All Things Gardening
Plant some dramatic blooms that are easy to grow and return each year
(upbeat music) - It's time for All Things Gardening with Charlie Nardosy. Brought to you by Gardener Supply and for Montgomery Greenhouses. Hello, Charlie. - Hi, Mary. - Well, these tropical perennials grow super colorful high wattage blooms and the hardy varieties do really well here. I'm always envious of my neighbors that have this plant. But can you walk us through which hardy hibiscus grow well and how do we keep them looking amazing year after year? - Yeah, hardy hibiscus are a great, what I call shrub-like perennial, meaning they grow up and are big, like three to six feet tall sometimes, but then they die back in the winter just like a regular perennial. So they're great for having a big, stunning plant in the landscape, especially this time of year when you're looking for something big and bright. So there's lots of different varieties. If you want some dwarf variety, shorter ones, the Luna series is really nice. There's a white and a red one. They only grow two to three feet tall. If you want some with burgundy colored leaves, which are really nice, even when the plants not flowering, midnight marvel and evening rose can do that. And there's even one that has yellowish kind of flowers called French vanilla. So there's lots of different varieties, a lot of bicolored ones too that are out there. The key with hardy hibiscus is to find a well-drained site in full sun. That's really all it needs. Once it's established, it'll come back reliably year after year after year, even down into a zone four climate. And once the plant starts growing and grows up big, there's really not much to do. There's one pest you have to watch out for, and that's the hibiscus soft fly. And that's a small little caterpillar that'll be on the underside of the leaves, and it defoliates individual leaves. And you start seeing that damage, check on the undersides, and then just handpick those little caterpillars. If you have a lot of them, you can't spray an organic pesticides such as spinnasad. You just want to do it in the evening when the bees aren't active. Other than that, you just let them grow. They're big, gaudy eight-inch diameter flowers that'll bloom for weeks into the fall. In the fall, I just leave the plant there because a lot of beneficial insects might overwinter in the stems. They have a hollow stem. But in the spring, once the beneficials have moved on, you can cut all that back. And then the key is to be patient because they're very slow to emerge in spring. Everything else is up. Some things are even flowering, and your hardy hibiscus is still not growing yet. Be patient with it. It'll show up and once it shows up and gets some hot weather, damn, it's right back again, a full plant in your landscape. - Oh, I love those. Those are so beautiful. Question coming in from Brendan in Norwich. Brendan writes, "So far I've simply been squashing them by hand, but it's hard going with Colorado potato beetles. There've been many this year. Do you have any suggestions?" - Sure, Brendan. What you can do, first of all, is to look for the orange colored eggs on the bottom sides of the leaves. So this is, of course, it's pretty late to be doing that now. But in the spring or early summer when the plants first come up, start checking underneath there. If you see those orange colored eggs or very bright orange, just crush them with your hands. If you miss some of them, you're gonna have those red, slug-like Colorado potato beetle larvae. You can crush those with your hands too. Or you can crush everything. You can crush the adults as well. If it's really bad, you can spray an organic spray called Bexillus thuringiensis tenebrianis. That's a big name. Just look for the one, the BT that's for Colorado potato beetles. That will kill the larval stage, not the adult stage of the Colorado potato beetle. And in the future, if you wanna plant some companion plants like cilantro and dill, that will deter the Colorado potato beetle from coming into your potato patch. - Okay, this next question from Twinkie in Putney, my basil in containers on the porch is being attacked by Japanese beetles. Any tips on how to get that under control? - Well, Twinkie, because you have it in a container on a porch, I think the best thing to do is just handpick them every morning. So every morning, go out there with your cup of coffee or tea or whatever you're drinking and just handpick those very sluggish Japanese beetles and put them in a bowl of soapy water and that'll kill them. If that doesn't seem to be enough or you have to be away or whatever, you can't just cover the whole container with a mesh material. It's kind of like a window screening and that will not allow the Japanese beetles to get in there to attack your basil. It may not look so great, but you'll have really nice basil. - If you have questions for Charlie about your garden and lawns, then write to us gardening@vermapublic.org and listen back to this wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks, Charlie. - You're welcome, Mary. - And I'll be seeing you in the garden. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)