Hi

This time of year I'm always impressed with the various gingers. Some are starting to flower but the awe inspiring part is the growth rate lol Empty pots all winter and now are way over crowded lol Another is the gesneriads particularly the Chrysothemis and florist gloxinia They love the heat and humidity as long as it rains but the glox point straight up and the rain destroys the flowers looks like failure again fot the peruvian daffodils had great hopes for them this year as they actually went dormant same is true for the agapanthus ,amaryllis lots of leaves ,no flowers

caldwell lily surprised me by going dormant but is now producing flowers with no leaves same is true for the blood lilies flowering one at a time rather than all at once . Amazon and peace lilies are flowering very well but not as lush as they should be . Most of the orchids are growing rather than flowering except for the phals but not nearly as much as they can .

A hybrid tea rose I got as an experiment last winter is flowering well and so far not a sign of disease. Now if I can figure out how to prune it . Insists on making two foot long stems with a single flower producing a very ugly shrub lol

I recently bought some new stuff a supposed frost tolerant giant anthurium, a black color changing ginger , Blue Hibiscus and a Brazilian tree fern. Not sure how the hibiscus will react to the rain as they are a desert plant so i put a lot of leca in the potting mix . Fingers crossed!!! gary

Gary, to prune a rose, cut the dead bloom off at the first set of 5 leaves. That's it. I never prune roses by more than 1/3 the height in late winter. We just don't have enough cold to allow them to come back from harsh pruning. I'm interested to see how your blue hibiscus does. I've tried it, and never could get it to do well.

Hi

Just happened to find the blue Hibiscus in a catalog and bought it on impulse lol. It is a puny little thing under a foot ,obviously started from seed,so way to small to plant out had to repot immediately so used about a quarter each of compost ,leca, and and very fine fir chips . Fear I lack enough sun , less than 4 hours . So far it's hanging in there even has new growth. They tell me it prefers very sandy soil with fast drainage . Where will I find soil like that?? lol Supposedly the "Blue " variety not the cream or purple ,which is the reason I bought it but guess I'll have to wait has to make it through the long humisd wet summer first?? lol gary.

Mine didn't make it through the summer. I bought mine in a garden center in a 1-gallon pot and put it into the ground in plain old FL sand with just a little potting soil. This was when I lived in 9b/10a. We did have a particularly wet summer that year, so that was probably why it died. I tried taking cuttings once it got large enough, but none rooted, and it gave no seeds. Good luck with yours! Let us know how it does.

Hi

The one I got was Alyogyne huegelii the so called "blue Hiscus " actually not a hibiscus at all. There is another going by that name which is actually a hybrid of Althea .hardy hibiscus . From the pix it seems to reliably "blue "lol

Don't think Althea would appreciate the lack of seasonal change so went with the tropical type . I intend to plant it in the shrub border when it gains some size and I find out how it handles summer lol Time will tell I guess gary

That's the one I had. I had an althea down in your neck of the woods, but no, it did not like it there. It grew very slowly and put out very few blooms -- not at all like the monsters from my mom's yard in SC that took over everything. I'm trying to pick an althea for up here. I'm torn between the blue and the solid white, which also has a "blue" name - Blue River. This is the blue one I'm looking at.

https://www.provenwinners.com/plants/hibiscus/blue-chiffon-rose-sharon-hibiscus-syriacus