Garden Treasures

 

            Hi everybody and welcome! Having a very rare week end off, my wife and I decided to spend this past Saturday flower shopping. Since we are in the process of totally revamping our yard, finding flowers and ornaments that are different and exciting is a must. We are very fortunate to live in an area that has so many great local nurseries that boast a wealth of colorful treasures. I found one such treasure at Pinder’s Nursery on highway 714 in Stuart. When you first walk in, you are dazzled by an array of both common and exotic plant varieties that includes every color of the rainbow. One that particularly caught my eye was a plant called the pillar geranium. This particular variety is new to our area so I decided I would give it a try. The plant can grow up to 6 feet tall and will need a cage type structure around it for support. The plant comes in several dazzling colors. I am planting mine in the center of a large 8-foot windmill. The steel girders of the windmill will act as the support the plant will need to achieve its pillar shape. I am doing this as an experiment and I will let everyone know the progress as the plant matures. I am planting mine in a large pot in an area that gets some full sun in the morning and filtered sun in the afternoon. If all goes well, I should have the most colorful windmill on the block!

            Pillar geraniums are a very unique addition for the geranium world. The plant boasts its ability to be a vigorous grower with a branching out effect as it climbs to the sky. The plant is ideal for patios but can also be used at a central focal point in a garden. It does very well planted in a container 12 – 14 inches in diameter. As I mentioned earlier, you will need a structure such as a tomato cage or trellis type structure to contain the plant so you can create the column type appearance it is famous for. You can fertilize your plants with a good timed-release fertilizer such as Dynamite or Miracle Gro. Water about 4 times a week and be sure your pot has good drainage.

            Pillar geraniums are relatively disease and insect free so you should have minimal problems of this nature.

            I have a lot of people who come into K Mart and ask me about plants that require the least amount of care. Most of these are hard working people who just don’t have time to deal with plants that need day to day care, but they want to add sparkling color to their yards. One of the best plants I know of in this category is the bougainvillea. These plants, which are native to Brazil, have thin woody stems with dark green leaves and very sharp thorns. The brilliant color is actually produced by the colored bracts and not the flowers. The small white flowers are surrounded by the brilliant bracts and are almost unnoticeable.

            Bougainvillea can be planted either in containers or planted in the ground. I have tried them both ways with equal success. I always use a good quality soil such as Miracle Gro and place my plants in a very sunny area. They require very little care and in fact, if you try to take too care of them, they usually will not give you the color you want but rather will produce just green leaves. Generally, the growing season for these plants is during the summer rainy season and the winter dry season produces the most flowers.

            These plants are very versatile to the effect that they can be trained as a bush, grown into a hedge, put in hanging baskets or can even be trained to grow into a tree. You can even train them on a trellis to grow as tall as your house! Don’t you wish everything was this versatile?

            Fertilize your plants with a good quality slow release fertilizer such as Dynamite or Osmocote about every 4 months.

            That’s it for this week’s column and I hope you enjoyed it. Next week we will look at plants that attract butterflies. See you then.