Sharon, I have some that are still alive too, and they were blooming in December. That's pretty typical. Sometimes they'll freeze back to the ground in January or February on a very cold night, but sometimes they don't.

I usually start seeing volunteers as early as February and often will have new ones continue to sprout sporadically until June or so. In my garden paths in the veggie garden, there currently are some that sprouted in December and they're an inch or two tall now. When they first sprout, they stay small and low to the ground for a while and I expect they are busy making a good root system during that time.

If yours didn't reseed and you don't see sprouts in late winter or early spring, I can bring more to the swap this year, or can bring you some seed or mail you some. I think I have seed of the regular Laura Bush Petunias which have purple blooms, Laura Bush Pink and the Formula Mix which has shades of pink and white.

I've grown Laura Bush petunias since the days when I lived back in Texas, so roughly since about 1997 or 1998 and have found them to be both heat-tolerant and cold-tolerant. They normally reseed readily. When they are huge monsters in mid-summer, you can prune them back by at least half, and they respond by growing like crazy again and putting out tons of blooms.

When they sprout, they will look exactly like miniature petunia plants, but in case you've never raised petunias from seed, I am going to link the Laura Bush purple petunia page from Wildseed Farms because it has a seedling photo for identification purposes. They have seedling ID photos for most of the varieties they sell, so folks growing them from seed can recognize the seedlings and not yank them out while weeding. I find their seedling photos so helpful when I am growing something that is new to me.

I'm glad the one plant performed well for you. Mine did well too, even the ones in the garden that weren't watered after I stopped watering in July. They did struggle in the August heat, but didn't die and bounced back fast once rain started falling in September.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Laura Bush Petunia