My Floret Zinnias This Past Summer
Hello friends,
Last spring I sowed all the remaining Floret Zinnia seeds I had in storage, which I had bought from Emerden in 2024. The Floret Previous Metals, Dawn Creek Blush, and Unicorn zinnia varieties were sown into seed raising mix, grown on until they had two sets of true leaves, and then they were potted up into bigger containers with potting mix until I was sure the risk of frost was over.
I planted them in two vegetable garden beds close together, so that I could easily save seed for my own personal stash for the coming years.
And then it was time to wait for them to flower. Due to our horrible summer, which wasn't really a summer, my zinnia plants didn't begin to start flowering until late January, but they were well worth the wait. I had hundreds of flowers in such gorgeous colours ranging from cream, pinks, and orange, all the way to bright red. The range of zinnia flower types flowering varied from singles, to cactus shapes, all the way through to frilly doubles.
Dawns Creek Blush flowers varied from dusky pinks, to pinks, and to purples.
Precious Metals gave me lots of metallics in shades of orange, pinks and purples, and there was even ombré colouring in some of the flowers.
And finally, the Floret Unicorn variety gave me florescent bright pinks and orange and red flowers, with a lot of double flowers amongst them.
I was so happy with my zinnia patch, and I wasn't the only one. Bees and butterflies swarmed over my zinnias all summer and autumn long, and that made it just it that much better in my opinion.
I shared my Floret zinnias on social media, and soon found myself becoming a very small scale flower farmer, as I provided buckets of zinnias to a local flower farmer florist. I very much enjoyed going out into my garden on summer mornings to fill up buckets of zinnias to send away to their new homes.
Unfortunately though thanks to the terrible summer we had, all too soon I had to start seed saving by letting the blooming flowers set seed and turn brown. I managed to save seed from a lot of mature flowers, before the looming threat of a decent frost forced me to save as many older flowers (but not quite mature flowers) in mid-April.
On the 22nd of April we had our first proper frost, and all my lovely zinnias sparkled in the cold autumn sunrise as frost coated them all. By the afternoon the zinnia plants had all turned brown and died.
And so the zinnia season for 2025/2026 has come to an end. I have 5 trays of zinnia flower heads to process over the winter, so I can harvest the seed and store it away until next spring. I am very much looking forward to seeing which zinnia flowers bloom next summer. Zinnias are known to have complex and highly plastic genomes, and have transposons, aka jumping genes, which can lead to unstable genetics, so who knows what I'll end up with. But I'm excited to find out...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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My Favorite Dahlia Varieties Of This Past Summer
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you my ten favorite named dahlia varieties of the 2025/2026 growing season. This list is in no particular order, but no doubt you'll probably see a pattern emerging...
First up we have the Polka variety, which is an anemone dahlia with white and cranberry outer leaves, and golden fluffy inner leaves. Honesty, she is probably my new favorite dahlia of all time. Her colouring is just so unusual and happy, that she'll always have a space in my garden.
Number two is my second favorite new dahlia variety of all time, Bumble Rumble, a collarette dahlia with bright pink and white and gold flowers. She's a stunner in the garden with her frilly petals, and the bumble bees do indeed rumble over her all summer long.
Dahlia variety number three is Misses Amy, another anemone dahlia, with cranberry and light pink colouring. She has a huge pincushion top which makes her another favorite of bees and butterflies in our garden.
The next variety, Mambo, is another stunning anemone dahlia in my garden. She has magenta and red and peachy toned flowers, and her inner anemone petals are very unusual, as they lie flat with serrated gold tips.
Dahlia variety number five is Dream Seeker, a collarette dahlia bred by Dr Keith Hammett in New Zealand. This bright orange dahlia also attracts bees and butterflies all summer long, and her florescent colouring brightens our front garden for months and months over summer and autumn.
Cafe Au Lait Rosé is the only dinner plate dahlia to make it into to my favorite dahlia list for the 2025/2026 season. Her flowers are huge, and the deep magenta flower petals are stunning against the green backdrop of the garden. If I were to only keep one dinner plate dahlia CAL Rosé would be the one.
Princess Nadine is another eye catching collarette dahlia I love, and her cranberry shades fading to golden yellow petals are just so pretty. She's probably my third favorite dahlia overall in the garden.
Sweet Sanne is one of the two decorative dahlias which made it onto my favorite dahlias list. Her ombré dark peach colouring is gorgeous against her dark green leaves.
Joal Kaitlyn, is another decorative dahlia which made it onto the list. She was an expensive buy for me, but she is completely worth it in my opinion. Her smoky peach/apricot colouring is just so unusual that she stands out in my front garden. This was hubby's favorite dahlia last season, and that's a big thing for him since he doesn't really care that much about plants.
