God's Growing Garden: Zinnias & the Importance of Labeling Seedlings

Thursday, August 6, 2026

Zinnias & the Importance of Labeling Seedlings

Zinnias & the Importance of Labeling Seedlings

For the past couple years, we have been starting most of our plants from seed in our homemade cold frame (click HERE to view "Repurposed Windows Made Into A Cold Frame"). This year for some reason, we decided to put the empty seed packet underneath the seedling rows instead of using a popsicle stick marker. I'm sure that you can guess what happened.........the seed packet got soaked and the words were unreadable.

We had a packet of Zinnias from Mary's Heirloom Seeds and a packet of cantaloupe.

Click HERE to visit the Zinnia page on "Mary's Heirloom Seeds"!

Well, somehow the tray of cantaloupe got mixed up with our cucumber seedlings and we totally lost track of the Zinnias. We thought the Zinnia seedlings were the cantaloupe starters.

We reserved a special spot in the garden for the melons giving them plenty of room to spread. Now keep in mind that I had never grown Zinnias before - even after 40 years of gardening. As the seedlings started growing I noticed that they were rather upright, like maybe a unique climbing melon or something (I am laughing - haha).

They were looking like the pictures below:

Once we saw the little blossom (see picture below), then I knew that we had made a mistake.

Anyway, they are beautiful and the bees love them.

There are so many different colors - God's creativity is amazing!!

Enjoy the following pictures:

All photos were taken by me (Angie Ouellette-Tower) and the flowers were all grown in my garden.
© (2026)