Dax:

I too love fragrant plants and can't think of any that will give you more sweet scent in a heated winter GH than a gardenia. Just a few blossoms will scent your entire GH, but you may have to settle on a smaller plant for now, unless you can find and are prepared to pay the cost of a large, shrub sized one.

I have one that I've had to keep pruned to quite small shrub size, to allow me to move it into the house in winter, but now that I have a GH, I'll be able to let it get much larger. It's currently in a huge pot on the deck of my GH about 40 mi. S of Chicago and is blooming it's head off. When we got hit with a severe storm several weeks ago, I rolled it inside the GH and within minutes, the rich, heady scent permeated the entire 12 x 16 x 12 ft. space. It was heavenly!

It started as a little thing in a 6 inch pot about 15 years ago, but had I allowed it to grow all year, instead of it having been set back every winter in our rather dry house, it would probably be at least 6 ft tall and wide by now. And, they are very easy to grow. Just keep them damp but never soaked and with a few Miracid feedings a year, they will bloom, and bloom, for months- in a midwestern winter.

Perfect. You know, I was wondering if Gardenia could be right but I didn't realize they would bloom for that extended of a period.

I really appreciate the cultural tips!

Many thanks again,

Dax

Birdwidow, Would you please post a picture. It sounds beutiful. Thanks barb

How much sun do they need to bloom?

Peace lilies (Spathphilums) have very sweet blooms called spathes. A shady spot makes them happy. Also the common snake plants have very sweet smelling flowers and don't need a lot of sun. Right now my giant stapelia is blooming and smells like decomposing road kill. LOL! :)

Grenhouser: My gardenia blooms best with a lot of sun, but not too much heat. We had a blistering summer here, so I moved it into semi-shade to prevent leaf burn. It did well, but bloomed only lightly. I'm planning to keep it in a cool corner of the GH under a bright light this winter, to see if that will induce blooming. It did bloom in the house all last winter, but not a heavily as I am sure it would have, had it been in the damper, slightly cooler environment of the GH.

Rosepedal: Sorry. My digital camera crashed some months ago and replacing it is still a Roundtuit, but my gardenia is just a small green shrub, with shiny leaves and smallish, round white blossoms- with a heavenly scent that seems cheap and overdone in perfume, but ethreal in the live flower.

However, we are coming up to the season when you will find well started and even already blooming plants in most any nursery, for under $15.00. There were racks of small ones in the indoor garden section at our local Home Depot last week, priced at $5.99, so I'm presuming they must be fairly easy to cultivate from cuttings.

Ah, the Gardenia, flower of death. Do you know that in much of Central and South America, plus the Carribean Island chain the Gardenia is used to fill the casket of the dead because they don't have refrigation? Bury them quick before they start to smell. A little known fact supplied by.

1eyedJack and the Dawg

I really like the smell, the flower that is, but my former spouse was from Cuba and the memories were to much for her to stomach so we had no Gardenias.

Hi
Gardenia would be an excellant choice. I would recommend one of the hybrids "Miami Supreme" is the best IMO. Very double and much larger flowers. Easy to keep the bush compact also. They do require ideal soil on the acid side.
i suspect you'd get spring flowers rather than winter though.
Other choices might be Camellia ,any of the citrus family and you get fruit as a bonus.. Jasmines, though the best for aroma is Madagascar which is a vine..
Amazon lily Eucharis grandiflora , will remain under 3 feet . Many people find the aroma "antiseptic" but I think it's fantastic .
Then there's always orchids , make your own tree of PVC
and you could have constant flowers without overgrowing its location.. Many ,many tropical trees would fall into that catagory also. gary

My dens have a very faint aroma. The Oncidium and the phals have no aroma at all.

Speaking of aroma. I went out to close the vents in the HFGH after dinner and almost gagged. The Stapelia are blooming! Does anything smell worse? :þ

Thanks for the info. They may not do well here in TN where we have long hot summers. I had tried them twice when I lived in NYC and they'd just drop their buds and slowly fade away.

Gardenias are quite fragrant, but I have found them finicky and a little tough to grow. Various jasmines are easier and they all smell great. I have J. nitidum and J. adenophyllum which have bloomed quite small and respond very well to pruning. Aglaia odorata, Wrightia religiosa and the citrus are other thoughts. You won't go wrong with the jasmines, tho.

SB

I never see Jasmine here but do see the gardenias in Spring, usually around Easter.

Heya Dax and all,

My choice for this would be Jasminum sambac. It might be a little shy blooming in the true dead of winter but it blooms alot with a long season for me. Not as showy as the Gardenia but definitely not as much trouble either.

I just returned from Greece and a friend had one trained against the house around my window...what a great thing to wake up to daily. :)

Dave

For scent, Jasmine would be lovely too.

It dropped down into the 40's here last night and I was worried about my gardenia still sitting outside, but it remains lush and full leafed, although while there are buds on it, it seems to know to keep them closed for the present.

It really does best in warm but too hot and damp; around 60-70 deg. But there are plenty in stores now, all ready to bloom, so I would guess they were forced. Or, a winter blooming variety does exist and I just happen to have one. I don't know which variety it is. The blooms are creamy white, double, and about 3" in diameter.

What stores are you seeing them in? I was just to Wal*Mart, K-Mart, Lowe's and HD the other day. All I saw were mainly the usual African Violets, mini roses, cacti, etc.

Greenhouser: There was a rack of them last week at my local HD. Perhaps they are being offered up north because we are going into winter?

But out of curiousity, I checked eBay and found a number of different varieties: More than I ever knew existed. Just go to the Home & Garden: Gardening & Plants section and type "Gardenia" into the search bar. There is an entire page of them listed, plants and seeds both.

Thanks for the info. I'll probably wait until they hit the stores here. I don't care to buy plants "sight unseen." BTW, the cacti were infected with scale at the HD store. UGH!

Yes, I understand. I also like to pick through live plants for just the right one. What about seeds though? I haven't the least notion how to grow Gardenia or Jasmine from seed, but it might be fun to try.

I may look into that if I can find the seeds locally, if not then I'll wait. I have to leave room in my GHs for flats of seeds come spring. They're just about full now with one bench empty. I'll need to do a little finagling in the spring to start all the things I plan to start. At the moment I'm working on increasing my supply of double Impatiens and the nicer geraniums. I'll soon need a 3rd GH at this rate. =:-O

I bought both a gardenia and sambac jasmine in floral departments of local supermarkets. Both bloomed off and on all summer in my greenhouse with little care. I have battled spider mites on the gardenia though. I feel they are worth it. They are widely available in 4" pots as gift plants. Big box stores too. Should be under ten bucks for either. Often can be purchased cheaper out of bloom. They won't bloom again in the stores but will in the greenhouse. Should be some available soon as Christmas is coming.....They are produced year round. I'm thinking Kroger's have big floral departments, don't they?

What killed me was having to pay since I tossed hundreds of them over the years when I was working in horticulture.

buyorsell888

Yes they have floral dept's but it's mostly cut flowers and some common houseplants with ribbons in fancy pots. Kroger has orchids. I've bought some out-of-bloom orchids there a few months back for $4 ea. I don't recall seeing jasmine anywhere but have seen gardenias. I plan to pick one up as soon as I see them again. They are a PIA here though because of their need for acid soil and our water is both very alkaline and very hard. This is also spider-mite land. I've resorted to using a systemic on my Impatiens to have any live at all.

I see the plants the stores toss in the trash and it's kills my soul. :(

I brought my gardenia into the GH on Wednesday and the bud that it had been holding in the cool outdoors opened. Only the one so far, but there are more forming, so I may have that heavenly scent in there just in time to lift my spirits as they become depressed by the cold and dark of oncoming winter.

I'm not much of a winter lover myself. The climate here in winter isn't too bad with most days sunny and above freezing. My pansies usually bloom all winter except for the coldest snaps. It's hard to find things to do though when the yard is a sea of mud. If you're not a bar or church person there isn't much to do here in the nearby towns. If it wasn't for my hobbies, my plants, ponds, gardens and now my GHs I would go stark raving bananas. I'm looking forward to setting up my large Xmas village after Halloween.

