Zinnia Garden Tour | All the Varieties I’m Growing for Cut Flowers

It's Christina from Sunshine and Flora. So this morning I want to give you a tour of all of the zinnias I have growing for cut flowers. This time of year zinnias are one of my main focal flowers for bouquets so I thought it was the perfect time to give you a tour of all the varieties I'm growing. So as you can see behind me my zinnias are growing amazing. We also did get an inch of rain overnight which is very helpful. But zinnias are one of those types of flowers that are just such a producer this time of year. They are known as a cut and come again flower which means the more you cut them and harvest them the more they bloom. And those are the flowers that I like to grow in my garden. So in this video we're going to take a walk around the garden and I'm going to show you all the varieties that I am growing and where I order the seeds from. Zinnias are also extremely easy to grow. You can start them inside or I just direct sow mine out in the garden once the soil is warm enough. The first area we're going to start with is the one right behind me. This is the first planting of zinnias that I planted. I like to plant successions of zinnias which means you're planting multiple plantings at different times and it can give you a staggered harvest. In my experience from growing zinnias after a bit the plants tend to get a little bit tired, the blooms get a little smaller, the production lessens and so I like to plant some every two to three weeks or even once a month. That way towards the end of the season I have some plants that are a little newer and are producing more than some of my earlier plantings that get a little tired. So this is my first planting of zinnias and all of these seeds came from Johnny's and these are all of the varieties that Johnny's has developed themselves through their breeding program. And clearly I need to come through and harvest because there are so many blooms in here. And look at the size of some of these compared to my hand that is enormous. Let's start down at the end. So starting on this end of the patch you'll see these are a lot more brighter color than some of these over here. The ones in front here that are kind of the sunset colors, the peaches, the corals, these are the Johnny's Aurora mix and I absolutely love these. I would say a hundred percent of these are the double almost dahlia looking zinnias. They're absolutely beautiful. This is a variety that came out I think two years ago and I definitely need to plant it next year. And then as we move on down the line the next batch are the ballerina mix and a lot of my ballerina zinnias are taking on the cactus style which I don't think all of them necessarily are supposed to be the cactus. You'll see in here some of these are the regular but because of this light color I actually kind of like it. It kind of sets it apart from the rest of my zinnias. Sorry I just realized that wasn't focusing. But the ballerina mix is all shades of pale pinks. Some of them are a little deeper pink kind of those mauve colors almost that like romantic wedding vibe. Definitely different from the aurora colors and so it's fun to have a variety because then I can have different bouquets every week. The aurora mix if we come down to the front here some of them are even giving me like these really deep gold colors which isn't my favorite but to go with you know certain colors of bouquets it definitely can add variety. So then moving down the patch you'll notice now I've got a lot that are kind of a cream color. This is the Johnny's linen and I think this is the first season that this has been available and I want to zoom in on this flower right here. Isn't that amazing? Look at the size of that bloom head. I think I need to harvest this to put it in a bouquet today but the linen series is all kind of this light cream taupe-y colored and actually I have one plant in here this is like a very pale yellow color. I'm loving this color so I would really like to save seed from this one plant. Actually I might have two. I think that bloom right there might be from a different plant but I'm loving that linen look and you can even mix the linen color with the ballerina mix. Actually you could mix any of them but the linen and the ballerina would just give a really soft look especially if I have some lisianthus to go with it. And then down on the end I think I must have planted a few more plants of the aurora and you'll see there is a random like semi-double or single variety here. I don't tend to use these much in bouquets. I kind of just leave these for the pollinators. I definitely prefer the double flowers best. Okay so the first patch was all of the johnny's flowers now we're going to move over to my second succession planting. So just across the way I have this little patch here this was an area of the garden that I just I didn't fill it with dahlias and I thought you know what I got to use all the space possible so I had some celosia plants these are a floret celosia I filled in the end but then you can see I've got some more zinnias down here and I started off by planting the rest of my aurora seeds and aren't they looking beautiful and some of the aurora varieties will take on this shading so you can see it starts with yellow in the center and goes to the cream and then kind of gets the pink on the end it's like that ombre effect this bigger one here you can see is taking on that coloring as well I love when they do that I probably should save seed from that particular plant too and then if we move down to the end this is the bennary's giant bright pink and the salmon rose so this is the bright pink obviously which is just a really pretty normal pink goes with anything and then this is the salmon rose which you can tell the difference I'll get them both in the frame here definitely more of a pink definitely more of a coral and I love them both and for some reason I have a random orange in there maybe that's from the aurora series let's take a look back this way isn't that just a pop of brightness these plants were pinched the plants over there were not pinched and these definitely bushed out much faster I don't always pinch my zinnias but I did with this particular row okay now we are going to make our way through here yes there's a path here and we're gonna go out here I've got two more succession plantings of zinnias in that area of the garden okay so we're out in the area with the hoop house the hoop house garden which there's going to be some major changes to this over the course of the fall and it's getting really windy I'm gonna have to try to block the wind for you guys but right out here I have this little raised bed of zinnias and these are all the oklahoma series these tend to be a lot smaller than the johnny's varieties and the bennary's giant varieties but I really love to sneak these into bouquets as an accent flower or even a little small vase arrangement so in this planter and this is a four by four size raised bed and you can see you can fit a lot of flowers in this space in fact this whole area I have a lot of flowers well a couple of them have been taken over by weeds but I have a whole bunch of straw flowers here I've been plucking the blooms off of which is why you don't see much color right back here that is all ageratum but the zinnia one is definitely the most colorful right now and the front color is the salmon this again is the oklahoma series so the salmon is in the front we've got the oklahoma I think it's gold I don't think it's the yellow I think it's called gold and then the oklahoma white which I love especially the oklahoma white because adding just sometimes adding white in bouquets can be a little bit overpowering but if you add just a little pop of white that's this tiny little zinnia it's just a really nice brightness to add to the bouquet all right the last area of zinnias has every color in the benry's giant rainbow and it's right over there all right so we're going to get past my celosia patch which I also need to harvest this today for bouquets oh my gosh look at that one this is a selway series I also have another succession planting of sunflowers going looking really good okay so this little patch is all the benry's giant colors so I will go through these rather quickly but these are great focal flowers so the first one is the benry's giant purple then we have the benry's giant orange this is the white color which is beautiful in bouquets I probably should have planted more white then we have a little bit of the lilac a couple more bright pink the benry's giant wine which is one of my favorites it's a really deep purplish red and then in contrast to the wine this is the deep red which hopefully this is focusing my phone isn't focusing very good today there you can have really good color of the deep red then we again have the salmon and the benry's giant yellow I tend to plant a lot of these brighter benry's giant colors as my last succession because a lot of these bright colors are really good for fall september in particular when the garden is still going strong okay so that's a tour of all the zinnias that are in the garden you might notice that there's one series that I usually plant every year that is not in the garden this year and that is the queen series now I did plant that in an area out in the garden they did not come up I don't know what the deal is some of the seeds were older some of them were newer it's an area that I've grown in before they did not come up so I guess I just don't have any of the queen series this year which is fine because I have plenty of other varieties so I'm going to cut this video off here thanks again for watching and hopefully you got some ideas for zinnias for your garden next year please subscribe to the channel stay tuned for a lot more cut flower content for the rest of the season and we will see you in the next video