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| Hello, all! I'm posting because I was just outside smiling at my torenia and realized I'd never searched for it on this forum - when I did, I found a few old threads but instead of bumping them up, I figured I'd just start a new one.
This way I can share some of my favorite flowers and say "Hello!" to you all. I'm in North Florida, along I-10 between Tallahassee & Lake City. I've recently found GardenWeb forums and have been spending way, way, way to much time researching and reading. (or should I say 'rediscovered the forums' because I registered for some reason back in 2010) In 2003 or 2004, I bought four little 3" pots of Torenia at a local hardware store because they looked happy. Four different colors. The next 2-3 years, my pots and surrounding ground overflowed with volunteers from those plants. I moved in April of 2006, and took my empty pots of "Torenia dirt" with me. In 2007 I had made a narrow, long bed along one side of my house, planted a few various annuals and set the pots.
At that point, I still really didn't even know what they were because I'd either forgotten or they didn't have ID tags on them when I bought them. All I knew was that I loved them. I'm not sure when this picture was taken, but it was several years ago.
Last year I mulched and enhanced several of my beds so I don't have many volunteers growing in-ground right now (though there are some!) - but I have pots FULL of them. Some of these are the original pots, and I'm sure the soil is very poor now but I can't dump the dirt because I might lose some seeds, lol. They are super easy to transplant, so often I'll take babies out of one pot, or out of the ground and stick them somewhere else - like into a pot with new soil. I move the pots around to areas where I would like a no maintenance, pretty plant to grow. I had a pepper plant that my husband promised to an aunt and I went out after he'd plucked the baby torenias out of the pot and thrown them on the ground. I rescued them all, stuck them in a pot that was empty and they all popped right back up and are growing happily. Yesterday, I dumped a pot of torenia (carefully) so that I could rescue the pansy that was being overtaken - I potted up the pansy** and stuck all the torenias into two different pots. Today they look like they've been growing in the pot forever. Those original four plants were a pretty good investment! They are also very likely the reason I still garden, other plants I'd tried before, and that first year with these, never did well and would likely have destroyed my confidence. --I do tell people that if they don't love them, they could easily be considered a weed. I haven't, though, had any problems with them appearing in any places where I have not set pots out so I guess the seeds are pretty heavy and drop instead of flying around the yard. Some of this year's flowers:
Some volunteers in an area that was a favorite digging & laying spot for my dogs, so it's pretty ugly. I'd set a bunch of pots there to enhance it a bit, so hopefully these will grow, prosper and multiply!
Volunteers in a pot around my calla:
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Follow-Up Postings:
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| How cool! I love Torenias! We called them Monkey flowers up north. I used to have one, but it died. |
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- Posted by aroidgardener 9b/central FL (My Page) on Sun, Jul 8, 12 at 16:37
| I just discovered them. I put some of the trailing kind in the garden and kept some in a hanging basket. I like plants that volunteer. So, that's good news to me. |
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