Timing for sowing petunia seedlings for sale and for your own needs

Multi-colored petunias with double or single flowers are real favorites among both amateurs and professional gardeners.

They decorate balconies, loggias, flower beds and delight with continuous flowering from spring to autumn.

In the spring, at specialized markets, sellers offer a lot of varietal seedlings, and if you need one or two flowers, it is better to purchase ready-made petunia seedlings.

If you need a lot of flowers for landscaping large spaces, then purchasing seedlings will cost a significant amount, then you can grow the planting material yourself.

In order to get suitable ones by the beginning of the season for transplantation flowers, it is necessary to correctly calculate the timing of sowing petunia seedlings and provide certain conditions for its growth.

Content:

Petunia seeds for seedlings: collect or buy?
What you need to collect seeds
When to sow petunia seedlings

Petunia seeds for seedlings: collect or buy?

It is advisable to collect petunia seeds for seedlings if the flower varieties are initially known. This is due to the fact that modern breeders have developed a large variety of not only varieties, but also hybrids of petunias.

Even if a hybrid plant produces seeds, in most cases they do not convey all the characteristics of the parent specimen and such petunias are best grown from cuttings.

If you nevertheless decide to prepare the seeds yourself, then even at the flowering stage it is worth marking the selected buds or flowers with bright, clearly visible ribbons or thick threads.

What you need to collect seeds

To collect seeds It is better to opt for the lower flowers. From the moment the bud opens to the collection of ripe seeds, at least 60 days pass.

To speed up the process, it is better to cut off some of the flowers so that the plant’s energy goes into seeds, and not into new flowers and buds.

Petunia seeds are enclosed in a fruit - a capsule. When it dries and just begins to open, it’s time to collect the boxes before all the seeds spill into the soil.

If you are afraid of missing the moment of collection, then you can attach small bags or bags to the boxes. The collected seeds are dried on paper for two to three days.

After drying, they are stored in paper bags marked with the date of collection and the name of the variety. petunias.

Keep the seeds in a dark, dry place at normal temperature. If for various reasons you were unable to prepare the seeds yourself, you can buy them in specialized stores, including through online platforms.

The next important stage is the timely sowing of seedlings and caring for them.

When to sow petunia seedlings

In order to correctly calculate the timing of sowing petunias, it is necessary to take into account not only the climatic conditions of the region and the likelihood of late frosts, but also the possibility of organizing additional lighting for crops and seedlings.

To obtain strong seedlings ready for flowering by the second half of April, you need to sow petunia for seedlings no later than the third ten days of January. In this case, additional lighting will be required at first for 7 - 8 hours.

Petunia will be ready for planting in the ground during January sowing in 75 - 90 days. In the early stages, as a rule, it is customary to grow its seedlings for sale. In most cases, petunias are planted in open ground in the last ten days of May - the first half of June. Such seedlings are most often used for personal needs.

In order for the seedlings for your own flower garden to be well formed by this time, you need to sow petunia seeds in mid-February. At this time, daylight hours already allow crops to be grown without additional hours of illumination.

The timing of sowing seeds also depends on the variety of petunias. Seedlings of small-flowered petunia are ready for planting in the ground after 70-75 days.

Most large-flowered varieties and hybrids are ready for transplanting in an average of 90 days.

In any case, you should not rush to plant multi-flowered petunia if the bulk of the seedlings is below 15 cm, large-flowered - below 20 cm, and ampelous - below 25 cm.

When growing petunia seedlings, it is advisable to regularly pinch the longest shoot so that the bush turns out to be lush, with many side branches.

In order for the seedlings to reach the specified size when growing it, it is important to provide the seedlings with a certain temperature, humidity and fertilizing.

It is important to ensure their germination before sowing seeds:

Bags of purchased seeds must have a germination test mark; those collected independently must be placed in advance on a gauze cloth moistened with a weak solution of potassium permanganate.
If after five to seven days more than 50% of the seeds have hatched, then they are suitable for sowing, but their number needs to be slightly increased. Generally petunia seeds will retain good germination for five years.

Thus, if you want to get petunia seedlings in April and use them mainly for sale, you need to sow the seeds in January and make some efforts to grow them.

If seedlings are needed by the beginning of summer, then the seeds must be sown in mid-February and such seedlings are much easier to grow.

Video on how to properly sow petunia seedlings: