I couldn’t plant a garden without including zinnias. Their colors are bold, the flowers attract both butterflies and hummingbirds, and zinnias make great cut flowers.
I have great luck sprouting the shorter cultivars from seed. The Magellan, Dreamland, Zahara and Profusion series all behave well for me.
The taller cultivars, however, usually give me trouble. They are really meant to be sprouted outside in the garden in late May when the soil is warm and the winds can keep the top of the soil dry. But I’m impatient and like to give my zinnias a head start indoors. That’s when I battle damping-off disease. Even if I water from the bottom and blow fans on the baby plants regularly, I usually lose a half-dozen or more seedlings each year to this fungal disease.
In the last couple of years I’ve switched from the Benary’s Giants series to the Park’s Picks series and have had much better success avoiding damping-off disease.
The colors are very similar to the Benary’s zinnias. My favorite is ‘Park’s Picks Deep Red’:
There are many other beautiful colors available including ‘Park’s Pick Lilac’:
And the eye-catching ‘Park’s Pick Carmine Rose’:
Park’s Picks zinnias grow 40-50 inches tall and perform best in full sun, but they will tolerate partial shade.