Are you using distilled water to water it or is your water acid or neutral? I've just set up a bunch of those gray 20g-30g bins behind my 16" outbuilding to catch rain water for my indoor fishtanks and my Orchids. There are no gutters on the building so the rain will spill down in the row of bins. Mixing it 1/2 and 1/2 with my tap water should help considerably.

Greenhouser: I use my GH as much for fish as plants and as most of them require soft, slightly acidic water, what comes out of the tanks makes a perfect watering compound for my gardenia. Otherwise, my tap water is pretty neutral, although every drop that goes into a tank is treated, and mixed with remineralized RO water. Otherwise, I fertilize my gardenia with Miracid, along with the evergreens in the foundation plantings.

If you have chemicals in your tap water that may negatively affect your plants and need more for your aquariums than you may capture from rainwater, which, sad to say, may contain airbourne poisons anyway, check out the water conditioners sold for ponds. Don't waste money on the stuff sold for aquariums. The exact same products are sold in concentrated form for ponds at a 10th of the cost. Meaning; what takes a tsp. per 10 gal. in the aquarium version, needs only a single drop in the concentrated form.

I don't grow orchids, but think it would be safe to believe that water in which Amazon fish will not only thrive but breed, would also keep orchids fourishing. Amazon water is soft and acidic from the leaves that fall into the water, releasing tannins.

I'm curious now: as they grow up in rain forest trees; what, if any effect does the tannin in tree bark have on the rain water that suppots orchids in the wild?

We don't have chemicals in our water. It's liquid rock from the limestone it perks through before the water co.'s pumps suck it up. It's got a mineral hardness of 300ppm calcium and extremely alkaline at 300(KH) ppm. Soft acid water fish die in days but the goldfish and koi thrive in this stuff they call water. I always buy for ponds for the reason you mentioned. I buy Sodium Thiosulfate crystals by the 10lb tub. Potassium Permanganate by the pound.

Plants that like soil PH's below neutral don't do well here unless we really amend the soil with sulphur and sand. Azaleas and blueberries and such plants usually still have a short life. My African Violets last only a few years even with the added peat moss and Miracle Grow acid fertilizer.

Right now I have some tropicals that have adapted to our rock hard seltzer water such as clown loaches, Gourmies, a few corydoras, a few small plecos and a couple of Sherpa Tetras and of course platys that love our water.

The bin water will be used to dilute our tap rocks,..er,... water. Once the drought is over it will be a little less hard and alkaline the water Co told me. Rain water here is safe to use. I'm not downwind from any pollution belching plants.

So far my orchids are doing OK with the hard water.

Greenhouser: Oooh. You have genuine Mineral Water, straight from the tap! I'll bet it tastes good, even though it's probably wrecking your pipes, but if it's any comfport- it will keep your bones healthy.

Okay, I dig the Sodium Thiosulsate in 10 lb tubs. But why so much PP? The only thing I use it for is to soak any new aquatic plants before letting them into my tanks, but it's so powerful, just a pinch per 5 gal will kill any inverts in minutes. Is there another use for it that I'm missing?

BTW: If you want to keep soft water fish alive longer, try Indian Almond leaves.

birdwidow

I use the PP to help keep my fish clean of parasites and oxidize the "crud" that collects in the 720g outdoor tubs. I use it to "clean" the gravel in the small in ground pond and to oxidise crud in the larger ponds between drain downs and clean outs. I use it to sterilize new plants. You must measure it very carefully as you probably already know or you can also wipe out your fish.

The water from our tap is OK if you can get past the chlorine smell and taste.

Greenhouser:

I've never had the guts to let my fish near any PP treated water, but "measure" it for soaking plants by color. I add it bit at a time until the water is nice and purple, then drop in the plants and 10 minutes later, whatever was alive on them, isn't anymore.

I never thought about using it on garden plants until now. I have some that I need to repot and bring into the GH, and it's just occured to me that I can dip them into a solution of PP water and avoid introducing anything other than the plants.

Measure carefully as you don't want to burn the roots. PP is an oxidizer. I use it mainly to clean new pond and aquarium plants. A light purple should do the job... and rinse well.

It's not harmful to fish unless you overdose them.

Cool. I'll take my book along with me to the local stores or find some Jasmine's and/or both Gardenia online.

Dax