How to feed petunia for plentiful flowering?

Few gardeners are indifferent to petunias. And rarely in any corner of the country you will not meet a familiar bush with an abundance of flowers. The beauty pleases the owners for a long time, but there will always be such a person who needs even more buds, even longer the charm of admiring. As in the famous animated film: "It will be a little!".

How to feed petunia for plentiful flowering? Is it possible, or genetics can not be argued? Quite. After all, even hybrids do not give out buds in full force with normal care. Moreover, petunia is a very voracious person. Now consider what can be done.

Childhood

The first top dressing of petunias for abundant flowering should be done even before emergence. How? Very simple. For sowing, you need to use nutritious soil based on good humus. On one peat, plants will grow more slowly, then flowering will be sparse.

Or, special granules are added directly to the soil that provide nutrition to young shoots for the first time. True, most gardeners do not respect long-playing fertilizers, preferring timely top-dressing due to the lack of trace elements.

Plus, immediately after the seed is laid, but before germination, a single spray with a solution of succinic acid or epin is recommended. This procedure will wake the plant’s own vitality and increase the number of buds by about a third.

It is worth noting that petunia needs to be fed throughout the growing season quite often. Once a week is too little. The plant blooms much more abundantly, if fertilizer is applied after each watering, but reducing the dosage. For example, 3 times a week.

After seed germination, the first "adult" fertilizer is applied immediately after the pick. By this time, the seedlings already have 3-4 real leaves and reaches the age of 2-2.5 weeks. They certainly take into account that the plants are still young, the root system is weak. In fact, these are still children. Therefore, top dressing is given in small doses.

It is very useful now to use any root stimulant for the early development of the root system. You can begin to slowly feed any complex fertilizer with a prevailing nitrogen content. It would be nice to add potassium, manganese.

It is believed that it is at the initial stage of development of petunia that vitamins B1 and B12 are needed. You can purchase them at your local pharmacy. Just do not apply the preparations pure to the soil. It is necessary to dilute them with water, and then lightly spray young sprouts directly on the leaves. According to reviews, petunias really like this top dressing. They grow before our eyes, and the scale of subsequent flowering is amazing.

The vagaries of adolescents

Unlike human children, petunia in youth is not very capricious. But the appetite is excellent. After the development of a good root system, the growth of the aerial part begins. At this time, do not forget about the future flowering, so there is no way to get rid of urea alone. No, nitrogen is indispensable for the proper development of stems and foliage. But, if you overdo it, the plant will turn out to be loose, fragile and watery, and flowering will be weak and short-lived.

It is advisable at this stage to feed the petunias with liquid green fertilizer. It has a beneficial effect on the growth of the aerial parts, plus does not interfere with the formation of buds. It is even better to use humate-based top dressing. This is a valuable storehouse of nutrients. It is good because it does not burn the roots. But still without fanaticism. Even an ordinary infusion of mullein with an overabundance will do more harm than good.

Some sources recommend feeding petunias for plentiful flowering with diluted bird droppings. We do not recommend this:

1. Bird droppings are very concentrated. With an illiterate dosage, you can easily burn a young root system.
2. Adult plants require a dose of litter and water in a ratio of 1 to 25 (30). For young people 1 to 40 (45). And taking into account top dressing every other day - even less. Do you have accurate pharmacy scales to bother with concentration? Or nothing else to do but weighing?
3. Without a laboratory, it is impossible to determine the exact content of trace elements in the litter. And the search for each of them threatens not only the lack of abundant flowering, but also the death of the seedlings completely.
4. With a visible lack of any mineral or vitamin, it is much easier to adjust future nutrition. Just read the information on the composition on the package. In the case of fertilizer with bird droppings, this is not possible.

Given the prices of the seeds of the most beautiful varieties of petunias, such a game with fire will be inadmissible luxury and monkey labor. Do not risk young seedlings for the sake of strange experiments. Use bird droppings for other plants.

First buds

As soon as the first buds appear on the petunia, they stop stuffing it with nitrogen. Now the plant needs a decent amount of potassium and phosphorus. It is these trace elements that are responsible for the number of colors, and also help extend the joy of admiring beauty.

Just do not confuse potassium and calcium. Some gardeners, wanting to save money, add ground egg shells to the soil. It will not bring harm, but it will not be of any benefit at all.

Often it is during this period that the stretching of the shoots and yellowing of the leaves begins. This negatively affects the abundance of flowering. To avoid such a nuisance, it is necessary to carry out foliar top dressing on foliage. A solution of zircon or iron chelate copes well with such a “surprise”.

Only certainly carry out spraying in the evening. Otherwise, the sun's rays interact with fertilizer and leave ugly spots on the leaves.

Flowering period

So. Petunias bloom, luxuriantly, plentifully, one cannot take his eyes off. The hosts relaxed, feed the beauty less often. But in vain. By the middle of the growing season, the soil under the plant is almost completely depleted. And if petunia is planted in a small container - even earlier.

Now is the very moment when top dressing should not be reduced, but increased. In addition, petunia continues to grow, throwing new buds. Proper nutrition is vital for her now!

The introduction of complex mineral fertilizers with approximately the same content of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus will be ideal. You can take those on the packaging of which is written "for flowering houseplants." This composition is designed to feed flowers in a small amount of soil, so it is perfect.

Naturally, fertilizers specifically designed for petunias should also be taken into account. Only be sure to thoroughly read all the manufacturer's recommendations.

At the same time as mineral, you can use humic top dressing. Now, as never before, liquid green fertilizer or any class of humates will come in handy. Just do not pour it mixed with trace elements. It will be much more useful for the flowering of petunias to alternate fertilizing every other time. And do not forget to reduce the dosage, otherwise only hurt.

Useful Tips

1. Do not use top dressing on dry soil. Before making any fertilizer composition, be sure to ensure that the ground is sufficiently moist, otherwise you can not avoid a burn of small feeding roots. Then petunia will spend all its strength on restoring the root system, you will not wait for abundant flowering.
2. Some gardeners think that petunia planted in open ground does not require additional nutrition.Interestingly, do they know the exact amount of trace elements in the soil of their site? Or does a plant have five-meter roots that can be fed from anywhere? An erroneous opinion leads to poor flowering and poor growth. Even such petunias need to be fed periodically. Perhaps not as often as when kept in a cache-pot, but still necessary.
3. If you are too lazy to make food for petunias yourself, then your choice is universal complex fertilizers. They are as balanced as possible and are perfect for many beautifully flowering garden and indoor plants.

How to feed petunia for plentiful flowering? The question is far from rhetorical. Anything you can use. After all, a flower waterfall requires considerable strength, but they still need to be taken somewhere. Therefore, carefully read the article and properly fertilize your beauty. As a result, petunia will thank you with abundant and long flowering.

Video: formula for plentiful flowering of petunias