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Hidden Valley Hibiscus
Growers & Hybridizers of Exotic, Tropical Hibiscus
Volume 13, Issue 8
August 2012

News from Hidden Valley Hibiscus


Blooms, Blooms, Blooms in the HVH Greenhouse!
Clockwise from Top Left: Exotic Hibiscus Varieties 'Blue Ballerina,' 'Berried Treasure,' 'Blushing Peach'




'Andante'


'Painted Pony'


'Elation'

Hi to all our Fellow Hibiscus Lovers!

Hopefully most of us have made it through the worst of this summer's record-high heat, and now we may finally get some relief! In the hottest areas, hibiscus have probably been struggling through the heat waves, but now they should start to perk up and produce more blooms than ever as we head into September. Summer in the HVH greenhouse is the time when our hibiscus get to grow and bloom freely before fall propagation begins. It's a beautiful time to see the greenhouse, and we thought we would share a few pictures of our Blooms, Blooms, Blooms in the Greenhouse!

Our care article this month is about Hibiscus Hygiene. We don't always think of hygiene in relation to plants, but good hygiene practices can go a long way toward keeping our hibiscus healthy, blooming, growing, and free of pests and disease. Read everything you need to know to get started on a good plant hygiene program for your hibiscus in the article below.

Our August Seedling of the Month is a new dark, sultry double. Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter to see it!

Stay cool!

Charles & Cindy Black



'Ephemeral'


'Bright Hope'


'Kissing Giant'



 

Blooms, Blooms, Blooms in the Greenhouse!


It's summer! There are hibiscus flowers everywhere you look in the HVH greenhouse! Too many to name or even to stop and notice individually! But the show is spectacular, and we thought our readers might like to see a few of them. Enjoy!







Flowers, flowers, and more flowers! It's hard to stop taking pictures in the greenhouse with so many hibiscus blooms everywhere, and harder still to decide how many to share. We hope you have enjoyed our little hibiscus show!


 



 

Hibiscus Hygiene


'Whimsy'
Just like humans, animals, houses, and so many other things in life, a little bit of hygiene goes a long way toward keeping our hibiscus happy and healthy. Good hygiene is by far the best way to prevent pests, and clean plants capture sunlight more efficiently, which means more fuel for growing and blooming. So how do we go about practicing good hygiene with our hibiscus?

Showering

In nature, rain does much more than just water the ground and roots of plants. It washes plants, spraying away any prowling pests, keeping leaves clean, dust free, and more able to capture sunlight for fuel. Rain provides extra moisture through the leaves which helps hibiscus stay healthy in high heat. Hibiscus thrive in places that get frequent rain, and thanks to modern plumbing, we can give our hibiscus showers when nature doesn't provide them. In fact, we can beat Mother Nature with our hibiscus showers! Rain falls only on the tops of leaves, and misses everything underneath. When we shower our hibiscus, we can do a much more thorough job, and keep our hibiscus even healthier.


'Happy Heart'
Outdoor Hibiscus: When hibiscus are outside, showering is easy. Just use a sprayer attachment or a
BugBlaster on your garden hose to thoroughly spray all parts of each hibiscus plant. Be careful to spray both the under sides and top sides of leaves, the bark on the stalks and stems, and all growing tips. Hibiscus can take a strong spray of water, and they love to be wet and clean.

During the hottest part of the summer, hibiscus can take a shower every day if you have the time and inclination to do it. If your hibiscus show any signs of pest problems, a shower every day is crucial, ideally for a month to make sure every last pest is drowned or driven away. With healthy hibiscus, twice a week showers in the summer are fine. As fall approaches and the weather cools, gradually cut the number of showers down. You don't want your hibiscus to stay soggy all the time, or you could create new problems, like moss or fungus starting to grow. Hibiscus need to thoroughly dry out between showers, so in cool weather, slow down to once a week. Then when your rainy season begins you can stop showering all together and let the rain take over.


'Malibu Summer'
Indoor Hibiscus: For hibiscus in the house, showering is more of a pain when the plants are big. For healthy indoor hibiscus, showering once a month is ideal, and once a season is fine. If your hibiscus are outside for 6 months of the year, and have been showered frequently throughout all those months, then shower well one last time before bringing them into the house, and shower well again when you take them outside, and they should be fine making it through the winter months with 1 or 2 small showers during their inside time.

