In this season of spring flowers and bright chartreuse leaves, one indoor plant of mine has been putting on an extraordinary show. My hibiscus tree has been blooming non stop since the beginning of April. Today, there were seven blossoms! If it weren’t covered in buds, I would have moved it outdoors already.
It’s time for all my plants to move outside. In a week or so, after the pollen settles, and the leaf canopy provides enough dappled shade to keep it from sunburn, I’ll put my tree on the deck and cut it back. I do this every year, not so much for shaping but to control its size. By fall, the tree will have filled in again but still fit in its winter home. It isn’t a small tree. It’s about 8 ft. tall and almost touching the ceiling.
Do you put your plants outdoors in the summer?
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4 responses to “Bloomin’”
I have very few houseplants so I don’t put any outside. I do plant a lot of containers for the summer season, though, and I enjoy the heck out of them.
My mom had a beautiful salmon colored hibiscus tree and I gave it to the neighbor who had high ceilings and the room for it. Wish now I had taken a cutting of it. The things you don’t think of when hurriedly emptying out a house to sell. Yours is a beauty!
I need you to come prune my hibiscuses – the two of them are out of control, despite hard pruning in years past. Plus, neither blooms enough – not enough fertilizer or not enough sun or they’re rootbound or all of the above. When I’ve put the standard hibiscus outside in years past, it gets white flies.
In other words, like all gardening, the plants never do what you want.
We just bought a small lemon tree (looks more like a bush now) and plan to keep it outside in summer and inside in winter. Fingers crossed we won’t kill it.