Adored by pollinators and people many gardeners love to grow zinnia flowers for their ease & long-lasting gorgeous coloured flowers too. They are a favourite staple for beauty & pollination function, as well as simplicity of saving seeds for yearly replanting. Buy once and have seeds indefinitely, bonus!

Zinnias are one of the easiest flowers to grow being very low maintenance and come in all shapes and sizes, from dwarf varieties around 6 inches tall and species Zinnia Violacea (Z. Elegans), which can grow to just over 4 feet! Native to North & South America, they are mostly annuals for zones 2-8, however there are some wild native varieties that behave as perennials in warmer zones 9-12. These flowers love warm, full sun weather and good amount of soil moisture with balanced ph.

Seed Saving Options

Zinnia seeds can be saved from all open-pollinated varieties, but have awareness there will often be variations in colour/style. To seed select for more ‘true to parent type flowers,’ plant your zinnias further apart and select certain flower heads to be covered with a mesh bag to avoid cross-pollination if you have a few different varieties. This will prevent too much cross-pollination but will still allow the flower to go to seed.

Alternatively, you can also grow many varieties of zinnias all together in a Landrace style growing bed or scattered within a polyculture bed, encouraging cross-pollination and diversity in genetics, saving seeds for local resiliency, and letting nature lead in results of colour/shape/size and genetic diversity.

These are two excellent seed-saving options depending on your intentions & desired outcomes of collecting Zinnia seeds.

Harvesting Of Seeds

Zinna flowers for collecting seeds must be left on the plant until the flower head has died back, withered and dried out turning bownish in colour and crispy to touch. Zinnia seeds form at the center of the flower head at the end of the peddles. It is important to collect from a few different vigorous parent plants (for a colour you love or extra large size or traits like being more resistant to powdery mildew; these are traits you can select & save for with your seeds.)

To Harvest

Carefully cut the flower head off the main plant.
Gently shake, pull, or tap the seeds onto a piece of paper. (you will see the individual petals and attached seeds fall out.)
Leave the petals with seeds out to dry further on a plate for a week to be safe.
Before storing your zinnia seeds, you will want to remove some Chaff. Chaff refers to the seed covering and debris of the dried petals. Pick out the seeds – which will be small flat and brown – and discard the chaff outer coating. When fully dry, they often just fall out, which is easy. You can also shake in a paper bag to aid.
Healthy seeds are solid and thick; gray/brown-colored can be flat, spear-shaped, or elongated with sprouts at the end. All of them are suitable for planting. Remove any rotten black, affected, empty, or deformed ones, as they will not germinate next season.
Label the variety for next year, and store in glass jar or paper seed envelope in a cool, dry place. On average, zinnia seeds dried and stored correctly can last for at least 2-3 years.

SEED STORAGE —seed envelopes, mason jars, any small glass jar with lid, store in dark, cool area like back of cupboard or in freezer for longer term seed storage.

SEED USES —replanting.

PFC REMINDER —If you let some of your zinnia flowers die naturally and fall to the ground, they will germinate seeds by themselves, too.