Hibiscus

I bought this Painted Lady Hibiscus last year, and it's still in the five-gallon pot I bought it in. It's just about doubled in size from the size I bought it, but during the winter it went dormant and took it's sweet time coming back. The first blooms were misshapen and small, it also dries out really fast which tells me it's probably root bound and needs to be transplanted.

I don't currently have another container to move it into, so I fertilized it with some fish emulsion, and that seems to have brought it back from it's sad state. Next steps with this guy will be to transplant it into a larger container, and maybe try to propagate some new plants from it.

Hibiscus stats:
Full Sun
Blooms continuously
Zone 9a, 9b, 10a, 10b
sunset zones 9, 12-16, 19-24, Hawaii 1-2
needs overhead protection if temps go below 30
grows to 6-10ft
to keep growth vigorous, prune 1/3 of old wood back in spring
requires excellent drainage

The Vitex is Alive!

I was worried that I had killed this Vitex, or Chaste Tree, but it's finally showing sign of life, I'm so happy!

Vitex agnus castus
“Chaste Tree”
10-20ft tree or cut back to promote shrubby growth
Zones 6-10
drought tolerant
Sun- pt sun
lavender flower spikes in July-September. Fragrant 8-12” blooms
highly attractive to bees, butterflies & hummers & promote excellent honey production


more info avail on this plant at floridata

More Blueberries

What can I say - I'm a sucker for blueberries, and they seem to be everywhere this year. I got two more at my local Lowes, a 'Berkeley,' and one I had never heard of before... a 'Toro.' They were $6.95 each. not bareroot, but small 1 gallon containers.

$5 blueberry vs. $10 blueberry

This was the first nice weekend in a long time, so I spent some time cleaning the garden up a bit, doing some pruning, and raking up leaves. Then I went to a couple of nurseries, one in the local Lowes, and the other was my local chain nursery, Navlets. At Lowes I got a $5 bare root blueberry which is a one year old shrub. Bluejay, and at Navlets I got a $10.99 bare root blueberry called O'Neal which is labeled as a two-year old shrub.

I love blueberries, I have a bunch already and I grow them all in containers.

Bottle Brush Plant Blooming

This plant is part of the landscaping that came with the rented house we live in. It hasn't bloomed since we moved in 5 years ago because the owners gave strict instruction to keep all the shrubs trimmed into small boxes. This year, it has been my goal to get them to bloom. every time the gardeners come to the house I aske them no tho touch these shurbs, and did all the triming myself so the shrubs wouldn't get in their way while mowing. Now they have finally bloomed! and while they look a bit like the troll dolls with the wild hair, it's much better in my opinion then looking at a shrub pruned to resemble a popsicle stick, and not let them bloom ever.

Alstromeria repotting

This Alstromeria the third harmonic that I got at Annies Annuals in august was bursting out of its 4" pot, so I put it into a 1 gallon pot, but the rots of this plant are kind of tuberous, so I didn't loosen up the roots for fear of breaking them even though they were tightly bound together.

Hibiscus

Brilliant Hibiscus - Blooming!

Geraniums

This small shrub of geraniums came with the house. It does very well each year and blooms prolifically as long as I remove the dead flower heads...

I have not really been a fan of geraniums, maybe I had a bit of geranium overload as a child of the 70's, and I never liked the smell of them.

Having said that I am thoroughly impressed with this little shrub, and the number of other established geraniums in the neighborhood. They flower a lot, and do well in the area.

Feeding the Blueberries

Today I fed the blueberries some azalea & rhododendron food. I read somewhere to fertilize blueberries in the spring when they flower, which they are doing now (OK well some of them are done and are working on making fruit already). The directions said to give quite a bit, I hope I haven't overdone it...

I skipped giving the new blueberries the food, since they've probably been fed like crazy from the nursery.

New Hibiscus

Today I found a specific Hibiscus I've been looking for for years. I first saw it at the home of Chick Fil-A founder, Truett Cathy, while on a tour of his automobile collection in Georgia with the Cadillac & LaSalle Club. I remember seeing this variety, taking a photo, and thinking "I want that one." About a year later, I did see it in a nursery in Alameda, and found out it was called "Painted Lady" but it was like $35 or $40 for a five-gallon plant, so I reluctantly walked away.

Today I went to Home Depot looking for a hummingbird-friendly plant, and while there wasn't a great selection of red tubular flowering plants at his point in the season, I did find this Painted Lady Hibiscus, at a fantastic price, a five gallon pot was $13.95.

Blueberries

I've been looking for a Bluecrop or Blueray blueberry this season, I used to have both and they were flavorful and performed well for many years, until I killed them by not repotting them one year. I tried a few locations of my local small nursery chain, Navlet's, but their bare root blueberries were gone pretty much as soon as they arrived. so I missed that opportunity. and have been checking all Nursuries every where I went this year.  I'd given up hope on blueberries, but today, I saw a Bluecrop at Home Depot, for $4.95. So I picked it up, as well as a Jersey.

Blueberries

I have a number of blueberries in pots in my backyard, and have had blueberries in pots for years. Right now I'm putting some new Azalea soil in the pots and working it into the top inch or so of soil.

The plants I started out with are not the ones I have now, but here's the current line-up:

• Duke
• Jubilee
• Darrow
• Sharpblue
• Misty

In the past I've had, Blueray, Bluecrop, and Earliblue.

The trick with blueberries in pots is to keep them super happy. Give them a Azalea Mix Soil, and top it off with some redwood bark to keep the soil moist when it's warm out... Keep them pruned (take out any dead branches, and any that are growing toward the center of the bush, and any that are crossing each other), and well watered when it's hot out (containers soil dries out faster).

Manzanita

 

Last July, I went to a garden that had an interesting Manzanita, I asked if they propagated it in their nursery, and they said "no, they couldn't propagate it from cuttings." to which i thought "BS." So, since no one was patroling the garden to tell me not to - I took a small twig off the bush (yes - I know, I'm a terrible person) and tried to propagate it at home. The twig made about 6 cuttings, two of which never sprouted roots, and three of which I killed by letting the growing medium dry out in the fall. One survived, and now it has a bud on it! I'm so very happy about that. Hopefully it will make it to an actual plant.

Hibiscus

My large hibiscus plant finally recovered enough from last winters frost damage to bloom.

Chicago Peace Rose

 

I've had this rose in a pot for a number if years,  A couple years ago it died back to just one branch, but it has come back strong this year after I got rid of all the rootstock shoots. This rose does not have a strong scent, but the coloring is goergeous, and it changes over the life of the bloom depending on how much sun it gets.  You can see the right side of this bloom gets more sun, so is more pink.

Butterfly Bush

I have two butterfly bushes - one buddlejaceae davidii, and one variety called 'black knight' that I got from a garden tour last summer - this is the one that is shown below. These are also supposed to be big butterfly attracters, but again, I'm not seeing that any butterflies have figured out that they are here.

Secret Rose

This rose is called "Secret" I got it a few years ago from my mom's friend Roseanne. I've kept it in a pot, and moved it around with me from place to place, and so far it's done well. This was the first bloom this year.

Honor Rose

Today the Honor Rose bloomed - it also has a very nice fragrance and a beautiful pure white bloom.

Chicago Peace Rose

 

I've had this rose for a number of years, and I had let it get over run with runners from the rootstock. So, today I cut all of those runners out (they are in a pile on the small table next to the pot) and gave it a little rose fertilizer, hopefully it will bloom now... This one really does have a gorgeous bloom.

FYI - Hybrid tea roses can get runners, which are the stems that grow off the rootstock (which is typically an old english rose in a dark red color that has very hardy roots). The Hybrid tea has been grafted onto the rootstock, because it typically has roots that are more suseptable to diesease or water issues. When a Hybrid Tea Rose has died, very often the hardy rootstock will grow but you will not get the same flower you purchased, just a small red flower that typically only blooms once in a season.

Roses

This year I bought three new rose plants; Brandy, Honor, and Voodoo and put them in pots. This weekend the first bloom appeared in the Brandy rose bush. It's super gorgeous, perfect for cutting, and has a very nice but light scent.