Gainesville Landscape Plant of the Month: Supertunias

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Rusty Thompson on July 12th, 2018

The three big keys for successful Supertunias are: Sun, Water, and Fertilizers. These are the three things you must keep in mind to have the best performance from your Supertunias in your Gainesville, Florida yard.

All petunias want a full day of sun because the more shade they are planted in, the fewer flowers they can produce. Think of it this way, for Supertunias sun = energy – they need this energy to keep producing more flowers, because flowers require energy to produce. The more energy the plant has the better the flowering. We recommend AT LEAST 6 hours of full, hot sun a day for best results. So from 10:00am – 4:00 pm minimum for best results. With sun and Supertunias, more is almost always better!

The plants like consistent water. They can tolerate a little more or a little less, but the key is to be consistent. The more they receive their needed water on a regular basis the more reliable they are in producing new flowers. This is why things get dicey when someone forgets to water and plants become very dry, or if someone get carried away and makes the plant soggy – those extremes are harder for the plant to deal with than regular watering. When the plant is stressed by the extremes, they stop producing flowers and just try to survive – you never want your flowers to have to make that decision! Have a regular day every week that you water, and as the season progresses and you need to water more often, have a few regular days every week, always trying to be consistent. Irrigation set properly can really make this easy.

If sun = energy, and water must be consistent, then fertilizer = food. It is hard to get up each day and produce 50 new flowers without ever having breakfast. Think of how hard it would be to go to work without any food for a day or so. Fertilizer is essential for Supertunias to do well and they need fertilizer like we need food – everyday. So does that mean you need to fertilize every day? No. Because to a certain extent where your plants are located or planted has a big effect:

In Gainesville landscape beds, they have it easy, they have unlimited space to grow and if they can’t find the food they need they can send their little roots out farther to find it. Think of the average garden plot in your yard as a bank, there is almost always some water and some nutrients available for loan, so it provides a bit of a fudge factor when watering and fertilizing. As a result, plants planted in the ground can do with a bit less fertilizer and water than plants in containers.

Containers are a bit more complicated because in a pot the soil "bank" is gone. There is only so much room in a pot for soil and only so much water that can be held by the pot and saucer, and there is no place to go when fertilizer or water runs out. Also potting soil is usually an artificial soil that does not have all the nutrients and good qualities of garden soil. Potting soils make it necessary to provide ALL nutrients to plants, as most do not have nutrients already in them. So plants in containers need to be babied along by providing for their needs and that means regular watering and complete fertilizing.

If you would like to see Supertunias in your Gainesville Lawn, give us a call for a free landscape design including these great plants at (352) 378-5296 or emailing info@themasterslawncare.com.

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Landscaping