{"id":257,"date":"2011-05-26T05:02:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T13:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=257"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:34","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:34","slug":"petunias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/petunias\/","title":{"rendered":"Petunias"},"content":{"rendered":"

PETUNIAS
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The world has not heard a sound, but petunias have exploded.\u00a0 Back in the mid to late twentieth century, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, petunias were relatively simple.\u00a0 Every nursery and garden center carried flats of them in shades of red, white, pink and blue-purple with occasional yellow or red and white striped varieties thrown in.\u00a0 Those petunias of yesterday were low growers with somewhat sticky-prickly leaves and big trumpet-shaped blossoms that crumpled into brown globs in the rain.\u00a0 The brown globs were easy to deadhead, however, and subsequent flushes of bloom happened quickly.\u00a0 Petunias were flowers that you could depend on, like marigolds and red geraniums.\u00a0 They looked good in pots and sunny borders and stood out as a symbol of middle class respectability.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, they were so middle class and respectable that the newly minted garden snobs of the eighties and early nineties regarded them as bourgeois and banal.\u00a0 While all that disdain was raining down on the humble petunia, breeders were giving the genus a makeover of epic proportions.\u00a0 The results are plain to see in every garden center and catalog.\u00a0 Petunias have been newly ruffled, super-sized, miniaturized and decked out in trendy colors and patterns.\u00a0 Hundreds of new varieties come to market every year.\u00a0 The fashion for container gardening has collided head-on with the petunia explosion, resulting in petunias of all shapes and sizes showing up in containers ranging from elegant urns to discarded garden boots.\u00a0 The elderly neighbor of my childhood who fussed endlessly over her perfect beds of purple petunias would be flabbergasted by the changes.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The petunia was first described back in 1803.\u00a0 Native to parts of South America, wild petunias species favor sandy soil near water.\u00a0 Both sand dunes and desert conditions suit them fine, as long as there is a water source nearby.\u00a0 Like many humans, petunias have some toxic relatives, including nightshade, tobacco and the downright deadly datura.\u00a0 On the bright side, they are also related to tomatoes, potatoes and other, more benign members of the Solanaceae or nightshade family.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Petunias were introduced into the United States in 1837 and hybridizing began immediately.\u00a0 The result of those breeding efforts was the common garden petunia, which plant taxonomists refer to as Petunia x hybrida.\u00a0 The first great petunia vogue, which started in the mid to late nineteenth century, carried over into the early years of the twentieth.\u00a0 Garden historian Denise Wiles Adams says that over two hundred varieties were listed in pre-World War II catalogs.\u00a0 After the war, the furor died down, leaving everyone but petunia connoisseurs with the fairly narrow range of petunias that many of us remember from our childhoods.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All of that began changing when two big Japanese brewer\/distillers, Kirin and Suntory, got into plant breeding.\u00a0 Suntory introduced the colorful Surfinia line of petunias in 1989 and shortly thereafter Kirin brought out the Wave line of brightly colored spreading plants.\u00a0 In keeping with the trend in commercial horticulture, both names were trademarked.\u00a0 Expansion of those lines and the introduction of others continues unabated.\u00a0 Some of the new petunias were bred especially for hanging baskets, while others spread enough to use as ground covers.\u00a0 Overall, the plants are more floriferous, setting flowers all along the stems, rather than just at the ends.\u00a0 Colors are more vibrant and varied and rain tolerance has been improved, so that gardeners no longer have the unpleasant chore of removing sodden brown globs.\u00a0 Some petunias are even labeled “self cleaning,”\u009d meaning that you can forgo deadheading all together.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another big development in the petunia universe is the rise of a little petunia cousin named calibrachoa.\u00a0 The most popular line of these petite bloomers is Million Bells, another name trademarked by Suntory.\u00a0 The last time I went to the garden center, at least two thirds of the hanging basket and container garden arrangements had at least one Million Bells plant.\u00a0 Calibrachoa now comes in double-flowered varieties as well.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is amazing to think that somewhere out in the world, billion dollar companies are engaged in a horticultural smack down over the humble petunia.\u00a0 The fallout from these battles is a seemingly infinite number of new varieties.\u00a0 The hardest part is choosing among them.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every plant merchandiser in the county–and probably in the world–supplies petunias in flats, pots and baskets.\u00a0 If you don’t want to leave your property, most of the big online vendors carry them as well.\u00a0 With the plethora of choices, the best advice is to select based on color, application and price.\u00a0 Pouring over the promotional copy and horticultural hype will only give you a bad case of adjectival overload at a time when you will need all your strength to get those petunias into the garden. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PETUNIAS \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The world has not heard a sound, but petunias have exploded.\u00a0 Back in the mid to late twentieth century, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, petunias were relatively simple.\u00a0 Every nursery and garden center carried flats of them in shades of red, white, pink and blue-purple with occasional yellow or red and white … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}