Happy Heart and Cherry Appaloosa

[Halibut]

Hi Charlie,
It appears that these two CV's are somewhat similar. Since CA is on my wishlist, I was wondering what your thoughts were on the two?
Thanks!

Hal

[Charlie]

Hi Hal,

Happy Heart is an offspring of Cherry Appaloosa and shows the same red and white coloring. CA has a very fine flower, great color, form, and size. But, CA is a sprawling bush that wants to grow horizontal and is not what I would call attractive. So I crossed it with Saffron knowing that the white eye in both cultivars was likely to show up in at least some seedlings and in hopes that any white eyed seedlings would have Saffron's much better bush. In Happy Heart we got lucky - not only the white eye but also white spots on the cherry red petals and a far better bush than Cherry Appaloosa. I still like CA's flower the best but HH is not far behind. We will be growing a lot more HH in the future, unfortunately it has already sold out for this spring.

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Charlie,

How does Corazon compare to these too?

[Charlie]

Good eye, Chris, as usual.... 

Corazon is also a Cherry Appaloosa offspring but this time with Living Legend as the other parent. LL does not have a white eye and Corazon lacks it also. That is the main difference between Corazon and Happy Heart/Cherry App but Corazon makes up for it by showing more balance between the white and red colors. Is it a white with red markings or a red with white markings? We'll know that when we see it bloom in colder conditions. Most likely it will become more of a solid red then but we shall see. In this sense it is more like the red and white variety Hoosiers, a patented Dale Dubin variety. In the heat of summer that one shows more white than red but in cooler weather the red dominates. Corazon's bush benefited from Living Legend, as expected.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the 1 gallon plants of all these coming into bloom at the same time later this spring. So far the 6 inch (1 gallon this year) pots are looking fantastic, most being pinched recently to encourage bushiness.

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Thanks Charlie!

I am looking forward to these new ones this year!  I went crazy and got 4, 1 gallon pots...  so I look forward to seeing how much nicer they look (thats pretty hard considering how nice the newer varieties have been).  Take any pics of the new pots bushes?

I am trying to figure out what size pots to transplant into, I found some really deep pots; about 17 inches tall and 5 inches across.  My question is, is height or width most important?  I want to maximize the number of pots I can fit!

[Charlie]

Chris, pot shape is an interesting question and one not fully explored as far as I know. Hibiscus roots seem to be pretty opportunistic, taking advantage of nutrients or water wherever they find them. For example, if you spread time release fertilizer on the top of potting mix and then check out the roots 6 months later you will find a mass of roots in the first couple of inches under the surface and relatively few deeper in the pot. The same thing will happen if watering is done often but shallow as might happen when using a sprinkler to water hibiscus.

One sophisticated nursery around here has done experiments that involved collecting, drying, then weighing the total root mass of different varieties to determine which varieties were likely to flourish best with their customers. If total root mass is in fact a key factor then it would not seem to matter whether the roots spread out horizontally or vertically.

Pots dry out from the top down so such tall pots would be likely to still be wet at the bottom even after the top few inches have dried out. Is that a positive or negative? I tend to think it would be a positive but the proof is in the doing so if you use these 5 inch x 17 inch pots I will look forward to hearing about (and seeing) the results.

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Hi Charlie,

I was thinking the same thing, especially since hibiscus love water.  It makes sense to use shallow pots for plants that like to dry out more quickly, like cactus and succulents, but since hibiscus are water lovers and like consistency, I would think that anything you could do to keep the root zone constant would be a good thing.  It seems as though in switching to 1 gallon pots you already see a difference, so maybe deeper is even better  

[helixturnhelix]

Is Cherry Glow, Happy Heart's sibling?  I am enamored by the beauty of Cherry Glow