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Without a blooming petunia, it is currently difficult to imagine a flower bed or a backyard. In recent years, a real petunia boom has begun – everyone grows it, even those who used to treat them with distrust. After all, modern varieties, in addition to alluring beauty, also have unpretentiousness in cultivation. And growing petunia seedlings on your own is also no longer a kind of super-task, which it was scary to even dream about before. And it’s good if everything from the very first time began to work out. And the seeds sprout easily and quickly, and the sprouts are strong and healthy, and the leaves open one by one.
But if the seedlings are barely visible, and have been sitting in the ground for several weeks, stretched out, but there is no or almost no progress. Then the thought gradually comes to mind, and how to feed the petunia so that it finally begins to grow and develop. Here it turns out that not everything is as simple as we would like. Before you grab onto the first fertilizers that come to hand and fill them with unfortunate plants, you first need to find out what happens to petunias.
Basic requirements of petunias at the time of germination
Perhaps in the first place among all the care requirements for a petunia is light. Illumination should be as high as possible and around the clock, since the first shoots of the petunia appeared. It is thanks to this that the sprouts do not stretch out and grow strong and squat. Two weeks after the emergence of shoots, the light can already be turned off at night, but the 14-hour light day for petunia seedlings is needed for another one to two months until it blooms.
The second, important factor that must be taken into account so that the seedlings, on the one hand, do not stretch, and on the other hand, develop quickly and well, is the temperature, which should be slightly lowered after germination, but to certain limits.
In third place is sufficient moisture content of both soil and air, which is easily achieved not by watering (it is so easy to get a surprise in the form of a “black leg”), but by creating mini-greenhouse conditions at the first stage of growth, when seedlings grow and develop under a transparent cover or plastic bag. At the same time, regular daily airing of this mini-greenhouse is mandatory.
At the first stage of development before the appearance of true leaves, and it takes about two weeks, petunia seedlings do not need anything else. Failure to comply with any of the above care requirements leads to the fact that petunia plants either freeze in growth, or, stretching out into strings from lack of light, try to fall in different directions.
This procedure can look like feeding petunia seedlings and will help the plants overcome the involuntary stress caused by less than ideal growing conditions.
It should also be borne in mind that it is for petunias that a very, very slow growth of the aerial part in the first month of life is characteristic, as for many plants with small seeds. It seems that they do not grow at all, but they simply build up the root system, which is not visible to the eye.
Why petunia seedlings may not grow
Before answering the question of how to feed petunia seedlings, you need to understand for what other reasons it can slow down in growth.
ground mix
Often, when using unsuitable soil, various problems occur with growing petunias.
- For example, in acidic soil (pH from 3-5,5) or alkaline (pH from 7,5 and above), petunia roots will not be able to develop and the plants will soon die. For the successful cultivation of petunia seedlings, a neutral or slightly acidic reaction of the land mixture is necessary (pH from 5,5 – 7,5).
- In addition, for petunias, especially in the initial stages of growth, loose, breathable, light soil is vital. On sale, unfortunately, soils of very poor quality are often found, with a large amount of plant debris, heavy, poorly permeable to water. For petunias at the seedling stage, they are completely unsuitable, the roots in them will not be able to develop, and the seedlings will stop growing. When compiling an earthen mixture, it is better to take half of the standard purchased soil from the store for a guarantee, add ¼ of vermiculite to it for loosening, a little fine coconut fiber and biohumus. If the earth dries up, turns to stone, and when watering, water stagnates on the surface, petunia seedlings urgently need to be transplanted into another soil.
- Another nuisance associated with the poor quality of the soil is its possible contamination with various pathogens, which can also cause a delay in the development of seedlings. To exclude this moment, it is necessary to spray both the soil and the seedlings themselves twice with a solution of phytosporin or glyocladin with an interval between treatments of 5-7 days.
Seedling of seedlings
The answer to the question of how to feed petunia seedlings before picking can be very simple – nothing. The best option would be to simply transplant it into a fresh, more nutritious mixture, or even better in individual cups or pots, and wait for it to develop further. When the roots have nowhere else to grow – this is the simplest reason for stunting seedlings and fertilizer for petunias, of course, can help, but not for long. In a separate container, in fresh soil, seedlings should quickly begin to grow.
Miracle – elixir
If you have checked the compliance with all of the above conditions and have done all possible operations, and the condition of the petunia seedlings still causes you anxiety, you can try to feed it with ordinary “human” B vitamins.
Oddly enough, they often work better than many specialized herbal preparations.
To do this, dissolve one ampoule of each of these vitamins in one liter of warm water. If the sprouts are not yet two to three weeks old and they are very tiny, it is better to carefully apply a few drops to each seedling with a syringe or pipette. It is better to carefully spray older seedlings with the resulting solution from a spray bottle.
Try to use these treatments once a week and soon you will definitely see results that will please you.
The main period for dressing seedlings
Petunia is indeed a very voracious plant, and for good growth and flowering, it must be fertilized.
Choosing from the many fertilizers presented today, the better to feed petunia seedlings for good growth, it is necessary, first of all, to dwell on the so-called liquid complex organo-mineral fertilizers. In stores, especially specialized ones, there is a very large selection of such fertilizers, the most popular of which are: Uniflor Growth, Agricola, Ideal, Effecton, Gumi Kuznetsova. They are very convenient for use at home, because a certain amount of them, according to the instructions, is simply dissolved in water and petunia seedlings are watered with this solution.
You can also use water-soluble powder fertilizers, the choice of which is very large at present, but among professionals, such brands as Kemira, Kristallon, Plantafol are the most popular. Among the products of these companies, you can choose fertilizers with a wide variety of percentages of the main macro and microelements.
For the very first feeding of a petunia, it is necessary to choose fertilizers in which nitrogen would prevail in content, although phosphorus, which is responsible for the formation of a dense root system, will also not be superfluous at this stage. The third main macronutrient – potassium – is not yet in great demand, since its area of u50bu40bresponsibility is the formation of buds, flowers and ovaries, and it will be needed in large quantities a little later. At the initial stage, it may be in the composition a little. So, the approximate ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the fertilizer should be 10% -XNUMX% -XNUMX%. It is very desirable to have such mesonutrients as calcium and iron in the petunia fertilizer. And, of course, certain trace elements should also be.
What is the main feature when feeding petunias? The fact that she really needs a lot of “food” for good growth and abundant flowering. But at the same time, she will like it much more often, but little by little, than rarely, and a lot. This means that it is necessary to make the concentration of the nutrient solution 3-4 times less than indicated in the fertilizer manufacturer’s instructions, but water the petunia with this solution almost every other day, that is, instead of water. It is this feeding regimen that petunia will appreciate best.
From about two months old petunia seedlings, when it becomes much stronger and it already has enough leaves, you can switch to using fertilizer with an NPK composition of 30% -40% -30%.
That is, you dilute the fertilizer in a lower concentration than for irrigation, and carefully spray the entire aerial part of the seedlings with this solution. In this case, the effect of fertilizers is almost instantaneous, and this method of feeding is especially good if you no longer like something in the growth or development of seedlings.
At the last stage of growing seedlings – in May – both root and foliar top dressing with organic fertilizers will be very good: potassium humate, biohumus. They can be alternated with mineral supplements.
All the described methods of feeding petunia seedlings will allow you to grow plants that will delight you with their beauty and abundant flowering until autumn. You just need to remember about top dressing and adult petunia bushes throughout the summer.
