First flowers from zinnias grown in my basement

On November 12, 2023 I planted some zinnia seeds to test out different soils and fertilizers that I was working with. The pack of seeds said they were “coral zinnias”. Frankly I didn’t care which type they were as I was testing and wasn’t going to grow them out… or so I thought.

As they started to get bigger I decided to pot them up and see how they grew under LED shop lights. The plants below are a little over three weeks old.

Below are the zinnias at 8 weeks old and grown under inexpensive LED shop lights. As I would later find out, the plants were getting too much organic fertilizer. This caused several leaf issues, but the plants were determined to keep growing.

10 weeks after planting and the zinnia blooms were starting to open up… and the seeds weren’t exactly true to color.

There were 4 different colors as well as several different flower shapes. I’m using them as a test run for trying to breed different zinnias. Fingers crossed.