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When decorating and landscaping an area with flowers, we often use petunia. It can grow anywhere - in flower beds, discounts, in large flowerpots and flower pots of any size, in a hollowed-out piece of driftwood, a cut-off plastic bottle, a leaky bucket, even in an old shoe.
If you only need a few flowers, we don’t hesitate to buy seedlings, since the cost is reasonable. But to decorate a large area or if you want to turn the yard into a blooming and fragrant miracle, it is better to grow flowers yourself. Those who purchase seeds from year to year know how often low-quality planting material goes on sale. And what is stated on the label does not always grow. We will tell you how to collect petunia seeds at home.
Seed propagation of petunias
Propagating flowers by seeds is one of the simplest and most affordable ways. But only if you know when and how to collect them, how to dry them, and also what to expect from the emerging shoots. But it often happens that the owner collected dried flowers and sowed them, but they either did not sprout at all, or during flowering they turned out to be completely different from the mother plant.
Actually, petunia is a perennial plant, we just grow it as an annual.Owners of winter gardens or greenhouses can easily move the flower they like into the house for the winter. Even just on a wide, well-lit windowsill, after a little rest and short pruning, petunia will delight caring owners with abundant winter flowering.
But most of us are content with communicating with a beautiful fragrant flower from May to September-October. And they are forced to independently collect seeds from plants they especially like, so that by sowing them for seedlings in the summer, they will get a new extravaganza of colors and smells.
General information
Petunia fruits are a bicuspid capsule that cracks when ripe with very small seeds of a dark brown, rarely yellowish color. Typically the ovary is a centimeter long and contains 100 or more seeds half a millimeter in diameter. You can collect them only until the box is completely opened.
The pistils of petunias mature before the stamens, therefore, with rare exceptions, it is a cross-pollinating flower. What to expect after sowing? Will the grown flowers look like their “parents”?
Watch a video that clearly shows which petunias you can collect seeds from and what the result will be:
Plain simple flowers
From the seeds of plain petunias, most likely you grow up plants similar to the mother ones. The simpler the color and shape of the flower, the more likely it is that the gramophones will resemble last year’s. White, pink, purple, lilac (all shades) colors are best passed on to the next generation. Red, black, yellow can split into other colors or change shade.
Hybrid plants
Perhaps the most beautiful flowers are those of hybrid petunia. They can be multi-colored:
- striped;
- star-shaped;
- speckled;
- bordered;
- mesh.
Or different flowers:
- fringed;
- corrugated;
- with a wavy edge;
- terry.
It is possible to collect seeds from all hybrid petunias, except double varieties. True, when the seedlings bloom, they can differ greatly from the mother plants in both flower shape and color. But in any case they will be beautiful. Some housewives sow the seeds they collected with their own hands and wait with bated breath to see how the stripes or spots will appear on the flower.
Terry varieties
How to collect terry petunia seeds? The answer is very simple - not at all. Terry hybrids do not set seeds, since it is their pistils that turn into additional petals. Stamens not only reproduce normally, there are even more of them than in ordinary varieties.
Plant the terry petunia next to the regular one, and collect the seeds from the latter. The result of cross-pollination, if you are lucky, will be from 30 to 45% of the plants with many petals.
So is it possible to propagate terry petunia? Yes, but to ensure the preservation of varietal characteristics, vegetative propagation is used.
Obtaining seeds
Collecting petunia seeds and storing them is easy. You just need to follow some rules.
Seed collection
It is best to collect petunia seeds on a dry, sunny day. Using sharp scissors, cut off the darkened, already cracked, but not yet opened boxes and place them in a clean box or paper bag.
It is believed that the best seeds come from the first flowers. Mark the selected seed pods by tying them with colored threads and wait for ripening.
Very often we do not sow even half of the seeds that we collect. There is no point in not clearing petunia of faded buds at all and stopping its flowering prematurely. Remember that each ovary contains about 100 seeds, which are stored for 3-4 years.
Drying and storage
It is not enough to simply collect the seeds; they need to be dried, following simple rules. Place the boxes in a thin layer on a clean sheet of paper and leave in a dark, well-ventilated place at room temperature until completely dry.
Remove the seeds from the pods, place them in paper bags, and label them with the variety. They will need another 3-4 months to ripen. This simply means that the planting material should be stored at room temperature in a dry place.
Conclusion
Now you know how to properly collect, dry, and store petunia seeds. This does not require any special effort or special knowledge.
Grow your own flowers. Let them delight you not only throughout the warm season, but also during the cold, dull winter.
