Saving Dahlia and Zinnia Seeds for Next Season
Hello friends,
Over late summer and early autumn, I spent many happy hours collecting seeds from the dahlias in my garden, and from the Floret zinnia varieties growing in my zinnia patch.
This year, my focus was on saving seeds from as many collarette and anemone dahlias as possible, along with seeds from some of my favourite seedling dahlias from this season. There's always something hopeful about saving dahlia seeds. Unlike tubers, the seedlings won't grow true to their parents, and that's part of the magic. Every seed has the potential to produce something completely new, making each growing season full of anticipation and surprises.
The process of saving dahlia seeds takes a little time and patience. Once a flower has finished and the petals have fallen, the waiting begins. Not every flower produces a good seed head, so I watch carefully for those that develop into plump, full seed heads.
Once I find one, I mark it with a piece of flagging tape and leave it on the plant to mature. Depending on the weather, this can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month. As the seed head ripens, it gradually turns a mid to dark brown colour, becomes dry and crunchy to the touch, and the outer sepals begin to pull back, revealing the inner parts of the seed head.
At this stage, I remove the seed heads from the dahlia plant and place them in an open container labelled with the variety name. I then gently break up the seed heads by hand to increase the airflow around the seeds. As the seed head falls apart, the dahlia seeds begin to separate from the chaff, and I leave everything together in the container to dry for a couple of weeks.
Once the seed heads are completely dry, it's time to separate the dahlia seeds from the chaff. Fortunately, the chaff is both larger and lighter than the seeds, which makes the job a little easier.
There are a number of ways to do this. One method is simply to shake the container, allowing the heavier seeds to settle to the bottom while the chaff sits on top. Another option is to winnow the crushed seed heads on a windy day, or in front of a fan. The heavier seeds drop into a waiting container, while the lighter chaff blows away. A third method is to use a soil sieve, which screens out the larger pieces of chaff while allowing the seeds to fall through.
Most of the time I use the first method, as I've found that viable dahlia seeds can sometimes remain attached to the chaff. If I wasn't paying attention, it would be all too easy to throw away perfectly good seeds.
Before I begin, I make sure the seed heads are crushed up as much as possible. I then gently shake the container from side to side, allowing the heavier seeds to settle to the bottom while the chaff rises to the top. As I remove the chaff, I quickly check it for any viable seeds that are still attached and carefully pry them off by hand.
It takes a little extra time, but I'd rather spend a few extra minutes cleaning the seeds than accidentally lose some future potential favourite dahlia varieties.
Once all of this is done, I pop the dahlia seeds into labelled paper seed envelopes. I like to include the dahlia variety, the flower type, whether the seed was open or closed pollinated, the pollen parent (if I know it), and the date the seed was collected.
With everything labelled and safely stored away, the seeds are tucked away until spring, when the whole process begins again. One of the things I love most about growing dahlias from seed is that each seed holds the possibility of something completely new, and I can't help but wonder what surprises next season will bring.
My approach with the Floret zinnias in my zinnia patch (Precious Metals, Unicorn and Blush) was a little different. Rather than selecting individual plants, my aim was simply to collect as many viable seeds as possible from across the patch.
Because Floret zinnia seeds were only available in New Zealand for one season in 2024, I have no way of purchasing more seed. If I want these beautiful varieties to remain part of my summer garden, seed saving is really my only option.
Thankfully, zinnias are generous plants, and with a little effort I hope to carry these favourites forward for many summers to come.
Last spring, I sowed all of the remaining Floret zinnia seeds I had in storage and grew them on through the season. By late January the first flowers were appearing, and I began saving seed in February.
Fortunately, many of the plants set seed well, and before long I had collected trays of mature brown seed heads. Then, in April, just before our first decent frost, I harvested as many flower heads that had begun setting seed as possible, hoping that some of them would continue to mature and provide a few extra seeds as well.
With Floret zinnias no longer available, I was keen to make the most of every opportunity to save seed and carry these beautiful varieties forward into future summers.
The process for collecting zinnia seeds is pretty much the same as with the dahlia seeds. I allow the seed heads to dry out completely before gently crushing them by hand. The seeds naturally fall to the bottom, and I use the same shaking method to separate them from the chaff.
One of the interesting things about zinnias is that they produce two different types of seeds. Seeds from the ray flowers are larger and rounder in shape, while the seeds from the disk flowers are much smaller and narrower. Some growers believe that the larger ray flower seeds are self-pollinated, while the smaller disk flower seeds are more open-pollinated, producing different flowers in the next generation. I haven't found any definitive evidence for this, though.
As I've collected both seed types, it would be easy enough to grow them separately and see what happens. Perhaps that's a future Crafty Gardener project waiting to happen...but that's a story for another growing season.
Overall, I managed to harvest over half a margarine container full of Floret zinnia seeds. They are now safely stored away, waiting patiently for spring and another season in the garden.
Both dahlia and zinnia seed saving have taken up a lot of my time throughout autumn and now into early winter, but I have many seed packets safely stored away ready for sowing in spring.
Winter has arrived, and although it is often thought of as a quieter time in the garden, I know there is still much to do. There is tidying and weeding to tackle, dahlia tubers to dig up, and a new back garden project waiting in the wings.
