Re: Side Note on Petunias

At 08:48 AM 11/27/2002 -0500, you wrote:

I think I've said this on this list before, but an expert said in a talk this
summer that petunias are the teenage boys of plants--you simply cannot
over-feed them. The most stunning plantings I've seen of Wave petunias had
been heavily fertilized.
Bill Lee
Well, maybe. A petunia is not necessarily a petunia when it comes to feeding. The waves are the greediest in the family and you'll only get superior performance from them if you feed them heavily. All cultural information in the trade pretty much agrees with that.

The others - grandifloras, multifloras, floribundas are a different cultural habit and average fertility was recommended. My experience in the greenhouse was that if you overfeed the latter classes, you'll slow down flowering (but you'll increase vegetative growth and get longer internodes). Mind you, there's a whole bunch of interaction going on with temperatures, sunlight etc to influence growth rates.

In the greenhouses, we'd use 200 ppm of Nitrogen on the average petunia but kick that up to 300-400 ppm for the Waves.

In the garden, I recommend two things. One, a weekly feeding for Waves with compost tea and Two - after you do this, jump back quickly as the plant has been known to break ankles with its rapid growth. :-)

Doug

ps. I guess a petunia is a perennial somewhere. :-)
Doug Green
Author of the award winning "Gardening Wisdom"
See gardening articles at http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com

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