A few more things:

When you pinch off spent petunia flowers, don't just remove them as far back
as the little green "funnel" from which they grow. The funnel will have a
very short green stem behind it - get rid of that, too, unless there are new
buds in that area. And, the stems of healthy petunias can be sticky and
somewhat fibrous, so scissors help. The best tool for trimming in tight
spots: Joyce Chen kitchen scissors from a cooking store. They'll cut through
chicken bones, so very few plant stems present a problem. The same tool is
sold in garden stores for two or three times the price, as "florist's
snippers" or some such name.

-Doug




"pilk00" wrote in message
...
Thanks, Doug, for all the info! I'm going to do the pinching & try to
recondition the "soil".

Dan

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"Cereus-validus" wrote in message
...
Yeah right.

Go ahead and blow on the plants and see what that does.

He said "flowers are shriveled". One reason for that is simply that the
flowers are spent, but the rest of the plant could be fine. He did NOT
say
the leaves were shriveled up, brown and dead.

1) Pinch off the dead flowers along with the buds beneath them.

2) Water the bejeezus out of the plant. If the pot has a bottom tray
attached, leave the residual water in the tray until it is absorbed.
Don't
spill it out, especially if the soil was extremely dry before watering.

Most nurseries use a soilless mix for potted plants. Often, it's nothing
but
peat moss, vermiculite and/or perlite, and some lime to get the pH
right.
The main purpose of this mix to that it's disease-free. The disadvantage
is
that when the mix (especially the peat moss) dries out completely, it's
tough to get it to absorb water again. It's sort of like a totally dry
sponge. Like the sponge, the soil actually shrinks. You'll notice that
it's
actually pulled in from the sides of the pot. You have to re-wet the
soil
just to make it ready to behave like soil should. It never will behave
exactly like natural soil, but it's not worth going into the reasons
why.

Also: Hanging pots force plants to survive in weird conditions. Put a
sun-loving plant like a petunia or marigold in a sunny garden bed and
it'll
thrive. Put the same plant in a pot and it's another story. The
temperature
of the pot & soil are at LEAST as hot as the surrounding air, and
usually
higher if the pot's in the sun all day. These plants are not designed
for
their roots to be that hot. You have to make up for it with extra water.
If
you can't provide it, you must either move the pots to a shadier place
and
accept somewhat less "performance", or find a way to keep the plants in
the
sun, but shade the pots. Finally, you can switch to enormous pots.
That's
one of the better solutions, since the typical store-bought hanging pot
can
dry out in a few hours while you're at work.