The process of saving your own zinnia seeds is incredibly simple. This year, I really wanted to focus on making some specific crosses in the hopes of creating my own hybrid. Let’s take a look at how I saved zinnia seeds from the summer flower garden.
The first thing I did was wait patiently until the flower heads had dried completely. This meant that even the pollen floret had been long gone. Many of the seed pods had already had birds eating them and dropping seeds on their own. I knew that I would need to act fast to make certain that I was able to save my fair share of seeds.
These pointy shaped zinnia seeds are called ray seeds. As you can see, these are the seeds that form at the base of each petal.
The disk seeds are the zinnia seeds that form below the center disk of the flower. These types of seed are more prevalent in single and semi-double flowers. In my experience, these seeds are most likely to produce offspring that is alike or at least very similar to the parent plant.
For my zinnia seed saving experiment, I decided to save both types of seed. Above, you can see all the “stuff” before I have taken the time to separate the viable seeds. Even though it looks like a big mess, I know that there’s a lot of potential for hidden beauty in the photo above.
Have you saved zinnia seeds before? If so, I’d love to hear all about it in the comment section below. Thank you so much for stopping by the blog. I hope that you’re having a wonderful day!
Thanks for the reminder to save my zinnia seeds! I had several different varieties this year and definitely need to take advantage of the seed abundance.
Do you pull the seed from the petals? I saved a bunch and I’m literally left with about a gallon of petals attached to seeds. I thought I would just plant them together and hope they grow, since dividing them would take a small eternity. Thoughts?
Thank you! I always wondered why there were two types of seeds in one seed head, and it’s helpful to hear your experience about which type of seed produced more flowers like the parent plant!
As a late response to Andreea but also to anyone else looking for information, I usually spend a good chunk of time painstakingly separating my seeds from the petals and other chaff. They probably would be fine attached, but it might be more stuff that decomposes close to the germinating seed and usually you want the seed to have less competition of sorts (I think that’s why people often try to use a sterile mix to germinate seeds- less chance of other things growing which may not help the seedling or harm it).
If I have had the luck of having too many seeds heads though I have sometimes crumpled the seed head out on a raised bed or garden and see what grows. Because it’s hot and dry where I live, usually that doesn’t yield much success though it is probably due to water needs rather than not having separated the seeds from the chaff.