Viewing comments posted by dyzzypyxxy

I grew these from seed, and while they were beautiful plants that grew nicely to a height of about 16in. they lasted quite a short time in my Florida winter/spring garden. They were protected from the few cold nights we had and bloomed from February through about the end of April when they began to peter out, and completely disappeared by mid-May. I was also disappointed that they didn't seem to be attractive to hummingbirds or butterflies in my garden. Other Cuphea I've grown were great pollinator attractors.

This cultivar is highly resistant to daylily rust, and here in Florida that's a most important attribute. It has beautiful clean foliage, and puts up lots of gorgeous twisty flowers every year. I could only wish it was a re-bloomer. The show is too short for me.

Since I'm in Florida and rust resistance is of paramount importance here, this one is a star. Never shows a spot of rust at all. Blooms and repeats, gorgeous flowers. This is my absolute favorite daylily. I would have a lot more of them if I hadn't divided and shared so many with friends and family.

A lovely delicate ginger, with wonderful fragrance only at night. Stays relatively short, at 36in, max for me. Needs regular water and partial to full shade in Florida where I am. Any sun during the middle of the day burns the leaves. Blooms usually starting in September or October for me, so a nice treat for the fall garden. Very cold tender, so thick mulch in zone 9 for the winter months after the stems die back. I keep mine in large pots in my protected hoop house through the winter, always above 50deg. F.

These trees, often sold at the holidays are really not a good thing to plant out in your yard in Florida. They get much too big and can be a danger to a structure even a long way away. I posted the picture of my neighbor's tree being removed to illustrate this. The tree was leaning towards his house, and luckily when Hurricane Irma came by, the winds were blowing the other way so it didn't fall. It was well over 100ft. tall and would have destroyed the house. It came out of the storm leaning more than it had been before so he took out a bank loan to cover the cost of removing this huge tree.

If you bought one in a pot that actually had three trees in the pot, you can plant all three together, and they will stunt each other so they don't get quite so tall and ungainly.

This Tithonia gets huge in coastal Florida. If not knocked back by cold weather, plants can be over 15ft tall and wide. They are not woody shrubs, though. The stems are brittle and break easily in high winds. They grow easily from cuttings as well as seeding themselves. An excellent plant for a quick privacy screen, because it does grow fast. But don't plant it if you want something small and delicate. Mine bloom twice a year, in April and again in November. Plants stay a nicer shape if cut back after each bloom cycle.

This brug has lovely, very long, pendant blossoms with a wonderful fragrance that open pure white, then are suffused with a pale golden color as they mature. An unusual feature of the leaves is a velvety texture. I'm wondering whether that's what seems to make them a little less attractive to spider mites than other brugs.

This cultivar was described as "rose and cream" on the seed packet. I'm a little disappointed that the color looks very similar to all the other Gaillardias I've grown, only perhaps a little faded. The flowers are only just starting, so maybe as the plants mature, the color will become more pronounced.

Beautiful water garden plant with velvety non-wettable leaves. Water drops roll around on them like mercury, to the delight of kids. Tubers are extremely fragile and must be handled gently when planting or transplanting. Any injury to the tuber results in rotting and death of the plant. Heavy feeder once it starts up, and water must warm to above 70deg. to start growth. Take care to grow in at least 4 hours of full sun per day for blooming.

Many cultivars are too large for a small water garden, growing leaves 2ft. across and 5ft tall, but there are dwarf cultivars available that stay small enough for even a tub or half-barrel. Flowers are beautiful and fragrant, but rather fleeting, often lasting only 2 days in hot weather. The seed pods are interesting and decorative, but they should be removed if you want the plant to continue blooming.

A Class 1 Invasive pest plant in Florida, this floating aquatic plant is a weed worldwide in temperate climates and can completely choke lakes and waterways in favorable situations. It spreads by seeds, and also by the divisions sometimes caused by boats and other watercraft cutting the plants up. They can then float downstream and infest the waterway further.

It is not winter hardy, so it is not invasive farther north where temperatures in the water get cold enough to kill it off. People therefore unknowingly may transplant water lettuce to a new waterway or water garden when they move south. It is, unfortunately, a very attractive plant.

A Class 1 invasive pest in Florida and Hawaii, and prohibited from sale or distribution in Texas, this is also a banned tree in Australia and South Africa. It forms dense stands and out-competes native species.

If you are either pruning or removing Brazilian Pepper on your property, be cautious and wear protective clothing as the sap is a severe irritant to some people. Do not burn the wood or branches, as the smoke is also noxious.

The pretty clusters of Brazilian Pepper fruit are sometimes used on holiday wreaths and other decorations. If you find yourself in possession of such a thing, dispose of the pepper seeds in the trash, enclosed in a plastic bag, and do not burn or compost them. Do not leave the decoration outdoors where birds or wildlife could eat and disperse the seeds.

Class 1 Prohibited invasive species in Florida. Another import from Australia, it is spread widely by seeds devoured by hordes of birds in season. The (also non-native) European Starlings feed in huge flocks on stands of Australian pine. The dense root system and thick carpet of shed needles smother all other plants in its vicinity.

It is also a weak tree, because of its shallow root system. It is easily blown down in high winds, and roads are often blocked and power lines taken down by these huge trees after tropical storms. If you have any on your property, take them down, especially if they are within range of any buildings. They make excellent firewood.

Class 1 Prohibited invasive tree in Florida and listed federally as a "noxious weed." Do not plant this tree. Remove it if it is in your landscape. This is the tree the Army Corps imported from Australia and planted in the 1930's with the intent to "drain the Everglades." It is everywhere now, creating clouds of irritating pollen, sometimes 3 times per year. Birds distribute the seeds far and wide.

