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
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
Crawford Road Autumn Seed Haul
Hello friends,
Last spring I grew from seed a large number of flowering plants, in order to fill my garden with colour throughout the growing season. Some of the plant species I grew and harvested are used as dried flowers, and include plants like Calendula, Love in the Mist, Statice, and Strawflowers.
I enjoyed going out into the garden to harvest these flowers, and spent some time drying them using both the hanging, and flat lay techniques.
I'm not quite sure what to do with all these dried flowers as yet, but for now they're safely stored away in cardboard boxes waiting for the coming colder months, when I will have time to craft with them.
After enjoying growing and harvesting these flowers, I wanted to prepare for next spring by buying some more dried flower seeds from Crawford Road, a New Zealand boutique seed company.
I purchased some new to me plant species, including Ammobium Winged Everlasting, Gomphrena QIS Pink, Gomphrena Raspberry Pink, Helipterum Pierrot White, Helipterum Red, and Persian Cress.
I also purchased Matricaria Magic Lime Green, Matricaria Vegmo Snowball, Verbena Bonariensis Vanity, and two zinnia seed varieties, Zinnia Jazzy Mix and Zinnia Persian Carpet. Zinnias are not only great as fresh cut flowers, but they also dry well, and they keep their colouring for months as long as they are stored properly.
And finally I bought some more Strawflower (Apricot Peach, Cranberry Rose, Creamy White, Purple Red, Silvery Rose) and Statice seed varieties (Forever Happy, Pale Blue, Pink Pokers, QIS Lavender, and QIS Rose).
All my new seeds are now entered into my seed database, and stored in my seed storage boxes.
My plan was to sow some of them this autumn, but life has been busy, so they will now have wait until spring. I'm looking forward to seeing all these new flower varieties next growing season.
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.
Our Lilac Tree Died
Hello friends,
Our lilac tree stood in the right hand side of our backyard, a fully grown tree already when we moved into our home in 2019. Each year in spring it would bud out and produce leaves followed by stunning purple scented flowers, but unfortunately this past spring was its last.
In the third week of October in 2025, a large wind storm blew through the South Island of New Zealand, causing wind damage throughout Otago and Southland, and cutting off power to thousands. At the time I thought my only plant casualties were some limbs coming off my quince tree, and my Avalanche camellia bush being snapped off at its base, but unknown to us at the time, my lilac tree had been damaged as well.
A week after the storm I'd noticed that our lilac tree hadn't burst its buds, and when I touched the buds they crumbled, having been turned brown and crispy by the wind storm. The tree had gotten wind blasted to the point that it was in serious trouble. We left it for a while to see if it would bounce back, and eventually a couple of leaf buds on the south side of the tree burst open, showing that at that time the tree was still alive (well only barely).
We left it over the summer to see if it would grow more leaf buds, but it didn't, and then around early February 2026 the few remaining leaves on the plant turned brown and fell off. After carefully checking multiple branches at points around the tree, and the suckers which usually came up from the base of the tree each summer, they were all dead and brown. I also checked with a few knowledgeable plant friends, and they also agreed that our lilac tree had died.
I was really upset over this, but also practical, because sometimes these things just happen. Nature gives and it takes away. The next weekend hubby got out our saw and began cutting down the tree limbs. Our first priority was to remove dead branches that could possibly hit the glasshouse or the fence, and then after that we cut the tree down to the ground. Hubby mulched what tree material he could with our wood chipper, and mulched around that area of the garden to help with weed suppression.
We also dug up the old fern plant beside the tree, as in the past a wasp nest had been buried in there, so I wanted to remove the plant to ensure it wouldn't happen again.
The resulting sunlight in this area of the garden after the tree had been taken down, is just amazing. There is now a lot more sun in the garden bed from early morning until early evening. Dahlia plants that had grown under the tree grew vigorously, and have even flowered.
At the moment in mid-autumn there are dahlias and damask roses still growing in this area. As soon as the first big autumn frost comes, and knocks back the dahlias growing there (after I've finished seed saving from them), I think I will rearrange this whole area of the garden, in preparation for the next growing season. And I already have some ideas on what I could do...
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.
Dehydrating Apples For Snacks
Hello friends,
My parents dropped by our home one day in early March, and brought with them a 10 L bucket full of golden delicious apples off their tree for us. As it's also currently apple harvesting season in our garden, I added them to our growing pile of homegrown apples, and started thinking about what to do with them all.
Our apples trees are the varieties Ballerina Waltz, and Ballerina Flamenco, highly compact, columnar apple trees ideal for small spaces. These apple varieties are bred to be no more than 40 cm wide, and up to 4 metres tall, with all the branches being completely covered in apples in autumn, making them perfect for urban gardens, and also for hedges. I really do recommend Ballerina apple trees if you don't have the space for fully grown apple trees, and they come in different varieties, so you can pick which apple types you'll be harvesting and eating.
Ballerina Waltz is a crisp and juicy variety with a slight tang, suitable for eating fresh, dehydrating, and cooking.
Ballerina Flamenco are eating apples, which also make a lovely apple jelly.
After some thought I wrote a small list of apple making possibilities, and got to work, first of all making dehydrated apples for snacks. I filled a bowl with water, and added the juice of a couple of lemons (from our lemon tree), to stop the apples from turning brown while I processed them.
Once the some of the apples were all cut and soaked in lemon juice water, they were patted dry before placing on dehydrator trays. They were put in our dehydrator and dried at 60˚C for 5 hours, with them being flipped over halfway through.
The dried apple slices were then tested for dryness, before being stored in a plastic container.
Dehydrated apples are great snacks, whether at home, or for when you're going on a walk and you need a little pick me up. The three different types of apples I dried all taste very different, with the Golden Delicious apples being super sweet, the Flamenco apples being nicely balanced between sweet and tart, and the Waltz apples being quite tart. It makes for a nice mix, and it's a pleasant surprise as the apples are eaten.
Unfortunately we didn't use up all the apples sitting in the 10L bucket, so hubby made a huge batch of apple pie filling with some cinnamon, and I've stored it away in our chest freezer to use over the coming autumn and winter months.
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.
Social Media
Archives