How to get petunias to come back year after year.....

 Nov. 12, 2020

For those of you who love gardening and hate to pay for plants each spring I have an idea for you.

For years now I have had petunias come back each year.  

In the fall I put my flower pots 'to bed' for the winter.  That means I don't pull the old dead flowers out, rather I bend them over in the pot.  This gives the old flowers time to drop their seed into the pot and it keeps the soil covered for the winter so the winter doesn't blow the seeds and dirt away.  

I leave the pots this way until about April.  Then I gently removed the old debris without digging up much of the soil. Sometimes I add a little more potting soil if the pot needs it.  And yes I use the soil for several years before replacing it and I fertilize them several times a summer.  As the weather warms I begin watering the pots about once a week.  Soon, as the weather warms, you'll see little petunias begin sprouting.  They will come up thick and you may thin them out and transplant them to another area.  I find that these petunias are more stringy and gangly as they grow than ones I buy at the store each season.  Several times during the summer then I trim them back to shorten them up and they come right back blooming again.  The picture below shows petunias that came back from seed the prior year in a flower garden.  I did the same thing with the flower garden as I do with my pots.  Have fun gardening!