Leggy petunias? No worries. Preventing leggy petunias requires trimming them back throughout the season. Petunias will look extra flower-filled and tidy if the spent flowers are deadheaded. Remember, removing just the spent flowers is not enough. You’ll also need to remove the seed pod to stop leggy petunias. The seed pod looks like a little green or tan bud nestled at the base of a star-shaped group of tiny leaves. Cut petunias back by about half if they look tired and straggly in mid-summer. This will stimulate the growth.
To prevent your petunias from getting too leggy, you’ll need to start by pruning the branches by one-quarter, or by half on a regular basis - every two weeks or so. Have you noticed that your container plants look leggy and not as attractive by mid- to late- summer as they did when you first bought them? I recommend that you give them a haircut - cutting them back to freshen them up and stimulate new growth. It isn’t always easy to cut off some of the blooms that are already there, but think of it as a temporary inconvenience for a permanent improvement.
Put your hanging basket or flower container on a surface so that you can look it over and work on it. Are there parts of the plant that are longer than others? Are there dead blooms? Dead leaves? I have petunias in most of my hanging baskets this year, so that is what I am going to use as my example. Anytime a flower has blossomed and then faded, you should cut this back. I try to do this about once a month. Cut the short stem that held the bloom all the way back to the larger stem to which it is attached. This can be tedious, and I often have to put my glasses on to see. It can be hard to see where to cut off the dead bloom, stems especially in smaller varieties of petunias. If you make a mistake and cut too much, it’s OK.
Even if you do keep dead blooms trimmed on a regular basis, you may still need to give the plant a haircut by midsummer. I try to do mine around the end of July, but August is fine. Look the plant over and decide which stems are too long. Start with those. Decide how far back you want to cut to make the plant more uniform all the way around on top and sides. Using scissors, cut the stem above leaf growth or nodule. As with any plant, it is always good to cut away any dead blooms or leaves. Make your way around the plant, trimming the too-long stems. When you think you are done, stand back and look at the plant again, and make any more necessary cuttings. I would recommend that you keep the existing stems to about 5 to 6 inches at least, in length. And remember that haircuts, or pruning, will stimulate new growth. In about a week or so, you will be rewarded with new blooms on your plants.
Keep your plants watered well, but not over-watered. It also helps to feed them. I recommend an indoor-outdoor, time-release fertilizer for containers and hanging baskets. Many of these products will last for four months. If you have petunias, you may be wondering how to keep your petunias looking good, especially when the blooms start dying. In this week’s video, you’ll: See exactly where to trim your petunias, so your plants look pretty and you encourage them to keep giving you new blooms. Find out when you DON’T need to prune your petunia plants. Discover what to look for to make sure your petunias aren’t “going to seed.” When your petunias start making seeds, it takes a lot of their energy. Click the video above to watch. Prefer to read? Simply scroll down for the transcript.
TRANSCRIPT: How to Trim Petunias to Keep Them Looking Pretty Are you wondering, “How do I maintain my petunias?” “When the petals die, what am I supposed to do?” That’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s tip. Hi, I’m Ann with Go West Gardener. [music] Inspiring new western gardeners to find their green thumbs with flowers. I love that you’re wondering how to maintain your petunias because taking a few small steps can make a big difference between colorful, showy flowers versus having stringy, kind-of-boring looking petunias. Let’s dig in. Petunias can go through a cycle of blooms. They flower, that flower bloom dies, and then new flower blooms show up on your plant. On many petunias, though, you need to manually remove the dead blooms in order to encourage new ones. This is known as deadheading. And yes, it’s more than just picking off the dead petals. Here’s what I mean. Think of your petunia bloom as a torch holding a flame. This little stem is the torch, and your petal is the flame. So, when petal dies, people often do one of two things. One, they remove the dead petal (the flame), but they leave the little stem (the torch). Or two, they may just wait for the dead petal to fall off. Here’s the problem. You may create a little seed pod where the flower was. It looks like a green kernel. Do you see it here? It grows in the center of the torch. This is known as “going to seed.” And while going to seed sound like a great thing, it means your plant could stop giving you new flowers. And we want colorful blooms. So, here’s what you want to do instead. You want to cut off the entire torch, trimming back to the nearest main stem. Right here. Now, some petunias have been bred, so that they can’t go to seed or they mostly deadhead themselves. Like the “tidal wave” variety. You’ll see this name on the plant tag when you buy it. In theory, this means you don’t have to remove the dead blooms. When you look at the little torch, you SHOULD see a brown center. But if you see a green center, Mother Nature has found a way to go to seed, and you may want to trim off that torch down to the stem. Please click subscribe below [on YouTube] … and share a little love while you’re at it. See you next time! [music]
Petunias: How to Care for Them ... and Trim Off the Right Parts!
Petunias can be some of the most eye-catching summer flowers, but they can also start to look a little sad as the season wears on. I’ve definitely had some good years for my petunias some bad ones. Sometimes they seem to stay full and beautiful all on their own, and some years I end up with some really scraggly petunias within just a few weeks. If you’re looking to really fix leggy petunias though, and make them look more full, simply removing the spent blooms isn’t going to cut it. To properly deadhead a petunia, you also need to remove the entire seed pod from the plant. As the seed pods get a little bit older, they’ll start to turn brown, so look for the brown nubs as well. The whole stem below the little nub will turn brown as well and you can just clip that whole section off. The nubs, stem, and foliage don’t come off as easily as the spent flowers do, so grab a pair of garden shears to make the job easier and cleaner. I sometimes try to just pull the sections with the little green nubs and spent blooms off with my fingers, but I often end up pulling too much of the delicate stems off along with them, including in-bloom flowers and fresh, new buds, so pruners are the way to go here.
One thing that I didn’t realize early on in my petunias struggles is that petunias actually need regular pruning to remain full and more compact. If you don’t prune your petunias, you’ll often end up with long, empty stems with a flower or two at the very end, AKA leggy petunias. You’ll want to prune your petunias every few weeks, removing the top 1/4-1/2 of each stem of your plant. This can feel a little tough to do, especially when everything is in full bloom, so feel free to prune just a few of the longest stems one week, and a few others the next week. And here’s the little friend that came along to watch. Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive! After you’ve completed your pruning steps for making your petunias fuller, things should start to look pretty great within a couple of weeks. You’ll want to keep up with your new watering schedule on an ongoing basis if your weather is really hot and dry and make sure you’re deadheading correctly at least every 3 days. Pictured below is an example of some petunias that I maintained well throughout the season and pruned back regularly. This is how they looked just after I pruned a few stems back.
Have you ever dealt with leggy petunias? Did you enjoy this post? Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices.