Harvest seeds yourself from the petunias on the balcony
As a care advice, petunias are generally advised to manually remove the withered flowers every few days during the flowering period for reasons of appearance and plant health. You have to refrain from doing this with at least some of your petunias on the balcony if you want to harvest ripe seeds from your plants yourself. As soon as the withered petals can be easily peeled off, a green seed base becomes visible on the former flower stem. Over time, this develops into clearly visible seed pods, which should be collected in their yellow-brown state in good time before they burst.
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The right conditions for growing petunias from seeds
So that the petunias can be planted as young plants in the garden or in a balcony box on time after the last night frosts in April or May, you should start growing them on the windowsill in February or March. If possible, the following conditions should be met during the germination phase:
- the light germs should be covered with soil as thinly as possible or not at all
- Temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius are ideal
- no direct sunlight
- high humidity through foil cover or in an indoor greenhouse
Optimal care for young plants raised from seeds
The seedlings that initially sprout from the seeds do not really look like the older petunias at first. Shortly after the second pair of leaves has formed, they should be cared for individually and still protected in the house. Especially at this young age, the delicate petunia plants in their growing substrate (€ 9.05 at Amazon *) should never dry out completely and should therefore be watered regularly. If you accustom the petunias you have grown yourself to the open air for hours after the Ice Saints and put them back in the house for a few days at night, you can harden the plants effectively.
Seeds from specialist shops
Petunias come in a variety of colors and flower patterns these days, either as young plants or as seeds. Make sure that hybrid varieties do not pass on their properties in a stable manner when propagated by seeds. Choose two or three different varieties in order to create particularly attractive color contrasts on the balcony later.
Tips
Really genuine petunias can usually only be obtained if they are propagated vegetatively using cuttings. When the petunia flowers are fertilized, the genes of petunias blooming in the neighborhood can mix with those of your own plants, so that the growing of the seeds that have ripened on the plants can result in surprising flower colors.