If you have this tree taken down, and your tree service chips the branches, ask to keep the chipped wood. It makes excellent mulch, having aromatic oils in the wood and bark that are shown to be somewhat insect repellent in recent studies at the University of Florida. It is closely related to the tree that is commercially grown in Australia for the production of Tea Tree Oil. There is at least one commercial operation in Florida producing exclusively Melaleuca mulch under the brand name "Florimulch." An excellent product recommended by County Extension as a win-win for the environment.

Do not plant. This is a Class 1 invasive tree in Florida, and possibly in other states. This is a very attractive tree with shiny dark-green leaves. The birds eat and distribute the seeds far and wide, and seedlings pop up readily in gardens and wild areas. If you have this tree on your property, you should remove it, and treat the stump with herbicide to prevent re-sprouting.

Great cultivar of the classic B. nodosa, it has the classic night fragrance of its parent, but larger flowers, and it is more vigorous, growing nearly twice as fast as my plant of B. nodosa. It does very well in a wood slat basket, with daily water, and weak fertilizer spray each week in winter and twice a week in summer. My orchids do grow outdoors year round, so they get quite cool in winter (with protection below 50 deg.) and up to 95 deg. in summer. This orchid loves some direct morning sun inside my screened pool enclosure even in summer.

A lovely plant for a shady border here. The flower buds do look like little musical notes, and the flowers are graceful and elegant when they open. I find that the flowers hardly last a day if the plant is in too much sun. Filtered shade under my oak trees seems to suit it wonderfully and the flowers last 3 or 4 days. I've also discovered that this plant is sensitive to my high pH well water. Some years I don't irrigate much, but this spring it had a month or so of nothing but well water, and it was really struggling, dropping leaves and looking yellow despite fertilizer and other remedies, until I turned off the sprinkler and began watering it by hand with rain water. This is not a large or robust Clerodendrum, but it is delicate and pretty and it would do nicely in a large container.

Strongly agree with the Caution! on planting this - it sure does send out those suckers a long way. Mine are planted within the root zone of my large Live Oak trees, so they have a much harder time spreading. In a less established landscape, or with less competition, the suckers could be a real menace.

It is truly a lovely shrub, both foliage and flowers are very attractivem but another reason to be cautious is that the bloom time here is mid-winter -- January, in fact. In the five years I have had mine, only two of those years were warm enough for the plant to bloom. So, I would say that unless you live in zone 10 or above, do not expect to see blooms regularly.

Mine also drop all their leaves if the weather stays cold - around 40 degrees or less - for more than a night or two. I had planted a row of them as a screen, so this ended badly for 3 years running. If they do drop their leaves, I then take the opportunity to prune them back drastically, so that they will go back to a more shrubby shape the next year. I think if they kept their leaves more than one winter, I would end up with a row of small trees (and many suckers) instead of large screening shrubs. I have now inter-planted them with variegated Ti, so at least there is something with leaves through the winter.

In my yard, this beautiful shrub blooms faithfully in shifting shade nearly year round. The red plumes appear on new growth each spring about May, a delicate pink at first, deepening to eye-catching crimson, and remain on the plant for a month or two after the flowers finish. The small tubular white blooms within the red calyxes appear for at least 2 months, while the plant puts on new growth in the fall. Come December, it begins a whole new round of bloom but progresses more slowly in winter. I'm going to need to prune it this fall, as it's taking over part of my potting bench now, but I'll prune selectively so as not to miss too much of the next round of bloom. I fertilize it lightly with a balanced timed-release formula in the late spring, and again at the end of September. I started this plant from a cutting 4 years ago, and it is a healthy 6ft. shrub now. It seems to be virtually pest and disease-free here.

A beautiful ginger that really does have pinstriped leaves. The stripes are narrow enough that the white areas do not burn in the sun, as some variegated gingers can. Mine bloom best with at least a couple of hours of sun. It is a good practice to cut off the whole stalk at ground level after blooms are done to encourage new stalks and the expansion of the whole clump. Fertilize generously and give a steady water supply as well. These are nice grown in a large pot, but this is also one of the few plants that compete well with all the tree roots in my garden, so I grow them in the ground. I do mulch them generously with oak leaves if temperatures are forecast to drop into the 30's in winter.

Phalaenopsis is the orchid you will most often see at big box stores, and in grocery stores. They are beautiful, and the flowers last a very long time - up to 3 months - if the plant survives. After the initial bloom finishes, do not cut off the bloom stem, sometimes it branches and puts on a second flush of bloom. They may grow and bloom in your home for years with a little care. Very sensitive to a change in environment, though, and often going from the store to your home is enough of a change to cause many buds to drop. If your plant was in bloom when it was bought, it may have been forced to bloom out of its regular season, springtime.

The mass-produced plants from the box and grocery stores are often potted in a wad of wet sphagnum moss and/or an unvented pot. The moss is good for transport of the plants from the grower to the store, but bad for long-term survival of the plant once you buy it, as it will tend to stay too wet and cause the plant's roots to rot. These (and most) orchids do need their roots to "breathe," and although they like their foliage to be misted daily, the roots must dry out between waterings. So if the plant begins to show wrinkled leaves, or if it drops its flowers, this may be the cause. Re-potting into a proper orchid medium -- a Phalaenopsis mix is best -- and a vented pot or basket is recommended after blooming is finished.

Many people simply throw out the plant once the flowers finish, or if the plant starts to show signs of stress. This is a waste when the plant has taken at least 2 years to reach blooming size. Also a shame because very often they will recover and become wonderful houseplants for years to come with a little care. If you don't have the patience to revive a stressed Phal, you can very likely find someone else who will give it a chance.