Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 2, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
StarLight,

"...how do you keep your Zinnias blooming more than once?"

If you are not trying to save hybrid seeds quickly, pinch out the central bud to encourage branching and pinch out subsequent buds or deadhead them. Most zinnias will keep putting out new branches in an attempt to set seeds in their flowers. If you keep pinching out the flower buds, your zinnias can become very branched.

I am impatient to cross my zinnias and get the seeds from those crosses, so I usually violate those principles for having good looking zinnias in the landscape in order to speed up the process of raising my own cross-pollinated hybrids.

"So what do ya think would be good to try and hybridize together?"

I think you might get some good results crossing the Magellans with the taller zinnias like the Park's Cutting Blend Pastel Shades and the California Giant Mix. I have been meaning to try that, myself. The taller zinnias can have sprawling branches and the Magellans are really too short and compact for their own good, so crosses between the low growing Magellans and the taller zinnias could create a "happy medium" with well-branched plants with a good intermediate height.

"Which ones do ya think would be a waste of time?"

The Profusions will probably be difficult to work with. You might succeed in crossing them with each other, but it would be a big gamble trying to cross them with your other zinnias. Also, I agree with Lucy (irisMA) that it is highly unlikely that the English Daisies will cross successfully with any of your zinnias. However, no harm in trying the "impossible" because, if it succeeded, your results could be very interesting. As a kid I tried repeatedly to cross marigolds and zinnias with no luck.

If you want to "branch out" in your zinnia project, you might want to try a packet or two of Burpee's Burpeeana Giant zinnias. Also, the scabiosa flowered zinnias can add a new dimension to your zinnia breeding, because their pollen florets (disk florets) are colored and last for many days, unlike the conventional fuzzy yellow disk florets, which usually fade and wither within a day or two.

I still like to make crosses involving the scabiosa flowered zinnias, despite the high number of single "daisy flowered" zinnias that they produce in my recombinants. This attached picture is a current bloom in what I refer to as "Echinacea flowered zinnias". They can result from a cross between a scabiosa flowered parent and a larger flowered zinnia. Or the scabiosa flowered crosses can produce "marigold flowered" zinnias and occasionally "sunflower flowered" zinnias.

ZM