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Supertunia® Vista Petunias were designed to be rock stars in the landscape. Their extraordinary vigor makes them the ideal flowers to quickly cover any empty, sunny space in the garden. Supertunia® Vista Bubblegum® forms a wall-to-wall carpet of pink blooms that start early in spring and last well into fall. Their three foot long, flower-coated stems knit together into a massive, spreading mound that smothers weeds in their path. You won’t need many to make a huge visual impact.
PLANTING YOUR GARDEN BED
- We recommend 12-18” spacing between Supertunia Vista Bubblegum plants in the ground. That means you’ll need two plants for every 5-7 feet of ground you have to cover.
- Space the plants equally in the ground so they fill out evenly with no bare spots in between.
- Amend your soil with a good quality garden soil, compost, or humus/manure mix. The soil should be well-drained, meaning water drains easily through it without pooling.
- Mix a bit of slow release plant food into the soil before you add the plants. Follow the package instructions to know how much to use. This will ensure a small amount of food is available to the plants’ roots over the season.
- Water your newly planted petunias immediately to help the soil settle in around the plants’ roots.
CARING FOR YOUR GARDEN BED
Sunlight, water and plant food are the three main things your garden bed filled with Supertunia Vista Bubblegum petunias will need to thrive all season long. If you provide all three consistently, both you and your plants will be very happy.
SUNLIGHT
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Supertunia Bordeaux grows best in full sun, but will still bloom if it receives light shade, especially in warm climates.
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If you are feeding and watering your plants well but they aren’t full of blooms, move the basket to a sunnier spot. If that is not the problem, you may have the dreaded petunia budworm. Read more about that here.
WATER
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Plants growing in hanging baskets tend to dry out much faster than those planted in heavier upright containers and in the ground. This is especially true when they are hanging in windy areas or in full sun all day.
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Never let your hanging basket dry out to the point where the plants wilt. That may mean it needs to be watered anywhere from every other day to more than once per day, especially as the summer’s heat sets in, depending on your growing conditions.
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To figure out if it is time to water, stick your finger down in the soil up to your first knuckle. If the soil sticks to your finger, it is moist enough to make it through the day without watering. If not, it’s time to water.
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If you don’t have much time to water or if you tend to travel in the summertime, consider investing in a WaterWise® self-watering kit. It saves time and water, is simple to use, and waters up to ten containers at once from a single faucet.
PLANT FOOD
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Every third time you water your hanging basket, include a bit of water soluble plant food in the water. Follow the package instructions to know how much to use.
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What does every third time mean? If you water every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then you’ll feed your plants every Friday. If you water your plants more than once a day, every third time you get out the watering can, add some water soluble plant food to the water. During the heat of summer when you are watering more often, your plants are growing faster and need more food to keep up. Feeding flowers is like feeding kids—not so much when they are toddlers but they’ll eat you out of house and home when they are teenagers.
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Any brand of plant food meant for flowers will work for your hanging baskets. But we recommend Proven Winners water soluble and continuous release plant foods because they are specially formulated with micronutrients to help our varieties grow bigger, stronger, and bear more flowers.
TRIMMING
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One of the biggest advantages of Supertunia Bordeaux is that, unlike many other petunias, it will naturally bloom all season without the need to remove the spent flowers. A more technical term you may have seen for this is “no deadheading required”.
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By midsummer, your hanging basket should be nice and full, and the flowers should be starting to trail below the bottom of the pot. To extend the life of your basket into fall, this is the time to trim the plants back. Giving them a “haircut”, taking care not to remove more than 20% of the plant, will make them bounce back with renewed vigor and you’ll have a fuller basket as a result.
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It is perfectly OK to trim your plants back once per month between midsummer and fall. You know how good it feels to get a haircut? Plants love that feeling too, and respond by growing new branches filled with flowers.