White Plumeria, Frangipani. These little trees have the most awesome fragrant flowers. In Hawaii, they just grow and grow. You poke a branch into the ground and before you know it, you have flowers. In San Diego, you have to find a warm, sunny spot but they will grow outdoors here. I've had a lot of trouble getting the white ones to bloom; at least, until I chatted with a co-customer at a local nursery. Actually, I was talking to his wife in line at the checkout and lamented that my plumeria just wouldn't bloom. "Well," she said, "you must talk to my husband!" To make a long story short, he said the secret was to put lots of bloom fertilizer on them. I went back in and bought a jug of slow release bloom fertilizer and, well, you can see the results. So, it pays to be nice to strangers (at least strangers in garden shops!).
2 comments:
My desktop is currently a gorgeous shot of plumeria from the yard of this guy.
Oddest thing but when I lived in Hawaii, we never needed bloom fertilizer to get plumeria to bloom (lucky for Jeep Guy, not so lucky for me). I don't know if it is a weather issue, a soil issue or both. I suspect that Southern CA is not ideal for Plumeria and that the bloom fertilizer is just forcing the balance into blooming where we are otherwise not hitting their ideal bloom triggering conditions.
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