A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 Honey, I shrunk the pansies!

Hi all!

I purchased a few giant pansies earlier this season and they have been doing well, pretty much. I water them, pinch off the faded blooms and have fertilized them once with the plant sticks for flowering plants. They are in a planter, not the ground.

Although they continue to bloom, I recently realized the flowers are getting progressively smaller, and the plants are getting leggier. (My potted petunias are getting awful tall, too--although they are still blooming profusely)

Hi ~ this is perfectly normal for this time of year. Pansies are cool weather flowers and will peter out when the weather gets warmer and stays that way. You can cut them way back in hopes that they will revive at the end of summer when it cools down, or you can let them go to seed, and you will have some plants in fall that may or may not bloom. Or you can rip them out when they get too unsightly.

I'm on my second year of icicle pansies (they reseeded and I moved the seedlings around to where I wanted them), and they are just about finishing up their blooms for this summer.

yea I noticed that mine are doing the same thing! that's really strange! I thought that maybe it was due to me not watering them as much as I should...they looked sorta dead but some seem to be coming back though...they are in hanging baskets

Now, any advice for the petunias? They are so tall it's unattractive. Can I cut them back? how severely?

I've heard (and tried) to cut them back in half but only up mid July. You will get a second bloom but they will not be as lush as the first bloom. Still pretty though.

Thanks!