Look at it as a gift :)

Last year, I had a white petunia growing in the crack of a brick walkway-it did wonderfully! They are considered annuals in my zone, but sometimes will reseed.

I would love it if my petunias from last year suddenly came back again this year. Yes, consider youself lucky and enjoy!

Linda

Sometimes mine do and sometimes the don't. Lucky you! :)

Petunias are tender perennials. They act like annuals in most of the country but, in addition to seeding, if they aren't ever frozen to death they will, like Arnold, "be baaack."

I bring mine in the house like pelagoniums. In your climate and maybe in the particular shelter of your yard, they didn't even need that. I simmer with jealousy, lol.

GREAT! I'm not the only one! LOL
I had the exact same thing happen to me. I have loads of white and pink petunias growing out in my driveway bed, that I DID NOT plant. I planted Blue Wave petunias in that bed last year...they came back this year with their friends, the pinks and the whites. And this didn't just happen with the petunias....I've got snapdragons in that bed that I've never seen before. Last year I planted snaps in that bed which were a deep fuschia color - this year the fuschia didn't come back, but now I have these very tall white snaps in there and I didn't plant them. I'm not complaining - they're gorgeous. So are the volunteer petunias. Just pull up the plants you don't want, and make sure you dead-head the spent blooms on the plants you keep. I pulled Blue Wave petunias out of my foundation bed last year because I couldn't keep up with the dead-heading - those things are extremely prolific bloomers. I've noticed a few volunteers this spring in that particular bed, but it's nothing compared to the number of volunteers I have in the driveway bed...prompt dead-heading is the key.
Enjoy your blooms!
Renee

Wow, stop torturing us Michiganders with this story. Volunteer petunias!!!!???? This is to die for.

I haven't had petunias reseed, but I did have something strange happen with them last summer. I planted only white petunias, and they bloomed beautifully for several weeks. Then I added a red dianthus next to them, and several weeks later some of the new blossoms that grew on the petunias had pink streaks on them. I don't know if they were cross pollinated, or if the petunias just suddenly started showing some of their recessive genes. Whatever it was, it was strange.

When I first read about Petunia's coming back I was amazed. Well, I'll be darned, it has happened to me in my strawberry pots. I have yet to see it flower but I am sure the foilage is from the petunia's I had planted in there last summer.

ditto what MI Gardengeek said...

I found this thread by doing a google search on this very topic! I've been planting my annuals, and trying to spruce up the yard. I took down two baskets that held glorious petunias last summer. Those baskets have been hanging on the deak all year through snow, ice, and cold. Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to see that both baskets are filled with baby petunia plants! This evening I pulled out the dead growth, added in some fresh potting soil and plant food and hung the baskets back up.

I had no idea that petunias occasionally grew back. Flowers are just so cool! :)

I'm in Zone 5. I don't have volunteer petunias (I just WISH) but I have hordes of volunteer snapdragons. I've always had a few but this year, holy cow! None have bloomed yet. But since I had all different colors and both short and monster tall varieties last year, I'm expecting a very wild demonstration in the possibilities of plant crosses soon. I have volunteer tomatoes too.

I had volunteer petunias this year also. I live in Regina,Saskatchewan where the winters get quite cold but this year I have a whole section of my flower bed loaded with petunias that planted themselves. When they first started growing I asked my mother if she'd ever heard of volunteer petunias and she and my sister told me I was nuts!

I very often have volunteer petunias if I am not a good dead header for a few weeks. Some cultivars reseed with fertile seeds better than others. And amazingly, you will find that the volunteers re seed very well indeed. But in several generations they will all turn to leggy lanky muddy pihkish plants.....that's why people make money growing hubrids.
I have even had impatiens re seed.
Not to mention, snaps, zinnias, mariglods, cosmos annual asters and cleome.
Linda C

I've had wave petunias reseed for years. Last winter we got down to minus 12 for a few nites and that didn't seem to stop them. I've learned to thin them out. I used to hate to do that, but with so many reseeding, I had to or they didn't look good after awhile...so crowded. For the past 5 years I've had the annual salvia 'Victoria Blue' reseed so I haven't had to buy any. I've had other annuals reseed and I love it. They usually take a little longer to flower than the ones I bought, but they catch up really fast.

