Why I Oughta...

Last year, I direct-sowed zinnia seeds into the cut flower bed in our sideyard and into the vertical tower on our patio.  And...it...well...worked.  We grew Zinnias.  But, this year I wanted to get them started a little bit earlier (not as early as I should have, though...) and decided to start some seeds indoors.   I showed the three varieties of seeds we bought this year - earlier this winter/spring;  Envy , State Fair and Cut and Come Again.    I had some eight-cell packs on-hand from annuals that I put out front, so I filled those with a potting mix and tucked seeds into each cell.   Pretty quickly, most of them germinated.   I kept the seedlings in the screened porch and they started to grow up and get taller.   In an attempt to keep them from getting too-leggy, I moved them outdoors as often as I could - weather-permitting.  Below is a photo showing the two trays out on the patio - where they live all day...

I bought and quickly divided a nursery-grown yellow, orange and red Zinnia named Zowie Yellow Flame earlier this season in a spot IB2DWs .  It produced a few early flowers that I clipped off some of the tips in hopes that it would 'bush-out' and get bigger.  The result?  Mixed.  It has certainly been pretty prolific with blooms.  But, it is tall and NOT super wide/fat/bush-like.    Below is what it looks like in late August:  I don't know a ton about collecting Zinnia seeds - specifically what happens with hybrids like this one - but I'm going to dry a couple heads and harvest the seeds.  I'll throw them into a mix and direct-sow them in my sideyard next Spring.   And, maybe I'll even throw some down IB2DWs to fill-in all the blank space over there.