12/19/2023 0 Comments Tiny petunia seedlingsHardening off is the essential step of gradually exposing plants to bright, hot sunlight, cool nights, UV radiation, and strong winds to toughen them up. Sometime in March, I begin getting our hanging baskets of petunias outside to begin hardening off. There's usually not space for such large pots under our plant lights, so the hanging basket pots in trays go onto bookshelves in our sunroom or on our dining room table by our bay windows. Occasionally, I put single petunia plants in eight inch hanging basket pots. That's often a large (10-12") hanging basket with three petunia plants per pot. At that point, they get moved to their final pot. The petunias for hanging baskets eventually outgrow their fourpack cells. That's often the Celebrity variety, along with whatever I might have picked up off a plant rack. For the second planting, I use varieties that do well in our garden plots. The tray of petunias in fourpacks goes under our plant lights.Īt this point, I seed two more egg cartons of petunias. I use a teaspoon to remove the petunia plant and rootball from each egg cell, moving them into roomier fourpacks filled with sterile potting mix. The egg carton tops used as drip pans make bottom watering pretty easy.Īfter four to six weeks, the petunias outgrow their egg cells. The petunias have to be watered every other day once they get started, due to the small size of the egg cells. They acclimate a bit under our plant lights in the basement before being moved to our kitchen windowsill. Once germinated, I keep the petunias on the heat mat for a day or two more before removing the clear cover and shutting off the heat. A warm, sunny windowsill might work as well. For petunias, I set our thermostat between 75-80° F. Our soil mat thermostat has a probe that goes right into the soil, so we can be pretty exact with our seed starting temperatures. For the time being, the egg carton tops that will later serve as drip pans get set aside, allowing me to bottom water the petunias if needed. Petunias also benefit from a bit of bottom heat during germination, so ours go into a planting tray with a clear cover on our heat mat and under our plant lights. I part with Mom's practice of just setting the egg carton on a windowsill to germinate, as it's a bit cold on our available windowsill these days. To help the pellet dissolve and release the seed on the soil surface, I go back and drip several drops of warm water on each seed with an eyedropper or an old syringe. Petunia seed needs light to germinate, so I don't cover the seed. A few extra seeds do provide insurance in case not all of the centered seeds germinate. Our petunia seed comes as pelletized seed, so planting is just a matter of getting one seed in the center of each cell, something harder to do than it sounds. I've also tried using peat pellets in egg cartons but didn't have much luck with the pellets in egg cartons or otherwise.īefore seeding, I water the starting mix thoroughly with warm water. We make our own from potting soil and peat moss, heating it in the oven for an hour or so at 400° F to kill off any damping off fungus that might be (and often is) present in potting soil. The cells of the egg cartons get filled with sterilized starting mix. Before putting the halves together, I punch a drainage hole in the bottom of each egg cell with a sharp pencil. One of the advantages of Styrofoam cartons over cardboard is that the top can go under the egg cell section as a watertight drip pan. I first cut off and discard the narrow flap on the egg carton before splitting the egg cell section from the top. Obviously, cardboard egg cartons wouldn't hold up. While I'm not a fan of Styrofoam coffee cups, Styrofoam egg cartons are perfect for this kind of planting. That may seem like overkill in packaging to some, but we appreciate it, as we freeze leftover seed for use in later seasons. The pelleted petunia seed ships in a reusable plastic vial.in a foil packet. Twilley packages most, if not all of its seed now in foil packets. Petunia seed is tiny, so the pelletized version makes planting much easier. Other than one terrible mistake, I plant pelletized (pelleted) Supercascade and Double Cascade seed from Twilley Seeds for the first planting. The first petunias I start each January are somewhat trailing varieties for hanging baskets. But the baby petunias add some nice color to a kitchen windowsill in the winter. The experiment turned out well, although the petunias quickly outgrew their egg carton cells. In a bit of a nostalgic mood, I tried starting petunias in egg cartons about ten years ago. My mother used to start seedlings in egg cartons on the kitchen windowsill. Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |