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Tropical bloom

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I grow several tropical vines, mostly passion flower, that I have to bring indoors each fall as they can’t withstand our harsh winter temperatures here in Toronto.

One of the vines that I bring indoors I still haven’t identified. I think it might be some kind of trumpet flower, but still … I’m just not sure.

Do you recognize this flower? I grows on a vine with medium green oval / oblong leaves.What is it?

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When I brought this vine indoors in October I brought it upstairs to sit in a south facing window. Much to my surprise sometime near the end of November it produced two blooms. My vines almost never bloom indoors when I bring them in for the winter because the light is too low – even in a south facing window.

I’m happy to report that the three passion flower, the unknown vine, and my big jasmine are all doing well, yet I’m sure they are impatiently waiting for better weather so that they can get back outside!

Do you bring plants indoors during the winter? How do they fare indoors. Do they bloom, do they struggle to survive because of dry conditions in the house and low light levels?

Update – One of my Amaryllis is about to bloom. It developed a flower stalk about a week after I’d brought it up from the basement at the end of December and it will soon have some huge blooms! The other two haven’t developed flower spikes yet but I expect that they will soon. Oh and my two Orchids have flower stalks – one is flowering and the other is developing buds … plus I bought one more orchid and it’s blooming as well. So between the soon to flower Amaryllis, blooming orchids and my still blooming hibiscus I have lots of indoor flowers to tide me over until spring.






Rose of Sharon blooming

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I’m always surprised when I look at the stats for this site and I see the search term “Rose of Sharon” come up almost daily all year round. There’s obviously a lot more people than I thought looking for information about Rose of Sharon shrubs!

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My Rose of Sharon came to me 7 years ago as a gift from my neighbor. She has a Rose of Sharon, lets call it the mother tree, that is about 40+ years old.

I’m not sure how tall her tree is but lets say it’s somewhere between 12 and 15 feet tall. The seedling she gave me has grown quite a bit over the years and it’s only about two feet shorter than the mother tree. It’s trunk and branches have thickened, but they are still smaller in diam. than the mother trees – but not by that much.

This is definitely not the best picture of the tree that I’ve ever taken, but to show you how big it is this year and what it looks like in full bloom, here we go …

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You can see the power line above the tree so that should give you an idea of how tall it is.

It’s been a beautiful addition to my garden. I love it’s purple blooms. Birds love the tree year round, and butterflies and other insects enjoy the tree when it’s in bloom. I’m sure it’s helped attract some of the butterflies that frequent my yard regularly each year.

The Rose of Sharon is a fairly hardy tree, but it’s slow to leaf out in the spring. It’s often one of the last plants to start to show signs of life in my garden. I usually see leaves forming by early June, but there have been a few years where it hasn’t leafed out till close to the end of June.

My elderly neighbor always thinks her tree is dead each year because it’s so slow and each year I reassure her that it will leaf out and bloom – and it does.

I’ll bet that the Rose of Sharon being slow to start up in the spring or early summer is one of the major reasons why I get so many searches on my site for this lovely shrub.

I used to have a Hardy Hibiscus that would die down each winter, but for the past two years it’s failed to come up. I think it’s gone. My tropical Hibiscus – that I keep indoors in the winter – is doing well in a large urn at the front of the house. There are several peach colored blooms on it.

Do you grow Hibiscus? What type and what have your experiences been with the plant?

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Every gardener needs an outdoor sink station

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I was browsing through gardening sites earlier today trying to get ideas for our garden and I came across this fantastic Outdoor Sink Station.

I don’t know about you, but each spring and then in early summer I spend a lot of time outdoors planting seedlings that I’ve grown indoors during the late winter and early spring months, or flats of plants that I’ve purchased from a local nursery.

Planting is messy business! Heck, even weeding or spending time putting fresh soil and compost on the garden is a dirty job.

Rather than trudge inside with dirty hands (my shoes, socks and clothing are usually well dusted too!) it would be nice to have a sink outdoors.

An outdoor sink would also come in handy when it comes time to pluck radishes, carrots, potatoes and other veggies from the soil. You could easily give them a rinse before bringing them into your kitchen.

If you use your backyard and or garden for entertaining guests – sitting outdoors barbecuing on the grill and eating outdoors it might also be handy to have a sink nearby.

What I really like about this Outdoor Sink Station is that there’s also a full size hose located at the bottom of the station. So you might end up having access to a hose closer to the garden than you did in the past. Plus the outdoor sink hose reel has a water-powered engine inside which uses water power to automatically reel-in the hose!

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