Saving Zinnia Seeds

Zinnia seeds are one of the easiest seeds to save and use the following year. We only save seeds from double blooms and our absolute favorite colors. Although you can’t guarantee the exact same color because of our little pollinator friends, you can usually get a close second. On this flower, you can see the petals curled up tightly in the middle, it just wanted to keep going and going! I probably harvested this one a little on the early side but you can see on the edges it was starting to die.

It is important to label your flowers when you would ideally harvest them for a bouquet or shortly after. This way you are able to see the true color of the flower and can label it accordingly. If you wait to label the flower, you may not know the true color of the seeds you are harvesting and would be planting next year. Which is totally okay if you are going to do a rainbow mix!

This year we labeled them with very high end, totally joking, (painters tape) labels because it was what we had at the time. We then harvested them and let them dry a bit in the garage until we remembered we needed to store and sort them. The day we remembered we needed to address them was because the dog came out of the garage with one in her mouth. These are very dog and 3 year old friendly flowers - dead and alive. Haha! When that day came, we made sure it was a nice day to do the messy job outside. You can start by cutting the petals close to the base of the stem. This just makes it easier when you pull the seeds out because you don’t have all the petals still hanging on. You will find the seeds you want to keep at the base of the flower. There can be a lot of seeds in one head.

You want to only keep the dark black colored seeds that keep their shape when you push on the tip. If they bend in the middle, they are no good and will not germinate the following year. After the seeds are removed from the head, we stored ours in plain envelopes that were decorated beautifully by Isabella herself. You may need to let them dry out a few days before putting them away to be stored in a dark cool area for the winter. If you don’t want to, you could always live on the edge and see what happens when it comes time to plant next spring.

Since we have saved our seeds from zinnias, Isabella has been saving seeds from every plant she now sees! “Mom we might need to use these next year,” as she hands me a handful of harvested seeds from who knows what. And I absolutely love sharing these moments with her!

Until Next Time,