How To Save Zinnia Seeds That Actually Germinate Next Year

This year I grew so many zinnias. I normally come to the same varieties that I that I know work well for me and for the bouquets that I make during the summer. The queen line varieties, the orange, the red, even the green, those are my go-tos when it comes to zinnias. And this bed that you're looking at right here is the first bed where I direct sowed a bunch of the queen red lime and I have been letting these guys go. They're going to stay here for this winter. They'll provide food and shelter for for all of the bugs and birds and today I'm going to be saving a bunch of seeds from these. Now saving seeds whether it's zinnias or dahlias or any other flower that I have grown in my garden it's not something that it's necessarily done just during the fall but it's something that I do when the blooms are ready and I know that many people do save the blooms when they look Nice like this and they let them dry indoors until the seeds are ready. That is something I don't normally do so I can't really tell you that's one way to do it because I have never tried it. I normally wait until the blooms are still in the plant and they're nice and crispy and done and brown completely. And don't get me wrong, I still buy a lot of zinnia seeds, especially new varieties, new colors, new shapes that come to the market, but I also do my best to save seeds from those zinnias that I know, that I know that I love. Let me show you this bed. This is where I harvested my garlic over the last winter. We were growing garlic here in the first week in July. That's when I harvested the garlic here. I showed you that video. I had a great harvest from music and I mentioned that I was going to direct seed a bunch of zinnias here. These zinnias that I have grown here are seeds that I collected actually two years ago from the variety from Johnny's called Aurora and that's a mix of colors, a mix of different kinds of colors. And I really, really like the varieties or the blooms, the color combinations that I have. Let me show you some that I think I'm going to be saving seeds from again. Let me start with this color here. My goodness, I love this color here. This one is almost like a dark purple slash orange. I mean look at that color. It is beautiful. This one isn't that big of a dahlia but I already marked it. I came here and I have a little bit of a string so that when this this bloom is nice and dry and ready for me to harvest it from I know which which blooms I want to save. Here's another This one is more on the purple side of things. That is gorgeous. This is slightly bigger. I love that. There are some that I'm not too crazy about like this. This salmon looking one is not my favorite for bouquets. I mean it's a really nice color but it's not one I'm going to be saving seeds from. Here's another one. This is not a double, this is just kind of like a more simple. I don't know that I am crazy about the color. Let me show you one. My goodness you guys this one right here. This one right here is just supreme. First, it is huge. Look at the size of next to my hand. Huge. It's almost, it has almost like a flat, like a flat, I don't know, shape to it with a bunch of layers. And it has this nice dark purple slash yellow color. I love that. I already mark it there with a piece of string so that I know when this bloom is nice and dry. I'm going to make sure that it's nice and tight too. I'll be able to save seeds from that. Now I do have others like this one right here. Uh this one is not my favorite and the thing is that if I don't like it now there is no point in me saving seeds from that because it's more than likely going to come up to a color that I don't like and if I put these two next to each other it's right on the sunshine right now. Like I definitely will prefer the one on the right versus this one right here. Let me show you other blooms. This one right here is another one, just gorgeous. Gorgeous bloom. Again these were seeds that I saved from the variety Aurora. Beautiful. Some of them this one I might I might save my market. Why not? Oh this one for sure for sure it's tiny but look at that that deep orange color. Beautiful. Here's another one that I'm saving. This one is a little bit thicker. This one is already spent but this one is sort of it's not as flat as the others. I love that color. This is beautiful, beautiful. Oh I think I might save seeds from this one. Maybe, maybe not. Here's one. This is giving me like ballerina. Vice but this one has like a diff like three different kinds of colors going on. They're like a Purple, I don't know Salmon color and yellow in the middle. Look at that. It's beautiful and it's nice and flat and then it's huge Then this one right here It's also beautiful so for these zinnias growing here I am definitely looking at the blooms the blooms that I like that is and I am going to be saving the seeds by by marking the blooms right now when I know that I like them now that way when they're nice and brown and crispy I can come back and save seeds from those the thing about this is that even though I am saving seeds from these blooms it's not a for sure thing that I am going to be getting the same The same colors, the same shapes next year. The colors may vary depending on what the bees did here. But I am starting with blooms that I already like with colors that I enjoy. So I'm hoping that next year I'll have, you know, more blooms, more colors that I enjoy. And most importantly, colors that I can use for my bouquets. The zinnias that you're looking at right here were Thank you. planted way before the ones that I just showed you. These are queen lime red zinnias. And these guys are already past their prime for sure I need to clean this bed but what I'm doing now is that I am just waiting for some of the blooms to get nice and ready for me to collect seeds. I normally don't like to pick the blooms like when they're this nice. I really really want to wait until the blooms are completely completely crispy. If I was on a pinch maybe I will wait until the blooms are something like this but for sure this will be the kind of bloom that I will be saving. I just remove the the spent bloom and I put them in a brown paper bag and sometime in the winter I will grab those bags and I will clean the material and separate the seeds look at the best looking seeds and save those. Like I say normally I wait until these blooms are completely brown on the plant before I put them in a brown paper bag and and keep them there until until I'm ready to to work but let me show you really quick how the zinnias the seeds that I save look like. I simply open this and you should do this when it's also dry outside and this right here are a bunch a bunch of zinnia seeds and normally what I do in the winter is that I just separate the seeds from everything else all the spin petals from the plants and then I just save the seeds that way I'm just working and feeling what everything is what everything I have here and the longer that I wait after these blooms have already are starting to to go down in quality the longer that I wait the look at this it's beautiful the longer that I wait the more time the birds have for for eating these these seeds which is also why I right around this time if I know that I am not going to be harvesting more blooms from my zinnias I'll just leave them there actually they're going to stay there until probably next spring because they provide homes for the birds and for the wildlife and also they are food for the birds and right here just from one One bloom. I have tons of seeds tons of them and you can tell by first looking at the seeds that I have here these are nice and hard nice and and they feel strong if you look at a seed and you start moving it around and if it bends easily it's more than this one is empty the hotter um the the seed feels The more chances you'll get or the higher the possibility of that seed being good and germinating is. If that makes sense. Like this one is nice and strong. It's beautiful. So I know that that one is going to be great. And this is, like I said, this is normally something that I collect in the fall or whenever the blooms are ready. But then I process them or I take my time sitting I'm staying inside in the warm. Probably watching a show or something and then that's when I collect all of these seeds. This is nice too. And then I'll just continue. Let me show you one more. And you guys I already have like a bunch of these so I am not worried about saving these specifically ones. This right here is also full of of seeds. Look at this. Lots of seeds from this one. And you can really tell where the birds have already collected because it's just empty. Versus like the other side where it's just full of the seeds where they haven't gotten to it. And lots of seeds here. Lots of seeds here. Show you one more. This one doesn't look like it has that many if any. Oh here's one. Here's two. You're like how can you tell because If the ends of where the seeds are supposed to be right here in the inside if they just feel like they're just dry petals there is nothing there like you know when you have a nice strong seed like that one right there because everything else is just it's just petals it's just empty pockets where the seeds should have been but the birds obviously beat us to them you can tell that right This is the seed right here and this is the where the petal was blooming. Lovely, beautiful. So like I said this is normally a job that I do in the winter but if you don't know how to save zinnia seeds this is the easiest that I have found it works for me. If you have a bunch of zinnias that you grow and that you just love, go ahead and save those seeds. See how they come up next year and just continue taking advantage of those free seeds that nature provides.