Nothing more spectacular and rewarding than to grow your own zinnias. In this post, I share how I personally How To Dry and Save Zinnia Seeds From Bouquets.
Who doesn’t love a fresh cut bouquet from a home garden to enjoy indoors? I have lost count of how many smiles my zinnias have brought. It is rewarding to cut and given as gifts. It is super easy to dry the flowers and save the seeds to grow more bouquets in the years to come. In fact, I have had seeds saved for close to five years that produced a flower. Below I will share how I save seeds from zinnias to grow more bouquets.
NOTE: for a zinnia to come back to true (or the same as it was the year before) it must be an heirloom. This doesn’t mean the zinnia seed won’t grow from seed if it was a hybrid.
You will need
* As the flower starts to fade it is time to remove it from the vase indoors. be sure to rinse off the expired leaves and other things that start growing around the steams in the vase water.
*after the stems have somewhat dried from removing the extra growth place the zinnia flowers facing inside the brown paper bag.
* Use floral wire to tie off the brown paper bag holding the zinnia flowers. Be sure the stems are wrapped and somewhat out of the bag so as the seeds dry they will drop into the bag.
The brown paper bag helps keep bugs and critters out and it also provides a place for the seeds to collect.
* Be sure to label your brown paper bag with the date and what variety you have placed in the bag to dry. This makes it so much easier next year when you go to plant your cut flower garden.
In this blog post, we are using a mixed bouquet that will grow perfect together because they are all the same plant and the heights are the same. In bigger bouquets, you may want to remove the larger flowers ( like sunflowers) and dry them separately because they don’t always grow well together.
* Hang the drying bags in a cool dry location. I hang mine in my garage where it is low light and I know there aren’t any critters that will be able to get into them.
This process is how you can dry the zinnia flowers in order to save the seeds. As the flower dries the seed usually falls to the bottom of the bag.
Once the zinnias a dry you can also save the seeds for years to come. It is also easy to wrap the dried seeds for storage. I share how you can save space by putting the dried zinnia seeds in homemade envelopes.
I hope this video was useful for you. Be sure to direct questions and comment to me on my website.
I would love to hear what you think about Zinnias. Please be sure to comment on this post. Reach out to me anytime with questions, comments or just a ‘howdy’. I hope I can help you grow your own zinnias.
Happy Gardening,
Note that this post has been revised from a 2014 blog post by Bren Haas.
