Food-Gardening Lessons From A Wartime Victory Garden

How Do I Grow Wave® or Supertunia® Petunias?

Supertunia Vista® Bubblegum® (Image thanks to Proven Winners®)

“I would love to plant Wave Petunias this year, in a 1/4 wooden barrel container.  Is there anything special I need to know about these beautiful flowers before I try to make them grow?  Oh, and will they last all summer?  Many thanks!” Question from Diane of Newark, Ohio

Answer: Wave petunias will last all summer with good care, take heat, and are one of the best choices for containers. Wave petunias were the first spreading, groundcover petunias created. The first, Purple Wave®, was bred by the Ball Seed Company and introduced in 1995 (many other Wave® varieties followed). What made them different was their ability to spread and bloom nonstop with little care and deadheading. They are tough, fast-spreading, nonstop bloomers. That’s why they are still popular today. Since then, many other groundcover petunias have been bred, some with even greater flowering power. Of these spreaders, here are the six that I recommend the most.

  1. Supertunia Vista® Bubblegum® -Clear pink flowers and super high performance make this one of the best trailing petunias.
  2. Supertunia® Black Cherry®  -This beautiful spreader has deepest red flowers with dark centers.
  3. Easy Wave® Lavender Sky Blue – Large, lavender-blue flowers make this a cool addition to containers.
  4. Wave® Carmine Velour – Plant these for a bright pop of deep fuchsia-red.
  5. Shock Wave® Rose – This Wave petunia produces nonstop rose-pink flowers.
  6. Supertunia® Trailing Purple– Deepest rose-purple flowers with dark veins make this a very striking garden petunia.

Spreading/cascading petunias such as these will perform beautifully if planted in large containers, like half or quarter barrels. We recommend using Black Gold Moisture Supreme Container Mix, which feeds plants for up to six months and holds moisture well in the heat of summer. Keep the plants well-watered, give them plenty of sunshine, and enjoy them! (Click here to read a full article on keeping petunias happy all season.)

Happy petunia growing!

Jessie Keith

Black Gold Horticulturist

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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