This will be my last blog post for the next fortnight. My husband and I have a medieval-themed wedding to attend (which means we finally get to wear our new cloaks!), and afterwards we're taking a short holiday to relax after a busy growing season.
So, until then, I'll wish you all a happy winter solstice. I'll see you again in July, at the beginning of a new gardening year, and the start of another season of stories.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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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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Flower Farming This Summer
Hello friends,
One day while I was doom scrolling on Instagram, I came across a reel from a local flower farmer, searching for local flower growers to sell their excess flowers to her for her floristry business. Since I was at the time in the middle of completing Floret Flower Farm's online Flower Farming Workshop, I thought this was a good opportunity to do some practical work for the workshop, by harvesting my flowers and foliage and selling them.
In summer my home garden is full of many flowers including varieties of dahlia, hydrangea, zinnia, scabiosa, cosmos, calendula, as well as many other precious goodies including my grown from seed dahlias. Most of these flowering plants are used in the floral industry for selling as cut flowers, and also many of these plant varieties that I grow do not travel very well over long distances, meaning that local florists need to find local growers to provide them for their floral work.
I contacted the flower farmer, and within a few days she came to my home to look at my garden, and also to pick her first bucket of flowers. She was impressed with my flower varieties, and especially my dahlias and Floret zinnia plants, and she quickly got to work photographing the flowers, and also harvesting them for use in her floristry business.
One of her favorite dahlias to harvest was a Floret Petite seedling dahlia of mine, which is currently named FP6, and it is an unusual anemone dahlia in shades of pink, red and yellow. I'm very happy with this dahlia, and intend to grow this as a second year seedling dahlia next year.
It wasn't long before she contacted me again, with the intention to buy more flowers from me, which I was very happy to do. This time she taught me how to harvest all the various flowers in the garden, so in the future I could harvest flowers for her myself.
This came in handy the next week which was Valentines Day week, the busiest time in a florist's year. For the first time I harvested all the flowers and foliage by myself, and I really enjoyed the process, harvesting the flowers that usually just flowered in my garden, and then processed them ready for her to pick them up.
I had so much fun harvesting zinnias, dahlias, hydrangea, and also filler flowers like calendula, cosmos and coreopsis. I also picked foliage plants like rosemary and dogwood for her. When she came to pick up all the flowers up after they'd been harvested, she asked to pick some more, as she planned to make over 100 bouquets for Valentines Day. By the time she left, my garden had provided her six buckets of flowers and foliage, and I was so pleased to have the experience under my belt.
From here on out, she is happy to buy flowers from me whenever she has the need for flowers, and I'm willing to sell them to her. I'm very pleased with this arrangement because it's a way for me to do some flower farming without committing myself to owning a full on flower farm, and all the commitments that come with it, but it also means that any income I receive from this means I can invest it into more plants for my garden, and most likely more dahlia varieties...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Planting Out All The Garden Seedlings
Hello friends,
The last couple of weeks have been very busy in the garden, with the weather now being warm enough to plant all the seedlings, plants, and dahlias in pots, out into the garden. This was super important, as the glasshouse was completely packed with plants, and my tomato, cucumber, and chilli and capsicum seedlings really needed to get planted in their final positions in the glasshouse.
The first plants to go out into the garden were the dahlias I had in pots, and also all the dahlia seedlings I'd grown from seed, which I put into two of the new side garden beds.
Next to plant out were all my natural dye plant seedlings into another new garden bed in the side garden, including tango cosmos, calendula, and Japanese indigo seedlings.
The vegetable garden beds also had to get weeded and dug over, so the corn, black turtle bean, lettuce, cabbage and bok choi seedlings could be planted into the garden.
After that, it was time for all the flower seedlings including cosmos, calendula, and pansies, to be dotted around the garden areas to fill out
empty spaces I leave for annual plants. This took about a week as I was very enthusiastic in sowing seeds this spring.
The last of my Floret zinnia seedlings (Unicorn, Precious Metals, and Dawn Creek Blush) went into two spare vegetable garden beds so they can self-pollinate with each other in blocks this growing season, to give me a stash of Floret seeds of my own for the coming years. There is no guarantee that Floret seeds will be imported into the country again any time soon, and I wanted to keep some seed stocks of these varieties for my garden.
And finally once the glasshouse was all but empty it was time to add compost to the glasshouse, dig over the soil, and plant out all my tomatoes (Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Island Bay, Lebanese, Grosse Lisse), capsicum (Marconi Red, Candy Cane), chilli (Serrano), and cucumber (Mini Me, Crunchy, Medici) varieties, and erect their climbing frames. I had some leftover plants which were given to family members.
Once the bigger plants were in place, I planted out my basil plants (Genovese, Gustosa, Lettuce Leaf) into the empty spaces. With that all done I scattered fertiliser, added Saturaid to help with water retention, replaced the yellow sticky traps to catch plant pests, and gave the glass house a good watering.
There are two more vegetable garden beds to be weeded, have compost added, and dug over for planting, but they are for special projects that will be dealt with by the time you read this blog post.
It's been a lot of work to get to get my garden to this point, and I've been neglecting weeding the garden to do this, so that will be my next big gardening job leading into summer in a couple of weeks.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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