Hidden Valley Hibiscus Forum

Halfway through October - Let's get this thread started...

Darren - Fantastic blooms as always! Love your Monet's Palate, Weep No More looks really interesting and that Molten Core is really cool.

Rebecca - I always look forward to first blooms on my plants - yours are looking great.  I love Cosmic Gold as well. Such a great bush on that cv to match its lovely flowers as well.

Kyle - Welcome back!  Those Wow Factors are awesome!

Thunderhead, Garden Pleasures and Sea of Tranquility, God's Eye, Tahitian Princess, Exuberance, & James Bond.

Heartbreaker & Spring Fever, Daisy Mae, My Blue Heaven with Yoda, Silver Lining, Saffron & Love Sonnet.

Tarzan with Cindy's Heart and Rainbow Christie, Dancin' Dragon, Tahitian Magenta Double Star, Marvel, Love Story, & Space Oddity.

Symphony & Heavy Metal, Belle du Jour, Creme de Cacao, Typhoon, Language of Love, & High Voltage.

I'll be lucky if I can keep my plants outdoors till Halloween.  Monday lows are supposed to be 39 in the evening which is cutting it close, but then temps are supposed to pick up again.  I have some big plans this year for my indoor grow room, including a potential upgrade to my indoor irrigation set up. Fingers crossed it all works out!

Girl Next Door, Heaven's Scent, Cindy's Heart, Voodoo Magic, and wrapping up with a couple shots from one of my garden areas showing a variety of HVH blooms.

First blooms off my Athena and Luminescence plants! 

Dave- your flowers are amazing, especially Thunderhead!  Good luck with moving the hibiscuses indoors!

A few more blooms.

Island Queen twins with a Crown of Bohemia in the background, and a new Jungle Fire bloom (which appropriately enough opened during the North Bay fires last week and has a bit of ash on it).

A first bloom for Sugar Kisses!  Fairy Queen continues to amaze as well.

A few more.

Dave your blooms are totally awesome! Love the results you are getting!

Farmer D

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I thought it would be interesting for people to see what things look like after being out of town for three weeks and what it looks like after cleaning things up which takes three solid days of sunrise to sunset work. I really don't get things completely where I like them for about 2 weeks.

I have a helpful friend come by once while gone to pick up all the dropped debris on the ground and do some light dead heading. That makes a huge difference as in the past I come back to a horrific mess. Still though it is a lot of work as I also have to mow lawns with three weeks of growth and prune hedges and other various yard work.

Every yellow leaf you see will be removed along with all pods (dead heading). I also had an enormous white fly population upon returning - the small ones. That is a first. My Cindy's Heart plant took 2 hours to clean up. I think I removed close to half the leaves...

I got about half way down the driveway after micro cleaning the entire inner front yard first. The next day I will finish the driveway and do the entire sidewalk planter.

Farmer D

After the second day of cleaning...and then a photo from after the heatwave to see how things improved. We had our hottest weather of the year several days after getting back with three days at 104 and 105 so that created a whole bunch more yellow leaves to clean up but I was glad I was back for that as the potted plants would have had a terrible time with such heat and extreme low humidity. Once the heatwave was over we had a big change in the weather pattern and a week of cloudy cool weather - this is important as you will see later that combination after a heatwave produces the dream bloomfest.

Farmer D

Of the many new HVH cultivars I got this year Catharsis was one of the ones I was most excited about. This is the third bloom and WOW is it amazing...and Heartache might be my favorite of them all currently

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Some blooms from Oct.

Pinot Noir continues to climb out of a 7 month dormancy.