malkymoo wrote: I have given up growing petunias from seed, too fiddly, especially if you only want a couple of plants.
Thanks for that, Malkymoo. The advice on the seed packet was to lay them onto the compost without covering them, because apparently they won't germinate without light. I think there are other plants that insist on this as well?
WRT the fiddly seeds, yes, they're tiny! Like poppy seeds. But I found that if I poured them onto a sheet of paper with a fold down the middle of it, it wasn't too hard to separate them. Of course, sowing them individually still takes a lot of care and a good pair of spectacles.
The main reason for being so fussy about single sowing was that I only got 18 seeds in the damn packet! No room for the usual Monty Don approach ("just sprinkle them at random and then root out all but the strongest") Still, I got 14 plants from my 18 seeds, sowing them in a propagator and then getting them out into the greenhouse as they reached about an inch in height.
Not sure if you need to deadhead them, I thought the F1 hybrids were sterile. I usually get the Surfina varieties, but find them a bit too vigorous.
F1 hybrids aren't always sterile - they may simply revert, or they may produce random/unstable progeny. I was able to test the deadheading principle by deadheading one lot while not doing it to another lot. The difference was unmistakeable! Deadheading definitely generates more vigour from the flowering nodes!
Speaking of F1 varieties and sterility....
We have just bought something called a digiplexis, which is a cross between a common foxglove (digitalis purpurea) and a digitalis canariensis, which apparently is another arm of the foxglove family. It's a bit of a Frankenstein combination, to be perfectly honest, but wow, the flowers are something else. And because they are truly sterile, they can apparently last till December!
http://www.rotarybotanicalgardens.org/w ... igiplexis/ .
They'd better. One plant cost us ten quid.
BJ