carolem said:How long is the process approximately, between pollination and harvesting hopefully viable, green seed?
Hi Carole,
It usually takes about three weeks, from the day a stigma is fertilized to when a green seed is well developed enough to pick.
Incidentally, a stigma will shrivel and die in a day or two after it is successfully fertilized. If a stigma is not fertilized, it can remain yellow and "perky" for two weeks or more, so you have several opportunities to get a stigma fertilized.
A single grain of pollen can fertilize a stigma. If you are persistent, you can get a high percentage of stigmas in a zinnia bloom fertilized and get a hundred or more seeds from just one bloom.
If you plan to store the green seeds for use at a later time, be sure to dry them out before you store them. Otherwise you might get some germination in storage, and that would not be a good thing. Just spread them out on some surface (sometimes I use an old newspaper page) and let them dry for a week or so at room conditions. Good luck.
ZM
