Winter Blooming Hibiscus Houseplants!

[Cindy]

LOL I just read your message to Charlie, Denise!  Hopefully he'll comply and bring me a Wine Spritzer!  :-)))))

[Cindy]

Chris, your plants look really green and healthy! The grow lights are working really well. Very, very cool.

I'm not sure what my favorite houseplants are right now.... It changes all the time!   Plus Charlie is always stealing my houseplants to take back to the greenhouse, so I hesitate to point out how good a variety is, or it will be instant Good-bye! But for this fall and winter, these have been my indoor varieties that bloom like crazy, always have flowers on them, and are easy to keep growing and blooming:

Winter Lights - maybe my very favorite of the moment. The blue is very dark in the house every time it blooms, which I love. It often has 2 flowers at a time, and blooms almost every day.

Hot Pepper - crazy bloomer, 3-4 flowers at a time! It never stops blooming.

Cosmic Gold - another crazy bloomer with 3-5 flowers at a time, and always blooming.

African Princess - It bloomed every day for 6 or 7 months till Charlie took it back to the greenhouse.

Bright Hope - Blooms all the time, great bright colors inside the house. The pink is a luscious candy pink inside.

Arabian Princess - Same kind of steady bloomer, and the colors are dark, dark, dark in the house.

Pinot Noir - The flowers are a dark burgundy in the house, smaller, and less ruffly, but it blooms all the time, and I like the dark burgundy color.

P's Purple - Never stops blooming. There's a flower or 2 every day, day in, day out, winter, spring, summer, fall.

Belle du Jour and her babies - Belle was my first hibiscus houseplant love, and still one of my favorites. The flowers are smaller in the house, but the color is beautiful. Our new varieties that come from her, Belle of the Ball and Affirmation, seem to be just as good. Beautiful flowers all the time. Belle seems to pass these genes onto her babies too!

I'm sure there are lots more!  These are the ones I'm looking at right now!  The next time you ask, there will be others.

[helixturnhelix]

Cindy,

I am glad you are liking the set up, its shocked me how well these plants are doing under lights.  Deb showed us what is possible, but geez I cant believe how great they do.    I also increased their magnesium and dropped nitrogen quite a bit, seems to have worked well so far.  How compact was African Princess for you?  It is another I go back and fourth with

I have a ton of Winter Lights seedlings that I hope will be good indoor bloomers!  

The CVs that bloomed very well for me here in WA (last spring/summer we had no sun for like 3 months)

Raindrop (ranged from lavender to dark purple almost black)

My Blue Heaven (AMAZING indoor bloomer, dark dark blue with white flecks)

Cosmic Gold (Huge orange blooms in the dead of winter)

Corazon (This one, unlike most red and whites, bloomed in red and white during the gloomy cool summer weather)

Muffin Man (Every bloom looked different, but always had bright yellow spotting)

I will have more to report soon,

BTW: where are more houseplant pics Cindy?!?!

[Cindy]

Lowering nitrogen, raising magnesium, iron, and potassium is what we've steadily done with the Houseplant Formula over the last 2 years too, Chris. It does seem to work well for indoor hibiscus.

African Princess is not a compact hibiscus. It's a very vigorous grower that grows both tall and bushy, with huge leaves. The big leaves are part of why I like it so much - it's like a lush, green, tropical foliage plant, kind of like some of the philodendrons, that also flowers. Honestly, if I didn't know it was a hibiscus, I would never guess that it's one - or even believe that it's one.

Thanks for your list!  I'm going to have to try Raindrop, My Blue Heaven, and Corazon in our house too, along with Wine Spritzer, which I still want to try indoors. Space, space, space.... LOL

I've noticed a big difference with heat in our house too. When I set our central heat at 70-72 every day, we had many blooms every day in every room. Then, for the last 3 weeks, I've been trying to save energy bills by using small space heaters in the rooms where we are, and setting the central heat at 65 during the day. I'm amazed at how the hibiscus flowers dropped off!  In the whole house, with our 50+ indoor hibiscus, we only had 4 flowers yesterday. Even with all our sunny windows, heat still really makes a difference for us. So I'm going to aim for 68-70 now and see if that will produce more blooms.

But with rising propane costs, we may just have to settle for more green and fewer blooms during the winter months! I have to admit that when I had more than a dozen hibiscus blooming in our warmer house every day, I sometimes hardly noticed individual flowers. With only 4 blooming yesterday, I stopped to really notice each one. Strange how that works.

[helixturnhelix]

Thats very interesting Cindy,

I wonder if they are just adjusting to the cooler temps?  My apartment in Seattle was not insulated at all, even in the summer it was usually 65 inside, dropping to the low 60s/high 50s at night.  Remember the pictures of the cold damaged hibiscus from inside I sent you.

