In my experience, Zinnia seedlings are very easy to transplant. I direct sow a swath of the tall Zinnias every year, sow the seeds about 3-4 inches apart and there are always too many. I've had great success thinning them out and moving extras to a new location, even when they are up to 6-12 inches tall. Not sure about the shorter Zinnias. As for most WS seedlings I usually wait until they're at least 1-2 inches tall to plant out from the containers. They are a little easier to establish with more roots. I plant them out in small groupings, and usually separate out the seedlings. But HOS works for a lot of seedlings too. I have gardens all over the yard, and once plant out time comes, the seedlings are all over the place. I often have to do a lot of watering to make sure the babies get established, and often slugs are a problem too, because they love seedlings! Transplanting them a little larger might help them survive.

I grow loads of different sunflowers every summer, and am always open and interested in hearing about new varieties that I don't have yet. This is not the way to do it though! Besides I'd much rather hear about personal experiences with the flowers than a standard commercial blurb that one could get off just about any website. That's not why most of us come to this forum! Also I'd like to point out that "Indian Blanket" is a sunflower I grow, but GardenWeb informs me that it is not in their database because it is not a "recognized" cultivar, or something like that. They responded to me and said: "We cannot find any record of this cultivar having been registered anywhere. With all due respect, there are far too many nurseries that make up names and market them with no formal registration/patent...If you can locate the name of the person/nursery that registered/patented it and the year, we will be glad to include it. The information will have to come from a university.edu, or society or botanical garden.org, or something similar, not a commercial enterprise." Just FYI.

dklucius, you are absolutely correct that the price of black oilseed is on the rise, but i doubt that the local riding horse market is generating a major impact because they have been using sunflower seeds of all variety, and especially the black oilseed as a supliment in both Equine and Bovine feeds for a number of years. I think you will find a much greater impact is coming from the oil industry. Although black oil seed has not been extensively farmed in the past, there are now finding that black oilseed it much cheaper than corn to produce and it has a higher yield for making biofuel. As the biofuel industry expands we can expect to see a big demand on sunflower seeds of all varieties. It is a great deal for the farmers because their initial planting and tilling costs are less and they can plant & harvest the oilseed with the same equipment they currently use for corn. If the biofuel industry kicks off as expected we will see the price of sunflower seeds fluctuate very quickly, It could go through the roof or on the other hand, once more farmers get into the production the price could drop tremmendiously. However it turns out, I will be okay because I have unlimited access to 10 acres where I can grow my own oilseed, or convert some of it to open meadow bird preserve. Last year we had to cut down two 65ft high Maple trees in the yard. We sold off the firewood, but I took all the brush and limbs and built a living fence along the creek which provides excellent habitat for birds, rabbits, and a couple ground hogs, now to mention that the open meadow area provides a hunting ground for the hawks and Bald Eagles. As soon as the weather breaks I will be building some hunting blinds in that area where i can sit all day and shoot pictures.

As a general rule, plants that have tap roots do not transplant well. This is why you don't see garden centers selling potted Sunflowers for planting in gardens. But that being said, Sunflowers are very tough. You say it has roots. Do you see a tap root formed? I would get it into the garden as soon as possible and give it lots of water in the beginning. After it appears to have rooted in the soil and looks stable, do NOT water so often, in fact not at all, depending on where you live. They need to send out the long tap root searching for water. This will keep the plant strong and stable. If you water it everyday forever it will happily sip water from the surface forever and be a very weak plant and could topple when it reaches maturity. This is all rather relative since there are many different varieties of Sunflowers. Some Sunflowers naturally grow very tall and produce small blooms. I grow a rather obscure "heirloom" Sunflower that gets 7' tall and has 3" blooms. They look gorgeous grown in clumps. You may want to shield it for a couple days with a net bag until it gets used to the spot it is planted in. They do need lots of sun to grow but it will go through transplant shock and may not make it. Don't freak out it the Sunflower goes all wilty for a couple days. Try to pick a cloudy day when you transplant it to the great outdoors. You have nothing to lose by trying. I wish you luck. You sound like you love Sunflowers and I hope this one makes it.