And finally we have Zahra, a creamy white anemone dahlia. Her poofy flowers may be small, but they stand out against all the other brighter dahlias in the garden. She reminds me a lot of the double white daffodil varieties flowering in my garden each spring.
As you will have probably noticed by now, this list is mainly made up of anemone and collarette dahlia varieties. As the years go on, I seem to be attracted more and more to these fluffy and bright and unusual dahlia varieties.
Already in this coming year, the only dahlias I've bought in pre-sales are collarette and anemone varieties. And I've already made some space for them in the garden by digging out some dahlia varieties which no longer interest me...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Knitting Socks for Mother's Day
Hello friends,
I've recently finished knitting another pair of socks, this time not for me, but for my mum's Mother's Day present. She, like myself, is blessed with having Raynaud's Syndrome, which means that our hands and feet easily go cold and numb in winter, and our skin turns a pale white colour as blood drains away from those areas of the body.
One of the best ways to help combat this is to keep our hands and feet as warm as possible by wearing cosy merino socks and gloves. As of yet I hadn't knitted my mother any socks, so I thought it would be a nice present to give to her for Mother's Day.
The yarn I chose was Country Wide 4 ply merino sock yarn in the shade 452, which is in bright pink, orange, blue and green colours. The pattern I used was the fingering weight Rye pattern by Tin Can Knits. Luckily my mum and I share the same sock size, so I didn't need to measure her feet to get the sizing right.
It only took a couple of weeks to knit up the socks. It was a bit tricky to try and get the colour repeats lined up, but I did the best I could given the time crunch.
The knitting was quite straight forward, even though the yarn was shedding fluffy bits as I knit the socks. Because of this fibre shedding I won't be buying this sock yarn again, as it means the socks will probably fall apart faster as they are worn.
All in all it was a very quick knitting project, and I'm quite pleased with the results. My mum has already enjoyed their toasty warmth, after she received them on Mother's Day, and she's very grateful to have them now over the coming winter months.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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2025/2026 Dahlia Breeding Season Results
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you the results of the 2025/2026 dahlia breeding season.
I grew a total of 55 dahlias from seed, or as seedlings, and at the end of season only 14 dahlia seedlings remain. The number of dahlias I've kept is unusually high, and this is a result of me growing some of Floret's Petite dahlia seedlings, which I bought from Emerden last spring. They were unusually populated with promising dahlia seedlings, and this in my opinion makes buying these expensive Floret seedlings completely worth it.
To keep a track of all my seedling dahlias during the season I employed a dual system, first of all a dahlia seedling spreadsheet, and also a physical note book with a page per seedling, noting down when it flowered, what type of dahlia it was, colouring, and photos showing each dahlia in flower.
The majority of dahlia seedlings that flowered were single dahlia types, and most of those dahlias were the colour yellow. This makes sense because the single dahlia type, and the colour yellow, are both dominant in dahlia genetics according to the book "Dahlia Breeding for the Farmer-Florist and the Home Gardener". Thirty eight of the fifty five dahlia seedlings were single types, equaling a total of 69% single dahlias in my breeding experiment. Twenty seven of the fifty five dahlia seedlings had yellow flowers, or they had yellow colouring in their flowers. Both single type dahlias, and dahlias with yellow flowers, are not what I'm looking for in a dahlia in general, as they are very common, and not really interesting to me.
This dahlia seedling, SR5, is a typical yellow single dahlia flower. I don't consider it interesting at all, even though the bees love these flowers. I don't have enough space in my small garden to justify growing them every year.
And now for all the amazing dahlia seedlings I grew this last summer.
First up we have Keith Hammett Beeline II #4, a dahlia seedling from a Beeline II seed packet I bought from the dahlia breeder Dr Keith Hammett. Dr Keith Hammett doesn't have the space to grow every single seed in his breeding program, so he sells seeds packets occasionally. This dahlia is a single dahlia, but the pink to yellow ombre colour shift is just spectacular against its dark green leaves. This dahlia, KHBII #4, is very similar to Dr Keith Hammett's Mystic Sparkler dahlia, which I own and love in my garden. However, this flower is much larger, and I prefer this seedling dahlia's petal shape more, so it makes it worth keeping this dahlia for next year to see how it fares.
Next up is another Dr Keith Hammett dahlia seedling, NZ Gardener #1, which is grown from a seed packet given away by the NZ Gardener magazine. This is a yellow decorative dahlia, with great symmetry in its petals. Even though this is a yellow dahlia, I haven't seen many pure lemon decorative dahlias for sale in New Zealand, and this is the only decorative dahlia seedling I grew this year. It's worth growing for another year to see how it looks over time.
