How to Grow Zinnias from Seed to Bouquet, Cut Flower Garden

Today is March 31st and it's time that I will start my Sinyang from seeds. These are potting mix. Then I'll add some perlite and some vermiculite. Now I'm gonna mix them together. Put this aside. Add some more water. Oh my goodness, I have so many varieties. So I have one. And I also have some Sinyang seeds that I hybridized them myself from last year. When the soil is like moist with water, it's gonna be so easy to make sure that no air gap inside the plug. And this is just the magic tape. So this seed packet is maybe like two years old. So I'm gonna plant a lot of seeds per one plug. This seed packet is new so I'm going to sow just a little bit, just maybe two per plug because I'm gonna save them for next year. This is the next one. This one I got from my flower friend. Wrap them with the plastic food wrap to make sure that the tray stays humid until the seeds germinate. Now I am going to plug in my heat mat and the perfect temperature would be around 70 Fahrenheit. And then I will place this tray on top of my heat mat and under the grow light. The closer the grow light to the trays, the better. Most of the time the heat mat comes with the thermostat and this will measure the temperature on the tray. And if it goes above 72 degrees, the heat mat will stop working. So when the temperature goes higher, you can move the seedlings to an unheated greenhouse in spring to harden them off. I will pinch the first row here and I will leave the second row and the third row to bloom before the first row. So I just use my finger and pinch it here. It's also important to note that you don't want to pinch it when the seedlings are too small because that will slow the growth of the seedlings. The perfect stage to pinch thinnier when you see these little side branches start to come off from the bottom leaves here, that is when I pinch them. So I just pinch on the top like that. This one is probably too small to pinch because you know I have only two or three set of two leaves and also I don't see the side branches yet. So I'm gonna let them grow a little bit stronger before I pinch this one. The one that I don't pinch, the flower is going to be very big which is good for some of bouquets. Some that I pinch, you know it's gonna get more side branches. And my thinniers start blooming. They are so cute. Look at that color. Hello there. Look at how unique it is. And I put you know rows of flowers because it's very easy to maintain when you have rows like this. You know you can just use the stake and then the wire and irrigation system is a lot easier to set up. Beautiful thinnier, Queeny Lime. So when I cut thinnier, I always go very deep so they can branch out from the bottom of the plant. One, two. You can see here I sacrificed this bud and also this one. And this is thinner Cinderella Peach. To get a longer stem, I sacrificed one, two, three small flower buds. But that's okay because it's going to help the thinners to become more bushy and produce even more flowers. Because I have thinner on this side and the other thinner, I will put on maybe like this side because everything looks pretty already. I want to show you how interesting they are. This is like a full double forms of the thinner queen. But some of them you know can be like this. They have like the red orange in the center. And some of them is semi-double like this. And some of them are just like single like this. Super cute. When I see a bloom like this, I can take it off by just take it like this. Or I can cut them right to the very base of the stem. There are two reasons why I cut them pretty low. The first reason is that I don't want them to get too tall. The second reason because I want in between the plants to have air circulation. I'm going to take this whole thing out. Ta-da! I think this is the new variety. It's called Queeny Lamb Brush. This is one of my favorite thinners. It's Cinderella Peach. Oh this is very cute. Ta-da! Bannerid Giant Thinner and Tempest Dahlia right there. Hot and sexy. It's mostly the Queeny Lamb Thinner that I plant in this row. But in the middle, I plant the you know the Giant Bannerid Thinner. Because I want the bees to cross-pollinate between two flowers. Okay. After that, I'm going to collect the seeds from this Bannerid Giant and I am hoping you know the Giant Zinnia get some beautiful color from this the Queeny Lamb Zinnia. That's my helper, the pollinator that helped me hybridize the two varieties of Zinnia. Again, I'm gonna cut this whole stem out because it's flopped so bad. Then I'll use this flower that I have here. This white thing on the plant is powdery meadow. It doesn't hurt me at all but it will hurt the plant because the leaves cannot take the sunlight. And I have tried so many ways. I learned that powdery meadow like this cannot be avoided at all. It's with the moisture. It comes with the heat. So in August like this time of the year, it's going to happen. But there are some things that we can do to kind of minimize the problem. To just give the plant a lot of air circulation. You can see here I cut the flowers at the very base of the plant like that. Yeah, this is gonna improve better air circulation. And today is September 30th. All the Zinnia that I have, they are flopped down to the ground because of the rainstorm this week. Some of them, you know, try to grow back and have that weird shape. And the seed that I plan to collect, they just got so wet and they are not viable anymore. Some of them even sprout on the seed head. So I think this week I am going to cut them back down to the ground. I could have left them in the garden a little longer. But, you know, the flower is going to be small or it's going to be weak or it's going to be in a weird shape anyway. So I would rather, you know, jump start and clean up for fall. These are the seeds that I collected last month. I keep them in this mesh bag because I would like them to stay as dry as possible because humidity can make them rot. And good seed will look like this. Kind of fat in the middle. And these are petals. They're not seed and they're not going to germinate. And I will divide the seed out from the petals in winter time. I really enjoy growing Zinnia from seed, seeing them become a little young plant, mature plants, and then producing the flowers and cast those beautiful flowers for my bouquets. But more than that, I also see myself grow too. I truly believe that gardening makes us a better person in so many ways. I am more patient. I am more calm. I learn so many things that I wouldn't learn. And if you are about to start gardening, you are about to start growing Zinnia from seed, just go ahead and do it. I cannot wait to grow this Zinnia seed next year in my garden because it will give me the new Zinnia color, new form, and it will surprise me. I am sure of that. But until then, there are a lot of things that we can enjoy in our garden. The leaves start changing color. The flowers that bloom in fall are blooming right now. And you know, the cooler temperature, the fall feeling, give us, make us cozy. It's just so nice to enjoy the season. And then we're going to have a holiday. And I just want to thank you for watching this video until the end. If you have not subscribed to my channel yet, please do so. If you already subscribed, please click like, and also leave me some comments, any feedback to help me grow, you know, either gardening skill, speaking skill, anything else that I can do to improve this YouTube channel. And until then, happy gardening, happy the temperature, and I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye.