Through the efforts of breeders, petunias are becoming increasingly popular. They bloom with all kinds of colors for a long time, delighting others.
Fans of decorative floriculture use petunias for the design of flower beds, balconies, arbors. Growing them is not particularly difficult. But still there are secrets and tricks. A lot comes with experience, but there are rules that both a professional and an amateur need to follow. In order to fully enjoy the beauty of the plant, you need to know how to properly pinch the petunia.
The essence of the method
Do not be scared when you need to carry out certain manipulations with plants. This is nothing complicated. So how to pinch a petunia? With the help of scissors or fingers, the top of the stem is removed. This leads to a thickening of the remaining shoot. This procedure is required by many plants, including some varieties of petunia.
Flower gardeners are often called pinching tweezers. These are essentially similar procedures. Only tweezing is carried out with seedlings, and grown plants need nipping. What is the use of the procedure for petunias? Is it dangerous for the flower?
What is the benefit
In order to answer the question: “Do I need to pinch the petunia?”, It is enough to explain what this method gives. As a result, the buds swell on the shortened shoots, the leaves acquire a more saturated tone. New stems with flowers will appear on the plant over time. Then the petunia will gain a magnificent and delightful look. If the procedure is not carried out, the plant will reach up and give few flowers.
First pinch (tweezers)
To begin, consider the information about pincing. It is carried out with young seedlings that grow in separate pots.
It is important to carry out the first nipping before the end of the growing season. It is carried out according to certain rules. So, the best time is considered to be the period when the seedling has developed five or six leaves. If you miss this moment, the seedlings will stretch, and the bush will not get a spherical shape.
During tweezing, a central growth kidney is cut out with the help of nail scissors. The operation requires certain skills and knowledge, so lovers prefer not to carry it out. If the fingers of the grower are thin enough, you can do without scissors. The plant does not have coarse fibers, so the shoots quite easily come off.
Here's how easy it is to pinch petunias at the seedling stage. After this, a section of the plant should be sprinkled with crushed activated carbon or wood ash. You can also treat the flower with a growth stimulator. Seedlings will slow their growth, but you should not worry. The plant receives a new growth point, from which several shoots will appear at once. It will gain strength and delight with its chic look.
Repeat procedure
When a plant is planted in the ground, it can be pinched again. It is necessary to wait until it is accepted and begins to grow. This usually takes several weeks. How to pinch a petunia in the garden?
To form a compact bush, you need to leave four to five internodes on the central stem. The upper part of the shoot is removed with scissors. This will stop the growth of petunias. So that she quickly returned to growth, you can feed her with complex mineral fertilizers. Also favorably affects the development of petunia spraying with copper or molybdenum fertilizer. It will also save flowers from fungal diseases. However, the procedure does not end there.
After one to two weeks, the plant will grow stronger and it will be necessary to shorten its lateral shoots. In order for the information to be more visual, it is worth watching the proposed video, which will replace step-by-step photos, how to pinch a petunia.
Experts advise choosing a thickened part of the shoot to shorten. Due to the fact that several branches appear on it at once, it should be strong enough for them. If the shoot is too thin, it will bend or break under the weight of new stems. In this case, we need practice, which will eventually appear.
Flowering after pinching
After the procedure, you will have to mentally delay the moment of flowering for two weeks. However, instead of a single flower, many buds will appear. Yes, and their size will be larger.
It is not enough to know how to pinch a petunia. In order for the bush to remain dense and blooming, it is necessary to remove wilted flowers in a timely manner. To do this, they are pinched along with the peduncle. If the testes form, they will take part of the force from the plant. Then the flowering will not be so plentiful.
Pinching and breeding
Now it became clear how to pinch a petunia for abundant flowering. However, it is worth mentioning another benefit of this procedure. So, cropped stems are used as an excellent planting material. Roots are enough to root. Over time, they will please the flowering practical owners of personal plots. How to do this?
To do this, you need to deepen them into a container with a mineral component called vermiculite. It contains many growth elements, including potassium and magnesium. The substance is organic, since it is taken from the earth's crust, so do not worry about its environmental friendliness. Vermiculite must be pre-moistened. Cuttings should be cleaned of leaves, retaining only a couple of the top. The stem must be deepened into a mineral substance to these leaves. Then they cover it with a translucent cap, for example, a cropped plastic bottle. Moisture will not evaporate sharply. Cuttings take root quite quickly - in seven to ten days.
Thus, along with pinching, you can multiply your favorite petunias. New plants will bloom a few weeks later than the uterine. They can be left to yourself or given to another lover of petunias.
Alternative to pinching
When it became clear how to properly pinch a petunia for abundant flowering, it is difficult to imagine that this method was used for commercial purposes. It is unlikely that the grower will spend a lot of time manually processing several hundred seedlings. To this end, preparations have long been developed that prevent the drawing of young plants. They also stimulate the development of lateral stems.
Interestingly, pinching is usually not required for hybrid and elite varieties of petunia. They are still treated with seedlings with special substances that contribute to abundant growth and flowering. But if there is not enough light for the flower, or the air temperature is below normal, it can grow. In this case, you can not do without cropping.
Pinching, especially for amateur varieties, is as important a procedure for plant development as seed planting and picking. Frivolity in this matter is unacceptable. If everything is done correctly and in a timely manner, you can enjoy abundantly blooming petunias. They certainly will not be worse than those that we see on the magazine pages.