Michelle65, sorry, but I have to dispute most of your claims. First of all, Wave petunias are spreading petunias, not the other way around. Spreading (Supertunia series, Surfinia series, etc.) petunias grown from cuttings have been around for decades. The Wave series (introduced in 1995) was the first commercially successful spreading petunia that was propagated from seed. Your statement that "the ones that say spreading petunia is the exact same this without the pink pot" is entirely erroneous, as is your statement "greenhouse have only been able to buy Wave seeds for the past couple of years". You should also know that there are FOUR separate divisions of Wave petunias. Actually 5 if you include the vegetatively propagated DOUBLE Waves. Wave, Easy Wave, Tidal Wave and Shock Wave all have very distinctly different growth habits. Are you paying extra for the pink pot? Absolutely. If it is in the pink pot and says Wave on it, it is required to be a Wave petunia, however that is entirely up to the distributor if they want them in a POP (point of purchase) pot or not. Waves can be planted in any color of pot, and there is no law saying that they have to be identified as a Wave. However, if it is NOT a Wave, and the signage identifies it as a Wave, THAT is illegal. The difference you see in price at retail is a factor of a number of things. If it is a spreading petunia grown from a cutting, it will always be more expensive than one grown from seed. But....if is a seed grown spreading petunia (Wave, Avalanche, Ramblin', Plush, Opera, Explorer, Trilogy) and it has all of the marketing POP items associated with it, it drives the price up. All Kleenex are tissues, but not all tissues are Kleenex. All Waves are spreading petunias, but not all spreading petunias are Waves. And for the record, there are no "generic" spreading petunias. Everything has a specific variety name, you just don't always see it at retail.

Okay, you're going to think I'm NUTS...but that wasn't the one I meant. I mean, this is the first year I've seen Dolce Flambe so I thought it was new and bought two flats of them. Can't get enough. But the one I wanted to talk about was another....this one is even more rare...to me! The nursery had few left: It's 'Sophistica' (TM), 'Lime Bicolor'. This one is combos of rose, pink, bright red but no orangey-red - more true red and yet subtle. And lime green is on most to some degree. Hard to explain. But the colors come out of the middle of the bloom like a star formation - on most - others are mixed. Again, hard to explain! I love both of these. I hope I can save the seeds or find who carries them next year. Prairiegirlz5: I love your mix of perennials with Dolce Flambe. I think I'll try it. Now I need to find Purple Emperor sedum! Duluthinbloom: I was born in Duluth. Miss the cold and the views...miss Minnesota lots! The humidity here sucks!

I'll go one step further and encourage you to cut into the root ball ball with a sharp knife, making several shallow vertical, shallow slashes. Yiu might also carve off the bottom couple of inches of roots completely. Pulling roots in an attempt to untangle them results in tearing and shredding, unless they aren't grown together. New roots will recover and regenerate very slowly. You already know that cutting the top back encourages new growth! The exact same principles work for the roots. You would be amazed at how rapidly a flush of new roots begins to energe from each severed root. Root pruning has been a technique used to rejuvenate root systems of container grown plants for thousands (literally) of years. It's important that the planting medium you select be coarse textured and fast draining. The planter must have drainage holes. With a little care, your petunias will do just fine.

Karen, we have a couple of hillbilly Bloom Masters. :) Here's one: We've got a couple of others made from old office and kitchen sized garbage cans. So far we've just used them as strawberry planters and they really worked well. We didn't really have any trouble with the soil coming out the holes. The soil wasn't bone dry when we loaded it and the plant root structure was good enough to help hold things together until root and stem growth plugged the holes properly. By the end of the summer you couldn't even see the containers under the plant growth. I hadn't really thought about them for flowers but now that you've mentioned it I may go ahead and make a couple of flower ones. The friendly neighborhood metal scrapyard owner often has plastic containers (people bring metal scrap in them) and he sees it as us doing him a favor if we take home free containers. I guess if I end up with too many WS plants they're going to go into cheapy cheap Bloom Masters. Could you picture that big blue barrel planted with T&M Fuchsia "Fuseedia Mix" or Park Seeds Carnation "Clove Drops"? Look what you've started. Time to study my seed list again. :) Lynda