So the CVs that bloomed for me under those cooler conditions are definitely some to try out 

Do you have any pictures of African Princess and bush?  What about Arabian Princess?  Is that one also vigorous with lush giant lobbed leaves?

I am really thinking about Bright Hope now, I sure do love the huge blooms on that one.  How is the bush on it? I am hoping that it is just like Simple P

[topshelf12]

this bloom greeted me today. maybe it sensed the warmer temps San Jose is getting this week.  I don't grow this inside all year just for the winter.
Norm

[Cindy]

Nice Some Like it Hot, Norm!  Isn't it fun getting flowers in the house in the winter!

Cindy

[Cindy]

Do you have any pictures of African Princess and bush?  What about Arabian Princess?  Is that one also vigorous with lush giant lobbed leaves? I am really thinking about Bright Hope now, I sure do love the huge blooms on that one.  How is the bush on it? I am hoping that it is just like Simple P

I'll try to find some pics of my Arabian Princess, Chris. It bloomed so much, I kind of took it for granted. Now Charlie has chopped it up for wood and taken it back to the greenhouse. It always happens to my best plants!  But yes, it is the vigorous, lush bush with deeply-lobed leaves.

Bright Hope is a GREAT hibiscus in every way. Another that blooms every day for me in the house, and the blooms have vivid colors. The bush is full and really pretty. It's one of my new favorites. Mine blooms with one flower at a time, but it has a flower almost every day, and has since last summer!

Cindy

[helixturnhelix]

I always love seeing indoor hibiscus blooms, since that is about all I get to enjoy these days.  I almost like growing them inside because I can control all the environmental conditions.  A true scientist I guess...

So yes more pics please

[Cindy]

I have a lot more spectacular hibiscus in my house, but somehow this little Bonsai Hibiscus rosa-sinensis always makes me want to take a picture! It has been in a 4 inch pot in my kitchen window for 5 years now:



It started out as an experiment to see if I could make a Bonsai out of a hibiscus. I haven't been willing to make it a true Bonsai by limiting the root growth to a very shallow pot. But 5 years in a 4" pot is a severe limitation for a hibiscus plant. I just keep pruning and pinching, and I water it with houseplant formula every time I water. 

When we moved a year ago, it managed to get spider mites from something in the move, and then it started to go into the spider mite collapse, with growing tips dying back. I dosed it heavily with aspirin, Vitamins B, C, D and sulfur (MSM), root trimmed it, and gave it about an inch of new soil in the bottom of the pot. Now a year later, here it is looking happy and healthy and blooming again, all budded up with more flowers coming.

Charlie thinks I'm nutty to lavish so much care on this little plant, and to keep it so small. But I really want to see how small we can keep hibiscus and for how long!  I haven't been as successful with the exotics, but Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is working really well!

Cindy

[helixturnhelix]

Really love seeing your indoor hibiscus jungle Cindy!  I really want to make a bonsai hibiscus too

[Cindy]

I have a 5 day weekend coming up next weekend, Chris!  I'll try to take some more pics. Jungle is about right! LOL But now I hesitate to put them back outside again in the summer. The summer is so very hot here. I'm not sure if my indoor plants can take all that heat after getting used to being houseplants. We may have to move out of the house to make room for all that I'm keeping inside now!

Cindy

[helixturnhelix]

LOL, you better take some sweet pictures with a long weekend coming up!

I have two grow racks and 30 square feet of growing space in a greenhouse, its a problem.  I only have 6 plants and a few seedlings in my room right now, but after spring shipping... it will be a jungle.  Yet I still want more... its a problem.

[Ernest]

Cindy, you may just have to keep adding on to the house in order to accomodate all your indoor plants. I grew up in San Jose where the Winchester Mystery House is a big tourist attraction. Mrs. Winchester kept building additions to her house because some psychic convinced her that she wouldn't die as long as she kept on building. The result is a mishmash of stairways to nowhere and rooms with no purpose. At least you would have a good reason for your additions.

I'm developing an appreciation for the indoor plants now; especially since I began bringing the potted plants indoors this winter. We were away for ten days through Christmas and New Year's day and I told our house sitter to put the pots out in the morning and bring them in at night. When we returned she told me that she never put them out because it was cold or overcast. At first I was horrified but then noticed that they seemed to thriving despite the absence of direct sunlight. I love my plants in the ground but will definitely keep some indoors in pots from now on as well. Your little bonsai is beautiful.

Erny

[Cindy]

LOL It really is getting that bad, Erny! Our house could end up looking like the Winchester Mystery House at the rate I'm going! :-)

Charlie thought I was crazy when I first moved down here from Washington State and had to have houseplants. When everything grows outside, why would anyone grow plants inside? But my house felt so empty without a jungle everywhere!  So slowly, the jungle has filled up the house again. And now I have a bigger house to fill up! LOL

Cindy