My Tips For Easy Summer Flowers in the Garden

Every summer I fill my gardens with flowers that keep blooming until fall.  It’s gorgeous, it’s affordable, and best of all, it’s low maintenance!

My secret flower is the Zinnia, a gorgeous and strong flower that’s beautiful in the garden and great for easy bouquets.

You can buy Zinnia plants at the nursery in the spring and summer, but it would cost hundreds of dollars to get the coverage I get with just $15 in seeds!  A packet of 50 seeds from Park Seed is $3 and they have always sprouted well for me.

Note: This is not a sponsored post. I’ve been using this company for 5 years & am a huge fan.

It turns out that Zinnias are so easy to grow from seed, and once established, they require very little care.  They flourish in my front garden, despite the strong sun, clay soil, and my inability to water them regularly.

They start blooming in early summer and continue through fall.  I still had some color in my garden on November 1st last year.  My favorite variety, the Zinna Park’s Pick Mix, grows 4 to 5 feet tall in my garden.

Another benefit?  They attract birds and butterflies.  The most exciting visitors to my garden have been Monarch Butterflies (an at-risk breed), Swallowtail Butterflies, and Goldfinch birds.

 

Even the planting process is easy.  I put down fresh mulch, then sprinkle the Zinnia seeds where I want them.  I don’t worry about spacing or anything, I just scatter them.  When the seeds are down, I sprinkle just a little more mulch over the area for cover.  I do water them every few days if we don’t have enough rain, doing this for a month or so until the seedlings are well established.

Which Seeds To Use:

Zinnia Park’s Pick Mix – the tallest, most vigorous Zinnias and easiest to grow. I put these against the house in the back of the garden, because they can hit 5 feet tall. Also great along fences.

Magellan Mix Zinnia Seeds – a short “dwarf” version that I put along the front of the garden.  The flowers are bushy and only reach about 1.5 feet tall.  Great along walkways and borders.

For the best looking Zinnia garden:

• Water below the foliage with a soaker hose because the leaves are prone to mildew, or else just water early in day.
• Cut off the dead flowers to encourage more blooming (called “deadheading”)
• Transplant some seedlings after established to give better spacing between plants.  (I don’t always do this
• Consider staking the tallest plants to keep the garden tidy.  You can stake just a few of the strongest ones, and then use twine to tie the others up with a line that runs over to the stake. They can fall over if they get too tall, and they can look unruly like they did in my garden last summer:

Now is the best time to order so that your seeds arrive by April!  If you’re not sure about it, just try one packet of seeds for now.  You can start seeds indoors, but I have never been responsible enough about maintaining them.  I just put the seeds right in the ground a few weeks after the last frost.  April is best in the VA/DC/MD/DE area.