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.

A few years ago I filled an enormous hanging basket with Tidal Wave Silver. It was too big to display well unless it had a really substantial pole. So I had the hoop and back removed from the metal basketball pole, painted it black and intalled a hook at top. Problem was that once I got the basket up there I never ever wanted to climb back up to take it down. So I 'raked' out the dead plants in the fall. The next summer while I was gathering courage to get the basket down and plant more Tidal Wave Silver petunias, the seeds were busy germinating. It's been self-sustaining for several years, and the progeny look and behave just like the parents. You will likely get a mix of petunias, but if their spot is closer to the ground than mine are, you can cull the ones that aren't vigorous enough or are the wrong color.

According to my above post, I got some sprouts in late March to early April. (Petunia Cascade Pink Orchid sprouts). They are growing beautifully. I am planning to plant them out this week. (5 plants total). I put them in their own individual cells a while back when they were quite small, and I think this helped them come along more quickly. I was beginning to think I had baked the rest of the petunia seeds since I planted a whole pack, and only 6 came up. But just today I noticed a new tiny sprout ... like maybe there's a second wave of sprouts on the way. I'm a zone ahead of several of you, so I wouldn't give up just yet. Just this week I've had several sprouts in containers that I had almost given up on. It's been warm here for a while, so I would have figured most things would be up by now.

I have grown them all plus the Ramblin and Raptides. They all did very well and share identical growth habits and bloom earlier than the original purple and pink waves. Shock waves are smaller flowered the color Denim was a favorite of my customers along with pink vein. Easy wave plum vein was a winner as well as Raptide sunshine which is a color you don't find in trailing petunias... Bob.