Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

Crazy petunias

wildlife, gardening, environment, Rural living, Pets and Vets
bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8063
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2845 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Crazy petunias

#241044

Postby bungeejumper » August 1st, 2019, 1:14 pm

Not a very promising title for a thread, is it? But these new Californian things have been dropping my jaw this year. Subtle they ain't :lol: , but what a display for a planter.

They're called Tidal Wave Red Velour, which sounds more like a racehorse than a bedding plant, and they go berserk if you keep on deadheading them, because each time you remove a flower they grow another two or three somewhere else. You're looking at just three plants here! Image

First seen on Gardener's World back in the spring - whereupon the entire nation ordered them, and I was quite lucky to be allocated two packets, a month too late to sow them. Or so I thought. But here they are at three months.

The Tidal Wave name seems to relate to the way they swamp everything else in the neighbourhood. Never seen anything like it.

BJ

malkymoo
Lemon Slice
Posts: 349
Joined: November 23rd, 2016, 9:45 am
Has thanked: 29 times
Been thanked: 116 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241364

Postby malkymoo » August 2nd, 2019, 6:59 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Not a very promising title for a thread, is it? But these new Californian things have been dropping my jaw this year. Subtle they ain't :lol: , but what a display for a planter.

They're called Tidal Wave Red Velour, which sounds more like a racehorse than a bedding plant, and they go berserk if you keep on deadheading them, because each time you remove a flower they grow another two or three somewhere else. You're looking at just three plants here!

First seen on Gardener's World back in the spring - whereupon the entire nation ordered them, and I was quite lucky to be allocated two packets, a month too late to sow them. Or so I thought. But here they are at three months.

The Tidal Wave name seems to relate to the way they swamp everything else in the neighbourhood. Never seen anything like it.

BJ


Very nice display, especially as you grew them from seed. Very good on the wall where they can hang down. I have given up growing petunias from seed, too fiddly, especially if you only want a couple of plants.

I have a Wave petunia in a container, different colour, that I bought as a plant. Very nice, but it does seem to be prone to rain damage to the flowers. Not sure if you need to deadhead them, I thought the F1 hybrids were sterile. I usually get the Surfina varieties, but find them a bit too vigorous.

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241367

Postby Dod101 » August 2nd, 2019, 7:10 pm

Well done, bj, to deadhead that lot. There is no doubt that deadheading in a timely fashion is very worthwhile but you need to be dedicated to do it assiduously with a pot like the OP's.
I am more lazy and pot large begonias. Less work , more spectacular, I think, but a lot more expensive to buy in the first place, and if you are prepared to do as BJ, not much difference in the end result.

Well done!

Dod

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8063
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2845 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241430

Postby bungeejumper » August 3rd, 2019, 9:29 am

malkymoo wrote: I have given up growing petunias from seed, too fiddly, especially if you only want a couple of plants.

Thanks for that, Malkymoo. The advice on the seed packet was to lay them onto the compost without covering them, because apparently they won't germinate without light. I think there are other plants that insist on this as well?

WRT the fiddly seeds, yes, they're tiny! Like poppy seeds. But I found that if I poured them onto a sheet of paper with a fold down the middle of it, it wasn't too hard to separate them. Of course, sowing them individually still takes a lot of care and a good pair of spectacles. :shock:

The main reason for being so fussy about single sowing was that I only got 18 seeds in the damn packet! No room for the usual Monty Don approach ("just sprinkle them at random and then root out all but the strongest") Still, I got 14 plants from my 18 seeds, sowing them in a propagator and then getting them out into the greenhouse as they reached about an inch in height.

Not sure if you need to deadhead them, I thought the F1 hybrids were sterile. I usually get the Surfina varieties, but find them a bit too vigorous.

F1 hybrids aren't always sterile - they may simply revert, or they may produce random/unstable progeny. I was able to test the deadheading principle by deadheading one lot while not doing it to another lot. The difference was unmistakeable! Deadheading definitely generates more vigour from the flowering nodes!

Speaking of F1 varieties and sterility....

We have just bought something called a digiplexis, which is a cross between a common foxglove (digitalis purpurea) and a digitalis canariensis, which apparently is another arm of the foxglove family. It's a bit of a Frankenstein combination, to be perfectly honest, but wow, the flowers are something else. And because they are truly sterile, they can apparently last till December!
http://www.rotarybotanicalgardens.org/w ... igiplexis/ .
They'd better. One plant cost us ten quid. :twisted:

BJ

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241450

Postby Dod101 » August 3rd, 2019, 10:38 am

Thinking about them again. I used to grow sweet peas from seed (when I had a lot more space than now to grow them) and I always found them easy and again, like the petunias, provided they are dead headed they will flower in profusion all summer.

