Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
cosquirrel

hibisticks

cosquirrel
18 years ago

Last year I started Disco Belle hibiscus from seed. They never really took off, but this year I have a single stick where each plant was set. It looks like the sticks are trying to bud. What should I do to get these to become flowering plants rather than sticks?

Comments (5)

  • bruggirl
    18 years ago

    They'll eventually bush out. You can pinch out the top to make them bush faster.

  • cosquirrel
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Thanks. I'll try to be patient. Also, we have fairly alkaline dry soil here. Would it work to mulch with pine needles?

  • jenny_in_se_pa
    18 years ago

    If you have any oak trees around, shredded oak leaves would provide a bit more acid to the soil as they break down.

  • HotPepperDad
    18 years ago

    This sounds familiar.
    Last year I grew some HH from seeds, but they seemed to "disappear", at least went unnoticed in the back of the bed.
    This spring I was cleaning out the bed and was pulling all these "twigs" at the back of the bed when I realized the placement of the twigs coincided with where I had planted the hibiscus.
    Stopped pulling, and now I have quite a number of new HH plants!
    Moral: be patient!

  • birdinthepalm
    18 years ago

    They do tend to look very dead come springtime, but they only die back to about ground level or sometimes a little deeper, and were you to dig around the old stems , as you got near the roots, you'd see some green still at the very bottom of the previous years growth, and thats where the new eyes form to grow into each new years growth. They for the most part never do become multibranched plants like some other perennials, but the clump will increase from year to year to give you lots of flowering stems, so you need not worry about how much each individual shoot branches to get lots of flowers. There's always one shoot the first year from seed, but the following year there are ususally more than one new shoot that come up from last years shoot. Sometimes not evidently from what you've said, but that should change next year. After a number of years there may be so many crowded shoots, that they struggle to compete for space and you may consider dividing them into smaller clumps in the early spring. It's a nice way to increase the numbers , without having to start them from seeds all the time.

0
Sponsored
Grow Landscapes
Average rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars8 Reviews
Planning Your Outdoor Space in Loundon County?