Zinnias are among the quickest and easiest flowers from which you can harvest and save seeds. Read our, The Spruce uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. There are also a few green seeds in the photo that I will not keep. Zinnias are annuals, so they grow for one season and make great cutting flowers. Separate the trash from the seeds by pouring the seeds from one cup to another in front of an electric fan. Repeat this process with all of your dried flowers, discarding the petals and only keeping the seeds. Use garden snips to cut completely dried flower heads from healthy zinnia plants. When deciding which ones to save, give preference to such heirloom, open-pollinated types as 'Cut and Come Again,' 'Granny’s Bouquet' and 'Green Envy,' since hybrid varieties like 'Blue Point' won’t come true from seed. From reading other posts, zinnia seeds should look like relatively large arrowheads (~1/4" wide) and should be dark in appearance. By using The Spruce, you accept our, Wait for the Zinnia Flowers to Dry Before Harvesting, How to Save Lettuce Seeds From Your Garden, How to Save Tomato Seeds to Grow Next Year, Seed Saving - Quick Tips for Saving Your Garden Favorites, How to Save Cucumber Seeds From Your Garden, Heirloom, Open-Pollinated, and Hybrid Seeds, How to Save Beans to Plant in Next Year's Garden. Once the danger of frost has passed for the next growing season, you can sow your seeds outdoors. Zinnia seeds look like little arrow heads or like flat sunflowers. A closet is ideal. One packet, labeled zinnia- purple, is comprised entirely of very thin, cylindrical plant bits (supposedly seeds?) Colleen Vanderlinden is a freelance writer and the author of Edible Gardening for the Midwest. Be sure that when you put you seeds away, for storage, that you mark that container that they are in with the "seed name" and "date of harvesting". See more ideas about zinnias, zinnia flowers, plants. Some might still be attached to the base of a petal. You can easily save seeds from your favorites, so you won’t have to purchase more next year. © Copyright 2020 Hearst Communications, Inc. If that’s the case, gently pull off the seed. Nothing completes a country bouquet like great zinnias. Once done sifting to find the seeds go ahead and compost the material left over. And if it’s a trifle gaudy, well, that’s just how we like our zinnias to be! The good news is for an average-size garden, you will generally only need a few blooms' worth of seeds to have enough to plant the next year. They will measure about 3/8 to 1/2 inch long, if harvested from medium-sized zinnias, and usually slightly less than 1/4 inch across at their widest point and brownish in color. You will have to put up with some unsightliness as you wait for the flowers to dry on your plants, but that's how you allow the seeds to ripen. Zinnia. Make sure to select plants that are healthy--powdery mildew can transfer to seeds, so don't save seeds from plants with disease. I placed a sheet of paper next to my dish of seeds and carefully picked each one out. Taxonomy: Zinnia elegans x angustifolia Seed Type: Annual Sow Indoors or Outdoors: For earlier blossoms, start seeds indoors 5 – 8 weeks before transplanting outside. For best results, aim to use your seeds within three to five years. Seeds from hybrid plants typically do not come true to the parent plant, so if you love a specific attribute of the zinnia, such as its double flowers or special colorings, you might be disappointed by the offspring of hybrid zinnias. The following zinnia varieties are open pollinated, meaning they will grow to look the same as the parent plants from which their seeds came: Allow the zinnia flower heads to dry completely on the plant. It’s best to sow zinnia seeds outdoors in early spring or summer, depending on your location, rather than starting them indoors, as they may produce single rather than double blooms if their roots are disturbed. To harvest zinnia seeds, allow some of the best flowers to remain on the plants until their petals wither and turn brown. Introducing "One Thing": A New Video Series, The Spruce Gardening & Plant Care Review Board, The Spruce Renovations and Repair Review Board, Basket or other container for harvesting flowers. Take a dry zinnia flower, and "flail" the seed head--hit it gently to release the seeds, or pull it apart or rub it between your fingers over the paper plate to release the seeds. Zinnias like well-fed soil, so some compost worked into the ground early in the season will give the soil an edge before it’s time to get the zinnia seeds or plants in the ground. You can even see a few seeds with the pink petals still attached. After the seeds have dried, place them in a paper envelope or bag for storage. See the seed on the bottom center of the photo? The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Remove the flower heads by snipping them off the plant with sterilized pruners. Spread some paper towels over a clean, flat surface where you can work to gather the seeds. And they produce many seeds per plant, so you shouldn't have to purchase seeds or nursery plants if you want to continue growing zinnias. that are 1/4" long. Reliable, prolific, and hassle-free with a long vase life, Zinnias are excellent for cut flower production. There are different shapes of roundness, length or thickness depending on the flower variety. University of Florida Extension Website. Before you begin, it's important to know whether your zinnias are open-pollinated plants or hybrids. Once done sifting to find the seeds go ahead and compost the material left over. In addition, when rabbits attack zinnia plants, they … join our gardening community on fb for more tips and tricks! The seeds are small and arrow-shaped. The seeds of zinnia’s have a unique arrow shape. are fast-growing, easy-care annuals that provide plenty of color from summer through fall. Each seed will look like that. Julie Thompson-Adolf is a master gardener and author with 13+ years of experience with year-round organic gardening, seed starting and saving, growing heirloom plants, perennials, and annuals, and sustainable and urban farming. The Zinnia seed should be black on one end. The seeds look like fuzzy or furry tiny arrowheads. After you have harvested the seeds, break them off of the brown flower petals and spread them on paper towels indoors for a few days. Aim to save seeds from plants that display qualities you enjoy, such as an ideal bloom color or optimal plant height. Make sure to keep varieties separated and labeled, unless you don't mind a mix full of surprises! For most of us, though, that's not feasible. Zinnias (Zinnia elegans) are fast-growing, easy-care annuals that provide plenty of color from summer through fall. Ravishing flowers look like crimson velvet laced with gold! The full-sized plants are just a bit compact, and the generous yield of blooms makes this an especially good variety for cut flowers. Place the packets inside a screw-top glass jar in your refrigerator until spring. A former master gardener with a Bachelor of Arts in writing from Houghton College, Audrey Stallsmith has had three gardening-related mysteries published by WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House. Moisture is important in early weeks, but make sure it doesn’t get soggy. You also might have enough seeds that you could consider giving away some as gifts. They are formed at the center of the head, at the end of the petals. What does a zinnia seed look like? Zinnias (Zinnia spp.) Once the flower heads are completely brown and dry, grasp the petals and pull them out of the center of the flower. Learn tips for creating your most beautiful (and bountiful) garden ever. Bernd Blossey, a professor in the department of natural resources at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said he received a few calls from worried recipients of the seed packets. Spread out the seeds and let them air dry uncovered for a few days. You can use a thermos to keep the water hot. Place the harvested seed heads on a screen so that they dry thoroughly on all sides. Depending on type, zinnias’ flowers are varied and range from round, double, pom-pom, cactus-shaped and can vary in size from 1 to 7 inches, while the plants grow from 4 inches to 4 feet tall. Moreover, if you have a large garden bed, you can opt to save seeds from plants away from the edge of the bed, so the drying flowers are less noticeable. The green seeds are not fully ripened and I doubt they will mature at this point. Once you are sure they are completely dry, seal them up in paper coin envelopes or small zip-top plastic bags, labeling each packet with the zinnia type and the year they were harvested.
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