Dod

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8063
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2845 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241457

Postby bungeejumper » August 3rd, 2019, 11:38 am

Dod101 wrote:Thinking about them again. I used to grow sweet peas from seed (when I had a lot more space than now to grow them) and I always found them easy and again, like the petunias, provided they are dead headed they will flower in profusion all summer.

Ah yes, sweet peas. I seem to have a knack for those. :) I grow mine up a cane wigwam, with a bit of pea netting to provide them with something to get hold of, and they'll reach seven feet in a good year. July's the best month for my favourites, the F1 fragrantissimas, but the non-fancy varieties will keep going till mid-September. More pleasure from a square/circular metre of ground than almost anything else in the garden.

LOL, maybe we ought to start a new thread?

BJ

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241475

Postby Dod101 » August 3rd, 2019, 1:56 pm

I grew my sweetpeas in the traditional way. I had two at least 20 feet long trellis 'fences' and they grew incredibly well to a height of 6/7 feet. Quite spectacular and my wife loved them because the more we cut for the house, the more they bloomed.

Nowadays I am in to petunias, begonias and the like in pots.

Dod

malkymoo
Lemon Slice
Posts: 349
Joined: November 23rd, 2016, 9:45 am
Has thanked: 29 times
Been thanked: 116 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#241520

Postby malkymoo » August 3rd, 2019, 6:38 pm

bungeejumper wrote:
Not sure if you need to deadhead them, I thought the F1 hybrids were sterile. I usually get the Surfina varieties, but find them a bit too vigorous.

F1 hybrids aren't always sterile - they may simply revert, or they may produce random/unstable progeny. I was able to test the deadheading principle by deadheading one lot while not doing it to another lot. The difference was unmistakeable! Deadheading definitely generates more vigour from the flowering nodes!



I have taken a look at my Wave petunia, and it has developed seed-heads and the flowering rate has decreased, agreeing with your observations. However I have another large F1 hybrid petunia in a container, a Sanguna variety, and that shows no signs of developing any seed-heads, so maybe some F1s are sterile, some not.

malkymoo
Lemon Slice
Posts: 349
Joined: November 23rd, 2016, 9:45 am
Has thanked: 29 times
Been thanked: 116 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#243107

Postby malkymoo » August 9th, 2019, 5:43 pm

Done a bit more research on petunia seed setting, and it seems some modern varieties are sterile (the term is self-cleaning), but some set seed. The wave varieties are not self-cleaning. My wave plant has now almost stopped flowering so I have given it a good trim to try to restart it. The Sanguna pant is still going strong.

I think I will try to stick to self-cleaning varieties in future, life's too short to dead-head plants as prolific as the wave petunias!

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8063
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2845 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Crazy petunias

#282688

Postby bungeejumper » February 6th, 2020, 11:24 am

Just a quick update to last year's tidal wave red velour petunias story. (There were serious seed shortages last year, because they'd got a springtime mention on Gardener's World and suddenly the whole country wanted them.) They remained absolutely fantastic until late November - I have never seen such vigorous (or floriferous) plants! (Check my pictures, although they actually got better during the following months.)

These are not your average petunias. A single plant will fill a planter, and they don't call them tidal wave for nothing. :lol: And, as some posters had wondered, the plants didn't really need dead-heading after all, because they were self-sterile. Which meant, in effect, that the plants didn't go into "pregnancy mode" - instead, they just carried on producing new flowers, which would shrivel and disappear quite obligingly when their time was over.

But here's the especially good bit. In late November, as the first frosts approached and the flowers died back, I uprooted half a dozen of the plants and brought them indoors, and they've thrived on a windowsill. (December uprootings were less successful.) And then last month I took about twenty cuttings from them and bunged them straight into compost - no rooting hormone, no ceremony - and every single one has taken. This is pretty good going for an F1 self-sterile plant whose DNA is still protected by copyright law. :lol:

If you fancy giving the seeds a try, I'd recommend ordering them now, rather than in April when the seasonal rush will be on again. You have to sow them on the surface, because they won't germinate without light. Sooooooo worthwhile.

BJ


Return to “The Natural World”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests