Frangipani!
I fell in love with plumeria trees when Andy and I visited Hawaii in 2000. They grow on all the hotel grounds there, bushy trees full of beautiful and heavily perfumed flowers.
When I began to develop an interest in gardening, I did a little research and discovered that, like orchids, plumeria are one of those touchy to grow plants that encourage obsessive interest.
Plumeria, being a tropical plant, love a lot of bright sunlight. However, they are not ideally suited to the high temperatures and extreme aridity of the desert. Some encouragement was to be found, however, in other desert dwellers' successes.
A little put off by the reported difficulties involved, I didn't buy my first plumeria until 2003. Then in the summer of 2004, my mom and I each purchased another. Hers quickly dropped all its leaves while mine looked fine, so she passed hers on to me.
So for two to three years I have been watering and watching these plants, protecting them from frost, harsh sun and hungry cats - and not a single bloom. Plumerias commonly won't put on new branches without blooming first, so mine were getting awfully extended and sparse looking.
Earlier this year, I got off my lazy gardener butt and actually bought the recommended fertilizer and began fertilizing the plants every time I watered them. Success!
One of my plumerias, the oldest, is set to bloom any moment. I'm hoping the first bud will have opened (and look something like this) by the time I get home from work tonight!
-Ace
When I began to develop an interest in gardening, I did a little research and discovered that, like orchids, plumeria are one of those touchy to grow plants that encourage obsessive interest.
Plumeria, being a tropical plant, love a lot of bright sunlight. However, they are not ideally suited to the high temperatures and extreme aridity of the desert. Some encouragement was to be found, however, in other desert dwellers' successes.
A little put off by the reported difficulties involved, I didn't buy my first plumeria until 2003. Then in the summer of 2004, my mom and I each purchased another. Hers quickly dropped all its leaves while mine looked fine, so she passed hers on to me.
So for two to three years I have been watering and watching these plants, protecting them from frost, harsh sun and hungry cats - and not a single bloom. Plumerias commonly won't put on new branches without blooming first, so mine were getting awfully extended and sparse looking.
Earlier this year, I got off my lazy gardener butt and actually bought the recommended fertilizer and began fertilizing the plants every time I watered them. Success!
One of my plumerias, the oldest, is set to bloom any moment. I'm hoping the first bud will have opened (and look something like this) by the time I get home from work tonight!
-Ace