Showering small hibiscus plants is easy in the kitchen sink or bathtub with any kind of handheld sprayer. If your days get warm enough in the winter to take your hibiscus outside mid-day for a quick shower with an outside hose, that's by far the quickest and easiest way to shower them. You can also pop them into a human shower in your bathroom, and use tepid or cool water. Whatever method you decide to use, be sure to spray the hibiscus thoroughly - both sides of all leaves, all stalks, stems, rough bark, and growing tips. Let them drip dry in the sink, tub, or shower, and make sure water has stopped draining out of the bottom of the pot. Then just pop them back into their usual sunny spot in your house.

Weeding


'Solar Energy'
Weeding seems obvious to all of us, usually for cosmetic reasons. Weeds are ugly and we want to get rid of them! But there is a hygienic reason to work at keeping weeds out of our gardens too - many noxious pests hide, live, and breed in weeds. You can use pest control products or frequent showering to keep your hibiscus free of pests, but if you have a patch of weeds nearby, look at them closely. Chances are if you've ever chased some kind of pest from your hibiscus, they simply moved to the nearest weed patch, and the first time you let down your guard, they will move right back to your hibiscus. Of course, we can't weed the whole world, our neighbors' yards, or every empty lot, meadow, or woods next to our garden. But the more we can keep weeds from growing and thriving near our hibiscus garden, the fewer problems our hibiscus will have.

Picking up Spent Flowers

One of the charms of hibiscus is that we don't have to dead-head them to keep them blooming, so it's easy to just forget about spent flowers and let them fall on the ground. But unfortunately, those spent flowers on the ground can become perfect breeding grounds for several pests. One of these pests, thrips will actually burrow into your hibiscus buds and kill the buds before they can bloom. In humid climates, spent flowers sometimes stay on the plant rotting slowly, and can actually infect the whole branch. So cleaning up spent flowers regularly is another important piece of hibiscus hygiene. If you only have a few hibiscus, it's easy to pick the spent flowers up by hand each day. If you have a lot of hibiscus, it may be easier to rake or sweep them up a couple of times per week.

Cleaning Tools


'Wild Allure'
Cleaning tools we use with our hibiscus is one of those things that's easy to forget. Even a watering hose or wand can pick up pests from one hibiscus and carry them to another. So when you're showering your hibiscus, don't forget to also shower off your hoses, wands, shovels, and any other gardening tools you've used.

Pruners are especially bad carriers of germs from one hibiscus to another, and more dangerous because they cut into the sap of the plants. Ideally you should use hand sanitizer on your pruners before and after every cut you make. If there is some kind of microbe on one branch you cut into, you don't even want to spread that microbe to another branch on the same hibiscus. A quick wipe with hand sanitizer prevents the spread of all kinds of fungal, bacterial, and viral disease in one little swipe.

Pots are another possible source of contamination. It's fine to reuse pots, but never reuse a pot without sanitizing it first. First use some kind of strong cleanser to scrub the pot as clean as you can. Then mix up a solution of 1 part bleach to 4 parts water in a bucket or sink. Soak the pot for 30-60 minutes in the bleach water. Rinse as much of the bleach water off as you can, then soak the pot for another 30-60 minutes in plain water, to leach out all traces of the bleach that could have soaked into the pot. Dry the pot thoroughly, and it's ready to use again.

Removing Dead Branches


'Wild Lilac'
This job only has to be done once a year. Do it in early summer, after all your hibiscus have had plenty of time to leaf out on all healthy branches. By this time, the dead tips and branches will stand out easily. They will look grayish in color and have no green growing tips or leaves anywhere. Identify a dead branch, then trace it back to the first green growth you can find. Clean your pruners with hand sanitizer, then carefully cut the dead branch off just above the healthy green growth. Be sure to clean your pruners again right after the cut! Dead branches usually carry some kind of infection and you don't want to pass it around to other branches and hibiscus plants! Go through your hibiscus garden looking for dead tips and branches, and carefully cut all the dead wood away so the disease can't spread downward to the healthy parts of the plants.

 



 

Exotic Hibiscus 'Nefertiti'
Exotic Hibiscus 'Nefertiti'

Seedling of the Month...

'Nefertiti '


Exotic Hibiscus 'Nefertiti'

Our August Seedling of the Month is a dark, sultry beauty named after the stunningly beautiful Egyptian queen, 'Nefertiti.' The flower of 'Nefertiti' is a 6-8" ruffly double hibiscus vivid in rose red with a ruffly purple edge. It's beauty speaks for itself! 'Nefertiti' is an orphan seedling of unknown parentage. The bush is medium sized, upright and a great bloomer. 'Nefertiti' will be released in limited quantities in 2013.