This next dahlia seedling is called Floret Bee's Choice #13 (FBC#13), AKA Pink Lemonade. This is a yellow, white, and pink anemone dahlia, with unusual domed inner anemone petals. I really love its delicate colours, and it's unusual anemone shape. This dahlia is quite pretty, and has a lot of potential. I'll be growing it for the next couple of years, to see how it develops as the tuber gets older.
The next dahlia is another Floret Bee's Choice seedling #15 (FBC#15). This is another anemone dahlia variety, and it is two toned, with pale lemon outer petals, and brighter yellow inner domed petals. I've called this one Daffodil Daze, as it reminds me of the fluffy double daffodil flowers I grow in my garden each spring.
This next seedling, SR#4, is another anemone dahlia. I'm not really sure what to think of it, but I love the purple colouring. I'm willing to grow it in my garden for another year to see if it improves.
This white collarette dahlia seedling is SR #13, which I've named Snow Dancer (named for the Snow Dancer wolf pack in Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling book series). She's such a pretty white collarette dahlia, and since I have none growing in my garden, she will make a happy addition to my dahlia collection.
The following dahlia seedling is Floret Petite #2, a magenta on magenta collarette dahlia. This is a really pretty dahlia I bought as a seedling from Emerden Garden last spring. She reminds me a lot of the Cafe Au Lait Rose dahlia, and she also has a large flower head for a collarette dahlia. She's definitely a keeper for next year, and I've collected seed from her to see what dahlia types I get from her.
This next dahlia seedling is Floret Petite #3, which is another anemone dahlia with great potential. New flowers are a very pretty smoky peach colour, and she fades to a apricot colour as the flowers age. FP#3 is definitely another keeper, and I can't wait to see how she performs next summer.
Next up is Floret Petite #4 a stunning lemon and magenta streaked collarette dahlia with white frilly petals inside. She is a stunner in the garden, and very much appreciated by those noticing her. This dahlia probably has the most potential of all the dahlia seedlings I've grown this year. I can't wait to see her flowering again next summer. I haven't chosen a name for her yet...
Floret Petite #5 is another collarette seedling dahlia, and has pointed lemon petals, and curly white inner petals. She was growing in a bad spot in the garden, and didn't get a lot of sun, so I don't think she's grown to her full potential this year. I'm going to grow her in a better place next year, and see how she fares.
And next is Floret Petite #6, my favorite of all the dahlia seedlings I grew this past year. She is a very unusual anemone dahlia, with the outer petals colour shifting in an ombre pattern from dark to light pink, and the inner anemone petals doing the same, but with gold tips. What is also interesting is her 3D shape which is very pronounced, making her look like she's wearing a poodle skirt. She is just stunning and looks nothing like any other dahlia I've ever seen. Her colouring shifts as the flowers age.
I have also kept dahlia seedling Floret Petite #8 until next year. Unfortunately Floret Petite #6 grew beside FP#8 and completely overshadowed the dahlia seedling. Because of this, the dahlia seedling stayed quite small, and it also didn't flower this year. Due to the prevalence of great Floret Petite dahlia seedlings, my plan is to grow it for another season, to see if it has potential.
And finally we have two unknown dahlia seedlings, Unknown 2 and Unknown 4, which popped up in the back garden over summer. Their parent plant I think is Dahlia Protegee, which grows nearby them, and I think when you see the comparison photos you'll agree with me.
First up is the suspected parent plant, Dahlia Protegee, which is a Keith Hammett bred dahlia. She is an ombré magenta to salmon pink single dahlia with dark leaves. This dahlia is an absolute bee magnet all summer long.
And this is Unknown #2 dahlia seedling. She has green leaves, her petals are rounded, and her petal colouring is a deep pink ombré fading out to a baby pink outer. There are also dark pink streaks throughout her petals. When this dahlia flower ages, the light pink fades to a white shade which is really pretty.
And this is Unknown 4 dahlia seedling. She has fewer petals, green leaves, but has more of a pure pink ombré effect. There are also streaks of darker pink running through the leaves. She is also very pretty.
As you can see from these photos, they do indeed look like dahlia Protogee's daughters. I'm happy to keep these dahlias for another growing season to see how they look and change over the growing season.
Overall my dahlia breeding season was very successful. At the start of the season my hope was to grow 2 - 3 dahlia seedlings which were promising enough to keep for another season, but having 14 is a bonus. All I have to do now is store them successfully over winter, and then grow them again next spring to see how they fare. In the mean time we've already had 4 frosts, and my dahlias have all died back, and winter is fast approaching...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
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