News from Hidden Valley Hibiscus

Help! My Hibiscus was Damaged by a Freeze!
What do I Do?

If your hibiscus has been damaged by a hard freeze or some other damaging event, first, just leave the plant alone until all danger of frost has passed and nights warm up to 50°F (10°C). The frost-damaged wood needs to be removed, but if you do it too soon, you can send the plant into shock and make it very difficult for it to wake up again. So if it is still cold in your area, save these directions and WAIT! When it is warm, the directions below will tell you how to find and cut away the damaged wood.

Nights are Warm, I'm Ready to Prune the Damaged Wood

First, make sure you have the tools you need in hand:

• Pruners: You need sharp, clean pruning shears.


• Hand Sanitizer: Be sure to have plenty of water-free hand cleaner with you because you will need to sterilize your pruners after every cut into damaged wood.


• Trash Bags: Once you start pruning, you'll also need to collect all dead, possibly diseased wood and put it in a plastic trash bag. You want to send all bad wood off to the dump in plastic bags rather than leave it lying around where it can spread disease back to your healthy plants.

Checking for Live Wood

First check your plants for dead stems and branches. The test is simple enough. Working from the tip of each plant stem down toward the base, use a strong fingernail or a small knife to make a small scratch test (1/4-1/2 inch long). Scrape away a tiny bit of the brown outer bark of the stem that you are not sure about and look at the color underneath. A live branch will be bright green underneath the bark. If the branch is brown or light tan, it is dead. Some dead stems may be rotten, soft and squishy to the touch. There's no need to do a scratch test on stems that are soft and squishy - they are clearly rotting and dead. Just keep working your way down the stem, doing scratch tests, until you find the point where scratching away the bark reveals bright, healthy, green plant tissue underneath. Plant tissue that is dull green with brown mixed in is not likely to live, so keep moving your way down the branch until you find a bright green patch. Now that we know where the live wood begins, it's time to remove the dead wood.

Removing the Dead Wood - Two Strategies

Deeply Pruned Hibiscus Branch Cut has clean, white wood inside bark. New growth is sprouting below.

When cutting dead or dying wood from the plant, there are two strategies to choose between. The first is to find the highest spot of clean, live wood on a stem and then cut the stem 1/4 inch above the next visible node down from that spot. This will eliminate the ugly, dead wood and keep any disease from spreading downward. When you make the cut, the inner core of the stem should be clean and white, not streaked with dark stains. If it isn't, then move further down the stem and keep cutting until you find good, clean, white wood. Keep in mind that the stem is likely to branch out from the node nearest the cut or from the 2-3 nodes just below the cut. Sometimes this is just fine, but other times that might make for a funny-looking plant with stems branching out near the top but not the bottom.

The second pruning strategy is to shape the plant while removing the dead wood. You start the same way, by finding the point where the wood is clean, green, and white. Instead of cutting just above the first clean, healthy node, make the cut further down, just above a node that is pointing in the direction you would like a stem to grow. Be sure and cut 1/4 inch above the node, so that there is room for the new stem to sprout. If the cut is too high, the remaining wood above the node may rot. If the cut is too close to the node, you may remove the special plant cells that would have sprouted into the new branch. In this second pruning strategy, you remove more wood than is necessary to eliminate the dead wood. Some of what is removed will be white and clean but the idea is to force more stems to sprout lower down on the bush, to help it achieve a full and attractive appearance. You may cut away as much as 2/3 or even more of a branch in order to do this. Don't be afraid to prune back many of the stems severely. The plant will re-grow with more branches than ever before and look fuller than ever before. More branches mean more flowers, too!

Some of the dead wood on a hibiscus bush will just be twigs. Remove the dead twigs as close to the branch they were growing from as possible without damaging that branch. Throw them in a trash bag in order to dispose of them.

Next Nutrition

So Many Choices!

Which Hibiscus Should I Get?

People constantly email us for suggestions about which hibiscus varieties they should order out of the hundreds of varieties that appear on our store (500 plus on the day the store opened at the end of December). We realize that the sheer abundance of choice can be confusing, so below are some suggestions for how to choose hibiscus that suit your tastes and needs.

One of the questions we get the most is which hibiscus will make a good hedge. Most of our hibiscus can typically be kept 5-6 feet tall at maturity with pruning. If you want a taller hedge, up to 10-12 feet tall at maturity, look for hibiscus that we describe as "tall," "fast-growing," or "vigorous." Many of our newer hybrids are in this category, so read the descriptions to find these varieties.

Apart from consideration of size, the most popular way to choose a hibiscus is by color. As many of you know, the varieties are presented on the pages by general color - red, yellow, and so forth. If you have a favorite color and have ordered mostly varieties of that one color, you may want to order some from the other color pages. We think you will be pleased by adding new colors to your collection of hibiscus.

Tried & True Hibiscus 'Laguna Beach' is easy to grow.

But let's say that color is not that decisive for you. For instance, many people tell us they like all the colors. Good! There are several other criteria you can use to fill out a fine collection of hibiscus: