Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Snowbanks flush of flowers, 0 by GordonHawk

GordonHawk wrote:
Well ... it's such a lovely looking plant.. such bold markings... real easy to root from a cutting... too bad ya'll are haveing such trouble with it.. and so many have given up and tossed it .. perhaps given it away... sure wish I'd known I could have saved on buying mine... but for the success in light of such problems with it .. I'm happy to have done so..
there's a bunch of diffrent opinions to growing this.. mine follow..
The plant is grown in NYC.. it spent the fall as a cutting from the mother plant rooting on the window sill.. light from 7-12 am it developed nicely and was placed outside maybe the first of May.. it gets full NYC sun from 7 AM to 8PM.. it's lightly sheltered from wind by a fence some 20' away... The plant sits right on the black rubber roof membrane.. which heats up considerably on sunny days... one day at noon there was an air temperature of 80*F.. my french mercury cooking thermometer had the roof temperature ....as measured by laying the thermometer on the roof surface of 145*F... the root zone temps would be somewhat cooler.. butthe wind blowing across the roof onto the plant I'm sure was all of the 145*.. kind of like a convection oven enviornment.. not real hospitable one might think.. but these are a Central American plant.. but this is where I have available to grow them.. NYC is zone 7 they say.. my roof with it's exposure to winter winds unobstructed off the harbor I feel is zone 5 for me.. and the summer on the hot roof I consider about zone 14.. although I don't know wherre it's 145 * on a regular basis so there's nowhere for me to compare it to.... I feed regularly... a bloom booster. ferterlizer.. seaweed extract and spray-n-grow regularly.. as a foliar spray.. and try to water a few times a day.. when the drip irrigation is up and running ...it's watered four times a day for 10 minutes.. on a 2 GPH drip... I'm starting a messenger regimin today.. hopefully it will make it lees attractive to the cats and other insects.. the pests like my brugs best of all and this one particularly is their favorite.. so I can battle them here and not through out the garden...
KELL... yes it is tremendeously fragerant... perhaps the strongest of my dozen or so Brugs.. lovely and there is never too sweet for my taste.. hope this might be helpful and something to consider for other growers success...
This is another photo of Snowbank... do so love the lightest coloration of the pink Gordon