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A Timeless
Classic
Think back. What
flowering plant was in every garden and planter in your neighborhood when
you were younger? The petunia. An easy to grow vigorous annual that could be
seen in every part of the country. A delicate looking flower, in shades of
lavender, graced many front entry gardens and backyard hanging baskets.
These flowers bloom non-stop from early summer straight through to frost,
making them ideal eye-catchers for dry, sunny locations.
As time passed,
gardeners decided they needed something "different and unique" to
distinguish their flower beds. They
were looking for the new and improved varieties to set their gardens apart
from their neighbors and the petunia’s popularity waned slightly. A decade
or so later, the petunia is back in favor! Why? New varieties and cultivars
emerged from the petunia family. Modern plant genetics and breeding efforts
has given birth to single, double, cascading, semi-trailing and striped
hybrids in every color except orange!
Now that you have
brought home these new varieties of petunia, how do you keep them looking
their best? In order to truly optimize your petunia’s super growing power
it is essential to provide the petunia with the proper nutrients and growing
environment. This is where Jack’s Classic Petunia Feed can help. Current
university research has shown that many plants are inefficient in taking up
iron and therefore must be grown in media pH’s that keep iron most soluble
(5.2 and 5.8). New advances in fertilizer technology has allowed for
fertilizer formulations that use three types of iron chelates in combination
that keep iron available to the plant over a broader pH range. This
minimizes those pale yellow, newer leaves that you might see emerge a little
later in the season, a classic sign of iron deficiency due to rising media
pH.
Since Jack’s
Professional Petunia FeED’s introduction, professional greenhouse growers
have been using this fertilizer to produce bright, vigorous petunia,
calibrachoa, bacopa, diascia, nemesia and many other plants with much
success. Now, this product is available to the home gardener as well as
Jack’s Classic Petunia FeED 20-6-22. This fertilizer is a good compliment to
our current water soluble family of products and is available only in
independent garden centers starting spring of 2006!
 A
word of caution, this formula is specifically designed for petunia and
related plants that are iron inefficient and prone to micronutrient
toxicities. Jack’s Petunia FeED should not be used on zonal or seed
geraniums, marigolds, new guinea impatiens, lisianthus (Texas bluebells),
penta (Egyptian star) or celosia as a regular feed. Rather, use Jack’s
Classic Dynamic Duo (a combination of 20-20-20 General Purpose and 10-30-20
Blossom Booster) to keep these plants green and vigorous with deep colored
blooms. Remember, if you are not using a watering can, do not use an old
gallon milk container. The calcium in milk inhibits the absorption of iron.
For best results, start with an one (1) gallon water jug. Would you like to
add more interest to your flower baskets and beds? Plant some Nicotiana
(flowering tobacco), a relative of the petunia, near your patch of petunias.
If you plant them they will come -hummingbirds love deep throated flowering
plants.
Every year,
Dixon, Illinois, holds a festival which honors the petunia as a timeless
classic! Imagine an area of almost a city block all abloom with petunias.
What started back in the early 1960s as the need to add interest to medians
after Dutch Elm disease and expansion left the land looking quite barren,
has turned into a week long festival. Timeless Classic ~YES!
Do you have questions about
your plants or fertilizer usage? E-mail us at
info@jrpeters.com
We will do our best to get you the answer in a timely fashion.
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