Darren could you explain your meaning when you say
''The more I feed this FF especially with the booster the more water it can take and the growth accelerates along with the bud count''.
The reason I ask is I have been thinking for a while that my cv's dont seem to be drinking a lot of water, I constantly check and they are very healthy and never dry, but considering the heat here some cv's are watered just every other day. They are also very much on the small side and do grow quite slowly, so your comment above has me wondering, thanks.
I'm glad you're interested in this. I've only recently noticed this but let me explain what I've experienced since growing these plants in ground since last spring.
In the past I've only used the special blend fert when watering my plants. I always thought my heavy clay soil here holds water well even after conditioning it a lot before planting. I would feed my plants and it wouldn't take long for them to start to get yellowish leaves looking like they are being over-watered (very similar to LJG's pic of her FF). Some a lot more quickly than others so I assumed each plant has it's own limits based on it's parent's genetics. So I would back off to the point that the soil around the plants would get somewhat dry before they would green up again.
This growing season I have been surprised how slowly all my cvs have been coming back from winter (lost all leaves due to cold) and also how much they dried out and shrunk when I was on vacation for 2 weeks back in May after spraying them with SN at least twice a day for a month before I left along with fertilizing/watering at least twice a week before I left.
When I got back from vacation 2 weeks ago I decided to add the HVH booster for the first time. Immediately the plants greened up and lost all yellow and started growing a lot faster. Some of my plants before looked not only yellow but the leaves would get that almost transparent look and have whitish edges as if way over watered (Palm Springs, Rainbow Sherbet and Valentines Day in particular). So for the past 2 weeks I have been continually adding more booster and water and still no yellowing. Being my plants are in ground any excess ferts tend to leach down into the soil with the extra water so no signs of too much of either as of yet.
Now my thinking is that for the past year plus I have been starving my plants hence the leaves that always easily yellow when watered. With the booster they seem to be able to tolerate or should I say absorb a lot more water and /or ferts, and I mean a lot more water. Funny thing is our weather here has been very cool all spring long staying in the high 60s or low 70s with clouds for at least half the day typically. So not a big need for water due to hot conditions at all. Quite the opposite here so far this year.
Bottom line so far, the booster seems to be a critical part of an exotic hibiscus' feeding regimen. My plants have never looked better and I still spray them daily with SN which has helped spur new branch growth so I can hopefully avoid any pruning but we covered that one already in another post.
Farmer D