Kat

I have two whiskey barrel planters that I dont fuss over much, usually I just plant whatever cheapie annuals I can find (usually Petunias). Last year I had dark pink, light pink and purple Petunias along with some Pansies (which reseeded).
This year I put in some pink African Daisies and red and yellow million bells.
This past month I was watering the plants and took a closer look at one of the barrels. What I had thought was part of the African Daisy was really a nice fat Petunia plant.
The flowers are very pale pink, very similar to the African Daisies and certainly healthy.
Could not believe it. I had worked the soil pretty good before planting this year too.
AND just yesterday I was wandering around the yard and saw a pink thing poking up through a crack in the driveway. It turned out to be the cutest 3 inch tall Petunia with a flower the same color as the one in the barrel. The flower is bigger than the silly plant.
I have no idea how the heck it got there, it's at least 15 ft away from the nearest planter. I must have mowed the poor thing at least 20 times this year too.
So......Petunias do indeed come back whenever and wherever they feel like.

I have volunteers every where. (perhaps tomorrow I'll learn how to post a picture). 4 years ago I used to dead head the petunias on my deck and pitch the spent flowers "over the side." The next year, this particular bed was the last one to be tended, and I just decided to let them go. They didn't come up until at least early june even in MD. I 've amazed at the different colors each year, guess I can name one beautiful pink one with an outer ring of white after myself. The trick is to NOT mulch over where you think they will come up (including where you planted last year). I even have them coming up thru ajuga, I just let them go and when the get too leggy I cut them all back, and within a week they are blooming again. I don't mess with deadheading as I want to keep the show going next year. I even had a pot I was not using this year, sprout seeds quite late--like mid June. I just watched! I had this happen to a few million bells this year, but they pretty much look like their parents. Its great not to be neat! Faye in MD

Remember that high school biology class you had a long long time ago, (or maybe not so long for all of you) where you learned about some ancient monk who worked with poppies(?) cross pollinating one color with another? REmember? He learned that some colors are recessive and some dominant, so even though you might have a white petunia, there still may have been a red great grandmother in his lineage somewhere a generation or two back? Well, that's why you're getting multi colors of volunteers. The original petunias you planted were hybrids: two, three, four different kinds that had been crossed and recrossed to get a variety of specific traits, especially bigger blooms and more resistance to disease. When those hybrids re-seed the next year, you get seedlings that begin to revert back to the hybrid ancestry. Voila! Variety!

Now, if you plant an old-fashioned type of petunia, say, integrifolia (I think it's actually an ancestor of the Wave petunias), you get smaller flowers, but you get the same kind of plant every year. With hybrids, you'll get multi colors, multi sizes, and who knows how strong, they'll be.

I planted petunia integrifolia about four years ago in pots. It seeds everywhere, and every year, I have more of them come up, especially in those same pots. They come up in the spring, burn out by July, and then come up again by late summer and bloom through the fall. Up north, you probably don't have a long enough summer season for all this to be accomplished. I know that sounds great to you northerners, but I have just received my fourth power bill in excess of $300 this year and we have one or two more months of this heat to go. It's a mixed blessing. Believe me! (On the other hand, your heating bills are high and go on forever too. Oh, yeah. I'd rather live here! :)

Not only did I get petunias, I got ageratum in several lovely shades, calendula, butterfly bush, alyssum and tomatoes. The petunias were smaller flowered than their parents, one group with white flowers and another with purple stars.

Now I have a garden thug - tomatoes! They reseeded everywhere I added compost; I have never had this happen as much before. Guess the compost didn't cook enough, and the weather was warmer here last winter.

Maple seeds sneak around everywhere, but I expect that. The rest were surprises, mostly well-behaved (not those tomatoes!)

I'm in zone 3, I'd be kicking my heels in joy if that happened in my yard! The volunteers I do get I love, and it's so easy to pull if it's in a really bad spot. My neighbor had a petunia reseed in a crack between her paving stones, and it looks so perfect growing there. Her garden is very sheltered, that's the only reason I could imagine the seed surviving our -38C temperatures.

Petunia seeds are so tiny that you would think they would have a hard time taking hold and growing. But, thankfully, their germination rate is almost 100% if given the opportunity to sprout with even average moisture and soil. Anyone who has thought about growing their own petunias from seed but were afraid to try, do it! You will save serious dollars over buying the plant at a nursery, and, without the transplant shock your seedlings will grow fast and furious and make you proud with lots of blooms.

I normally do not grow Petunias, but, this year I planted three big hanging baskets and they are just beautiful. Here in Gulf Coast Texas, it is the beginning of the slow down growth of almost everything due to the heat. I have been deadheading but my question is, can I cut them back a bit because they are getting leggy looking? And, the new blooms are getting smaller and smaller. To cut or not to cut?

I live in the NE where the winters get very cold. This year, I've had pink petunia's popping up all over the place where I never planted any. Found it kind of freaky, glad to hear I'm not the only one.

Lord, I learned at lot from this post. I am going to drop my deadheads in my big pots from now on to see if I get petunias next year. I'm in SE Michigan and notice we have been given the designation of Zone 6 this year, instead of 5. What a great joy if I get volunteer petunias coming up in my deck pots next year. Maybe the hosta pots I pull into the attached garage will be good for deadheads too. What fun! Love GardenWeb to pieces!

Google only brings up the archived posts. Darn.

I wanted to report, yes in zone 4a, Twin Cities, MN, I have witnessed my 2nd volunteer petunia. The first year I saw it i thought maybe I threw out a seed in the spring.

But a couple weeks ago I returned to my grandma's house to tend her garden. Sure enough was a tiny little petunia blooming. That was after the harsh winter of 2012-2013. It resembled one I planted last year. I know it couldn't have come any other way. How that survived I don't know. I've also seen a pansy survive the winter in that spot. The fall planted mum survived and a spring planted one too. I guess petunia reseeding/volunteers can happen in the north if well protected??

Depends on your zone but also if you had petunias that would give seed. If it's either a Wave and Supertunias variety, they are sterile and can only be duplicated by propagation. They are also self-cleaning (the old falls off naturally and they bloom again), but with other varieties, they'll go to seed and won't rebloom where a Wave or Supertunia will.

Annelle, I didn't know Wave and Supertunia petunias were self cleaning! I have not been buying petunias the last few years because dead-heading the baskets was such a chore.

When I see Wave petunias with seed heads I know that variety is not sterile. When I see volunteers coming from those seeds, I know that variety is not sterile. I even got seeds from a Supertunia that I carefully pollinated. Think it depends. Not all colors within a brand are created equally.

I've had many wave petunias reseed over the years. I get different colors too. I live in se Wisconsin, z5.

I think the one I had was either a Supertunia or something in the Prism series. Anyways it happened last year too, not just in my garden but in several places in the downtown area. This included cracks along buildings. I also saw it around the MSP airport. They have hanging baskets every year and on the ground underneath are volunteers.

Even this year I may be pulling up several petunia sprouts. I'll have to let some of them grow. They are either petunias or catchfly. I'm also having a ton of viola and pansy volunteers. Too many actually. And some of the viola "Johnny Jump Up" volunteers that sprouted late last summer didn't die. Those are greening up and getting ready to bloom.

Another random surprise volunteer that appeared in last year's garden: Impatiens Wallerina. Seriously?! Zone 4a. And even in the harsh winter of 2013-2014?! They came up around early/mid July and were definitely from the varieties I had in my 2013 garden. I didn't plant any last year so I doubt I'll get I. Wallerina this year, but I'll be surprised if the New Guinea sprout some, but I think they are sterile?

Just bought our home and moved in the spring. I have huge long legged petunias that were volunteers. What do I do with them at the end of the season? Cut them off, pull the plants, HELP!

You can pull them now if they're done, or in Spring if you want. I do most of my cleaning of the gardens in early Spring. Then I pull the annuals & cut back my perennials. If you don't want the petunias long, clip (pinch) them every so often during the summer. It'll make them branch more with more flowers & they won't be as leggy.

Thank you. If I pull them, they will still come back? Or will I have even more since they were so prolific this summer?

Petunias are tender perennials in some southern areas but are treated as hardy annuals in colder zones. They won't come back if you pull the plants out regardless and if they have a sustained freeze the plants will die and can then be pulled out in fall or spring. If you live in a zone lower than 9-10 any plants that volunteer there next year will be seedlings from seeds dropped this year.

