Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi Sharon,

"...how long have you taken to get this far?"

I started back in 2005, by planting a few Whirligigs, Burpee Burpeeana Giants, Burpee Giant Hybrids (now apparently a discontinued strain) and some Scabiosa Flowered zinnias. I made quite a few crosses, and in 2006 I got an excitingly different "sunflower flowered" zinnia (picture attached) from a cross between a Scabiosa Flowered zinnia and probably one of the Whirligig specimens.

I had never seen any zinnia like it, and that one zinnia was enough to get me hooked, although I had some other interesting results from crosses between Scabiosa Flowered zinnias and the large cactus flowered zinnias.

So really it took me only a year to get some unique zinnias that you couldn't get from a seed packet. My zinnia patch gets more interesting to me as each year goes by. It's an absorbing hobby, and easy to get into.

ZM