Posted the same picture twice huh? her's the other one,

Meant to post this one, volunteer zinnias beside the greenhouse:
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I get zinnia volunteers but I still can't grow lupines.

kay

Kay, the new zinnia strip looks great and truely was a great idea. When they all flower it will be such a lovely sight. But then I look at all the zinnias coming up in the first of the volunteer seedlings pictures and it looks just like you had planted them there. Amazing to me, simply amazing. Like I said, I have never had a volunteer zinnia seedling. Now, the goldfinches do like to come and eat the zinnia flowers as they go to seed but I am sure they don't eat all of them. Plus I am not very great at dead heading them which means there is plenty of seed.

The zinnias must truly love your garden. I buy plants and start seed myself too. Looks like you would probably not have to replant that front new zinnia strip from now on and just let it redo itself.

kay - that is amazing that you get so many reseeds - I do get some but like Rita the finches have a field day in my gardens and the zinnias seem to be a favorite food. Be sure and post pictures when they are in full bloom ......

Lynne

The Goldfinches come and eat seeds on the Coneflowers, Cosmos, Mexican Sundflowers, Sunflowers and the zinnias. But like I said, they hardly eat them all. The sunflowers are always self seeding from dropped seeds. I get volunteer conflowers too. Haven't noticed any volunteer Cosmos but since I am always changing around were I plant those, I could just weed them out without noticing. I would notice volunteer zinnias for sure but just don't see any.

Most likely the birds aren't eating the seeds...we always tend to get heavy volunteer zinnia plants. They won't necessarily be the same color, but I planted them originally for the butterflies, so who cares? My neighbor has zinnias up really thick in the circle bed from last year. Maybe it's the climate.
kay

The climate must help. Maybe we get too much winter here for the seeds to come up. But then other annuals do reseed themselves so why not zinnias.

In case anyone is interersted in scattering lots of zinnia seed and trying to self seed their own zinnia haven, American Meadows has generic zinnias in bulk.

Here is a link that might be useful: Zinnia Seeds at American Meadows

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This is the closest I get to volunteer zinnias. Have to buy them already growing in flats or start seeds in pots or flats myself. Going to go out and plant these out in the belgium block mini terraces were I have the daffodils.

Kay, I like your volunteers better LOL!

Wow. I had no idea zinnias even would reseed. And especially that prolifically. That is amazing. I think any zinnia is pretty so you're right about who cares what the colors are.

I have a few flats of zinnias started under lights and doing pretty well. They really are a great annual.

The bed where they have volunteered so very heavily (I have pulled up a good many of them already) was made of a lot of shredded oak leaves, composted manure and the like...I planted it with iris, but had one big purple zinnia there and several others areound the bed. These appear to be several different colors...a big rose pink one was the first to bloom.
kay

I finially planted all my zinias. I kept having rain delays for the past three days. Had some rain stoppages but then it would just start up again and I couldn't get finished.

Kay, what did you do about the volunteer zinnias? Did you transplant some out to the zinnia strip in front?

Rita,
I do occasionally transplant some of them, but thee are so many, a lot of them are just pulled and composted like any weed. Sorry, but you can allow only so many to bloom.
kay