Hibiscus Care - Your Online Source for Information on Hibiscus
Hibiscus care will depend on the weather in your location and how cold it gets in the winter. The hibiscus is a tropical plant and likes to grow where the climate is warm. It came from the Pacific Islands, India, Southeast Asia and China originally, and was transported to Europe in the early nineteenth century. Then the hibiscus expanded from one double red variety to hundreds of different types. Now you can get a hibiscus in red, white, yellow, orange, pink, violet, maroon, gray, brown and green and many other colors.
When you plant your hibiscus, you should be knowledgeable about hibiscus care. They like to have 4-6 hours of sunshine each day, but no more than that. The hibiscus plant loves to be fertilized and you can even buy a special hibiscus fertilizer at garden stores. If you choose to buy a more generic fertilizer, it is critical to hibiscus care that you check the content of certain minerals. It needs to have a low phosphate content and the potassium content needs to come from nitrate of potash, not the cheaper muriate of potash. It is important for hibiscus fertilizer to be free of chlorides.
Proper hibiscus care means watering thoroughly after fertilizing and also watering by hand should the weather start to get dry. Your hibiscus should be planted in a nicely drained bed. To start, you should use azalea potting mix at a ratio of fourteen bags for every hundred square feet of bed. Add the fertilizer and then mulch to keep in moisture and prevent weeds from growing. Hibiscus can also be planted in containers. If you live in a cold climate you might want to plant your hibiscus in containers and then you can bring them inside for the winter months. Each pot should be at least fourteen inches across and have holes in the bottom for adequate drainage.
If you have mild weather, hibiscus that were planted in the ground should be cut back to be four to six inches above the ground before the first frost and mulched with pine needles. Container plants should be pruned in January or February to have the best blossoms in the spring. Hibiscus are heavy flowerers and the blossoms only last for one day. That means you should get rid of the dead blossoms each day. Hibiscus care is also probably going to involve the use of insecticides as the plants seem to be easy targets for insects, such as the worms, cut worms, slugs, aphids, mealy bugs or white flies.
If you follow these standards for hibiscus care, your plants will thrive and you should experience bountiful blooms throughout the summer.