated to kill any diseases on them. You can use something like drugstore 3% hydrogen peroxide to treat your saved seeds just before you plant them.
(2) It makes it impractical to plant your seeds in a straight row. Planting your zinnias in a straight row makes it much easier to distinguish between weed seedlings and zinnia seedlings when you are plucking out the weeds.
It is fairly easy to hand pulverize your zinnia heads onto a sheet of white paper and simply pick out the seeds from the chaff. Click on the photos to see larger versions of them.
The actual seeds, both the petal seeds and the floret seeds, are fairly easy to recognize and pick out and store, and just the seeds are compact enough to store in an envelope or Ziploc bag.
The "pulverize the heads in the garden" method does involve a minimum of effort, but I find it kind of enjoyable, in a weird way, to pick zinnia seeds out of chaff. And plant my zinnias in straight rows.
ZM
harold100
3 years agozen_man
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoHi all,
Zinnias can produce strong plants without pinching. Click on the photos to see larger versions.
However, the pinching shown in the video is a simple and effective way of creating better branched plants. You can also carry that pinching to the next level by pinching the pinch-induced side branches. You can also use triploidy to produce very branchy zinnia plants.
That photo is just one triploid zinnia plant, and it had over a hundred blooms by the time that a killing frost put an end to its development.
I remain very impressed by the effectiveness of the YouTube videos in showing the pinching technique on zinnia plants. Kudos to the videos.
ZM
linnea56 (zone 5b Chicago) thanked zen_manlinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago)
3 years ago
zen_man