2024 IHF Field Notes

Zinnia -- Zinnia elegans -- Many Varieties

Tray 1 Sown 4/10
Tray 1 Germination 4/12 (2 days) Tray 2 Sown 4/10
Tray 2 Germination 4/12 (2 days) Tray 3 Sown 4/14
Tray 3 Germination 4/16 (2 days) Tray 4 Sown 4/17
Tray 4 Germination 4/20 (3 days)

Germination counts

Tray 1 (Benary 72, half tray) - 2/3 512, 1/3 FoxFire
4/12, 2pm: 2
4/13, 9am: 40
4/13, 3pm: 52
4/14, 8am: 68
4/15, 7am: 69
4/21, FINAL COUNT, post-thinning: 36

Tray 2 (Benary 144) - 512 Mix
4/12, 2pm: 3
4/13, 9am: 67
4/13, 3pm: 83
4/14, 8am: 107
4/14, 2pm: 114
4/14, 5pm: 119
4/21, FINAL COUNT: 72

Tray 3 (84 Candy Cane, 60 Cactus) - MG Mix - Sown 4/14
4/16, 6pm: 3
4/17, 10am: 33
4/17, 10am: 49
4/18, 6pm: 67
4/19, 6pm: 71
4/20, 6pm: 78
4/21, 6pm: 80

Tray 4 (72 Candy Cane, 72 Benary) - MG Mix - Sown 4/17
4/20, 9am: 15
4/20, 4pm: 31
4/21, 6am: 39

Tray 5 (12 Candy Cane, 36 Cactus, 24 Benary) - MG Mix - Sown 4/21

Tray 6 (50 Benary) - MG Seed Starting Mix

4/21 -- Well there is a lot to cover here! Most of the necessary information is above. Ended up with three varieties - found Cactus and Candy Cane varieties at certain garden supply center, and the Candy Cane variety especially looked compelling, so decided to give those a go, which altered my strategy. Have sown three full trays and one half tray - the first tray was a combination of Benary and leftover Marigold seeds from last year. For growing medium, at this point it is obvious than Johnny's 512 mix is a better germinator here than the Miracle-Gro organic potting mix. Tray 2 was all 512 and ended up being 83% germinated. Tray 3 is all MG mix, and barring a late flurry, is probably going to end up 60% germinated, which is fairly on par with last year. Nevertheless, because I did two seeds per cell across the board, I'll get a full tray out of that one - it just means way less thinning, which I suppose I appreciate in a certain way. But lesson here for next year - Johnny's 512 all the way with Zinnias is a lesson I've definitely and officially learned!

4/28 -- Not going to go through these all. I have lots of Zinnias but the germination hasn't been great. The most interesting thing I've done is started a final set of these in five rows of a 20 row tray using seed starting mix, just to see what happens - and what happened is 47 of the 50 germinated. I'll have to move them up quickly, but if they take to that well, this may well be the way I get them going next year. The other thing I did was using Tray 5 as a test of growing mediums. Learned there that Zinnias definitely prefer 512 and FoxFire mix as compared to ProMix - ZERO germination in the ProMix!

5/11 -- Have nearly 300 of these going at various stages of growth, which is now proving a bit tricky to plan for planting out! There are 100 of these that are bursting at the seams that need to go out soon - I'm classifying these as phase 1 Zinnias - and then I have a bunch that are likely a week to two weeks away, and a third set (that final 50 I mention in the entry above) that will be last, probably toward the end of May. Everything is fine with these though - the only thing I'm thinking about now is experimenting with pinching some of these. Haven't done that before, would be interesting to try.