Thanks for info.

My "Laura Bush" petunias reseeded in the cracks of our brick walkway. I love it. It looked so beautiful. There are still a few blooming now. I'm in Zone 5.

Those kind of petunias are definitely perennial. You can't buy them anymore at a store. My grandmother used to have them in her front flower bed but I picked some and distributed them to other people along the way. Her petunias have been coming up since the early 1950's. I think that now they might have died though :(

Has anyone had the 'velvet black petunias', there beautiful. I just saw them last year for $40.00 a hanging plant so I got on line and ordered some from 'China' it took 2 1/2 months to get them but I got them and planted them today, Wish me luck.

Alice, Mine reseed. Keep finding them everywhere and move them to where I want them. Good luck fallstarr202.

I believe if you take good care of your plants they will do what they are suppose to do and reseed. My pansies are reseeding but with the scorching temp in Nebraska I brought them in to give them some cool air. I baby my plants. I would love to have them in a shaded spot but my concern is the heat. Also my coleus plants seeded last year and I have babies coming up. “They" say they are annuals, not in my yard :)

Nozzero,

Nebraska .... The cold these seeds must endure to make it through the winter. That's amazing in itself.

The thing that reseeding makes me ponder the most is when to plant seeds. Example, people plant petunia seeds in the spring here because that is what we do...plant in the spring. But my plants are planting their own dropped seeds right now in June for next year's plants.

Omaha --- 99 degrees! Good luck with that heat.

nozerro, that your various plants are reseeding have nothing to do with whether they are annual or not. Many, many true annuals reseed themselves happily year after year, even though the mother plant dies when that first season is over.

Pansies and coleus happen to be tender perennials, as are petunias, but even if they were bonafide annuals they would still reseed.

I live in the Texas panhandle. Last year, I had 2 half-whiskey barrels full of white, red and white striped, lavender, dark purple, dark purple and white striped, light pink, dark pink and red Petunias which grew like crazy in the barrels. By late September, they were looking pretty leggy, dried up and sad. I pulled all of the dead plants up by mid-October. In April this year, I planted all my other big planters with beautiful uniquely shaped and striped Petunias from Sutherlands...not the same ones you get at Home Depot or Lowes. Well, the Sutherland Petunias grew like crazy and multiplied over and over. I still wasn't sure what to do with the whiskey barrels that I had those old previous year Petunias growing in so I just left them empty. In late May or early June, I start seeing little plant leaves popping up out of the bare potting soil. I thought...hmmm....could be weeds, but maybe not, I will just let them grow and see. SO glad I did. Both barrels begin to totally fill up with flowers from last year's Petunia seeds. What made it nice was the fact that I had brand NEW Petunias which were just getting started and spreading like wildfire in the barrels, while the Petunias I had planted 2 months before in other planters were getting leggy, but still filling and running over my huge containers with flowers. Thus, while the other (the ones I planted in April this year) ones were getting tired, I had new ones full of new flowers from last year's Petunia seeds in my barrels. Sooo, the point is, which has been my own personal experience, yes, even if you pull the OLD Petunia plants out, there should be new ones sprrouting in their place...but just in early summer, not early spring. Maybe it's the climate here in the panhandle (freezes and snows here in winter..gets in the single digits here sometimes). I had lived on the Gulf Coast previously, and I always pulled the old Petunias up in late fall, and I always thought those little sprouts coming back in early summer were weeds. They were new Petunia sproutlings all along. So patience...give the so-called weed time to grow for awhile.

Are these in sun?

Ive had volunteer petunias for the last three years in the same area where Ive never planted or had a hanging basket by. The closest basket was 25 feet away, yet every year without fail, BAM! Petunias... zone 5b Indiana

I never pull my petunias out of the planters. I let the stems dry out and then I crumble the stems, seed heads and all right in the pot and leave it be. Every Spring, I have been rewarded with a full new crop. The shades of pink, purple, and white continue to vary. This season I had some stripes. I pull a few out of the pot and transplant to other planters where they flourish as they are pretty darn hardy. Suffice it to say, I love love looooooove those plants.

We had the same thing , unreal all over

Tommaso Giovanni How do you like that solar light. What brand is it?