Zinnia Love

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. I’ve been busy growing stuff from seed, inside under LED shop lights like crazy including NINE different types of zinnias. If you want basil, I have basil and it’s not normal basil. I’m slowly shifting to cuttings under domes. Propagating is so much fun.

I started two different colors of the cactus flowered zinnia above Inca & Senorita. Select Seeds has many cool zinnia seed options and I bought a few. Can you see the powdery mildew in the pic above? The black specks are fly poop. The SF Bayview backyard was covered in flies every summer. I could grow the shorty zinnias just fine, but the big, tall ones always got icky with powdery mildew pretty quick.

Here in Wisconsin and pretty much anywhere except my old SF backyard, zinnias grow with wild, happy abandon. One of my favorite Madison zinnia gardens is only a couple blocks away.

Look at the wall of happy zinnia blooms last year! This gardener direct seeds his zinnia party. It’s so much more fun than the boring grass that was there before. By the end of the summer they were at least six feet tall and made a magical, flower tunnel. The gardener who lives here also lived in San Francisco many years ago.

The magical Bowling Ball Garden right next door to this zinnia party house also plants a patch of zinnias instead of grass. If you’re in the mood for looking at more cool zinnia seeds, check out Johnny’s.