Winter Blooming Hibiscus Houseplants!

[Cindy]

I woke up this morning to this beautiful display of blooms in my kitchen window, and had to snap a picture!



From left to right: Bright Hope, Wild Grape, 2 Radiant flowers, Lip Gloss.

3 of these flowers are 2nd or 3rd day blooms, but it still looks pretty! Nice Christmas present. :-)

Here's the same kitchen corner about 3 weeks ago:



From left to right: 3 giant Radiant flowers, 2 Lip Gloss flowers.

The Lip Gloss blooms like crazy and it's still in a 4" pot. I need to pot it up but want to wait till it stops blooming, and it won't stop. It has 3 more developing buds today.

Here's San Diego Sun on Nov. 30, about 2 weeks after I brought it into the house. It has made buds outside in the cold that kept dropping off, but these baby buds finished developing in the warm, toasty house.



And here are Rainbow Sherbet and Acapulco Gold blooming side-by-side in our living room:



And some beautiful little Wild Child twins, also in the living room:



We actually have more flowers blooming in our house, but I need to get to work, so I'll stop. Our new house is an amazing house for hibiscus. It is long and stretched out along the southern exposure, with sunny windows in every room, and tons of direct sunlight. It's giving us several hibiscus blooms every day, which makes the winter so much more fun. I'll try to keep taking pics.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!
Cindy

[helixturnhelix]

Cindy, these hibiscus are fantastic!  I finally tweaked my feeding and growing conditions and started using T5 lighting, so I will have some basement hibiscus blooms to share soon.    What is interesting about growing in a basement, everything is very consistent (temps, light intensity, photoperiod)  It is very interesting seeing how CVs bloom with all these variables the same, which is not always the case in most growing conditions

Thank you for sharing these and Merry Christmas! 

[roadrunner]

Wow!! Cindy those blooms are incredible. It appears that you and Charlie are living in my dream house with all those sunny windows. 

From Arizona wishing everyone a Merry Christmas !!!

dave

[Cindy]

I can hardly wait to see how your T5 lights work, Chris! Keep us posted. Those uniform growing conditions can be a huge asset. When I tweak one variable, I'm never sure if it makes the changes I see, because of light, temp, humidity always changing with the season.

Yeah, Dave, our house is a hibiscus dream! But in the summer, we have to be really careful. With all these windows, we use a ton of air conditioning and our electricity bill was $450 last August! Yikes! So I need to get some good insulating mini blinds and move all the hibiscus outside for the summer next year. OR we need to get solar panels for the roof. Or both maybe. But in the winter, it's hibiscus heaven and toasty warm in this house. I think our new climate is nearly identical to yours. We freeze almost every night here, but haven't yet gone below 30. Today it's supposed to hit a high of 68 - sunny and gorgeous!

I'm so anxious to see the new store pages that I'm already working on them. I couldn't wait till tomorrow! LOL I must be a true workaholic, working on Christmas. But of course, this is pretty fun and creative work.... :-)

Cindy

[roadrunner]

Cindy a big yikes on that summer electric bill.

[davidwood]

Lovely pics Cindy, I really like that San Diego Sun, good luck next week.

[helixturnhelix]

Cindy,

I am surprised at how well they are growing and budding up under the T5 lights, and still show fantastic color.  I haven't had any of my HVH hybrids bloom yet, but I am hoping that some of them begin blooming soon, so I can share!

I can only imagine the feeding frenzy on the 30th, I don't think I will be able to play well this year.  My internet on the island I live on is very touch and go, if it decides to go on the 30th it will be sad times   I hope there arent too many from my wish list in the store... 

[Denise]

All I can say about that San Diego Sun is: O M G! So looking forward to Friday.....I got a shopping pass from my husband for Christmas.

[roadrunner]

my first Wine Spritzer bloom.

[roadrunner]

Cindy's Heart blooming in the crowded south facing living room window

[Cindy]

Those are beauties, Dave! Even with limited space, you're sure doing a beautiful job!  I don't have a Wine Spritzer here at home. I may have to get one. Now that we live so far from the greenhouse, I want every variety at home and that means in the house over the winter. My addiction is really getting crazy! 

I tried to grab a few hibs yesterday too, but my hubby wouldn't let me, Denise!  LOL He insisted they were for our customers, not me! Sad for me, but good for you guys. Still, I think I'll have to find a way to slip into the greenhouse and get a Wine Spritzer for our house.

Chris, if you don't mind, it would be great to see some pics of your setup in your basement with the T5 lights.

[Cindy]

Here are a couple more pics I snapped last week before I got too busy getting the new store open:

'Winter Lights' twins on the left, 'Bright Hope' twins on the right.


'Winter Lights' is really dark inside our house in the cool winter weather!  We didn't know it could get that dark.

This is 'Cosmic Gold' blooming its head off as always:


I'll try to take some pictures of our setup too. We have these window alcoves in 3 big rooms on the south side of the house with windows on the east, south, and west sides - maximum sun in all 3 rooms!  It's amazingly good for hibiscus. :-)

Happy New Year's Eve!!!!!
Cindy

[Denise]

What!? I say Charlie marches down to that greenhouse right now and grabs his hard-working wife a Wine Spritzer this instant! 

I love that Bright Hope!!

How many days til Spring...?

[helixturnhelix]

Hi Cindy,

I am in the process of redoing the set up, I have another shelf now and plan on getting two 4 foot 4 bulb T5 fixtures with full spectrum 6400K lights.  the current 2 foot 4 bulb light set will be suspended above under the top shelf, where a 4 foot 4 bulb fixture will be suspended from the ceiling.  I decided on using full spectrum lights, instead of the bloom or 2700-3000K spectrum lights, because the relative intensity of red to blue light in both light types is almost identical.  Full spectrum lights also simulate noon sun intensity (when the light from the sun is most perpendicular with the earth) and for tropicals like hibiscus which don't see a change in relative sun intensity through the seasons, I figured would be fine with this spectrum.  So far I am very happy with the results, there are tons of buds forming and silver dragon is finally taking off!

Photos:

1: New Shelf, yes that is a duck phone from the 80s I got as a white elephant gift...
2: current set up, second shelf is all seedlings ready to be transferred to my new greenhouse space at the university!
3:Buds and more buds!
4: Silver Dragon
5: Sunrise this morning from my tiny basement window!

[helixturnhelix]

Cindy, your blooms are looking amazing!  which ones are your favorite indoor growers and bloomers you are growing?

I really like Bright hope, I really think that the simple pleasures is a Rainbow Christie kid,  from my research it seems as though you tend to get really pronounced exaggerated patterns and colors, like that deep eye of bright hope, when you line or backcross CVs.  Two dosages of Rainbow Christie genes would do that!  

Thats what I really like about Fly me to the Moon, (in the pic anyways...) very interesting and pronounced eye like Bright Hope, no surprise since its a backcross to Rainbow Christie!  Oops geeking out on hibiscus genetics