Content
- Pull petunia out of seeds yourself
- Even reap seeds from the petunias on the balcony
- The right conditions for growing petunia from seed
- Optimum care for seedlings grown from seed
- Seeds from the specialized trade
- Tips
Petunias are best grown from seeds
Pull petunia out of seeds yourself
Although petunias are usually relatively inexpensive to buy from the gardening trade, many hobby gardeners simply haul them themselves. This will save you the hassle and uncertainty of not so easy wintering of these plants.
Even reap seeds from the petunias on the balcony
As a care guide, in petunias, it is generally advised to manually remove the withered flowers every few days for optics and plant health purposes during flowering. But you must refrain from doing so on at least one of your petunias on the balcony if you yourself want to harvest ripe seeds from your plants. As soon as the withered petals are easily detached, a green seedling becomes visible on the former flower stem. This develops over time to a clearly visible seed capsules, which should be collected in the yellow-brown state in good time before bursting.
The right conditions for growing petunia from seed
In order to be able to plant the petunia as young plants in the garden or in a balcony box in time after the last night frosts in April or May, you should start growing on the windowsill already in February or March. As far as possible, the following conditions should be fulfilled during the germination phase:
Optimum care for seedlings grown from seed
The seedlings sprouting first from the seeds do not really look like the older petunias. They should be isolated shortly after the formation of the second pair of leaves and continue to be protected in the house maintained. Especially at this young age, the delicate petunia plantlets in their seed substrate should never completely dry out and be regularly watered accordingly. If you first get accustomed to the field by the hours of self-bred petunias after the icy saints and then put them back in the house for a few days at night, you can effectively harden the plants.
Seeds from the specialized trade
Petunias are nowadays available in a variety of colors and flower patterns, either as seedlings or as seeds. Make sure that hybrid varieties do not stably pass on their properties when propagated by seeds. Choose between two or three different varieties to make for a particularly attractive color contrast on the balcony later.
Tips
Truly true-to-the-species petunias are usually only obtained by propagating them vegetatively via cuttings. During the fertilization of the petunia flowers, the genes of petunia blooming in the neighborhood can mix with those of their own plants, so that by the cultivation of the seeds ripened on the plants quite surprising flower colors can result.