Texas Star Hib winter Question

I didnt get around to get them inside in time and the temps droped
down into the mid 30's at night. i got them inside before with got our
first frost though. All the leaves went throuh the fall color changes like a
maple tree.

Now that there inside and have lost all there leaves what i can do to get
them to kick back in ? i got a nice plant room so temps will be in the mid
70's or 80's if i close the door to room. and light are on timers. 400w HPS
and 5 4 foot shop lights.

They may not come back out but then again they might. Don't worry about them though as they will surely come back out in the spring.
I'm in Texas and mine are in the ground. Mine have already lost their leaves and look like sticks sticking up out there. But they come back out in the spring every year here. We have already had temps right at 32 deg. so I guess that's why mine have lost all their leaves.

Since yours are in a plant room with warm temps they may leaf back out but I wouldn't worry if they don't. I'm sure they are fine.
What color do you have? Mine are red but I would love to have some white to go with them.

Lin

i guess i'll be ok with them, just give them some time for the soil to warm up
and fool them thinking its spring/summer time. last winter i had strawberries
growing in the house , yummmmy .. got a few berries from them.

This is the end of first year for them, i got them off ebay (6 plants) there supposed to
be the red ones .. havent bloomed yet . there only like 2 foot tall now. (sticks LOL )

I leave mine outdoor's over winter too. They die back to almost nothing and I end up cutting them down flush to the ground. Texas Star is a hardy and should come back IMO. I have several other giant hardy hibiscus that have been in the ground for many years now. We have red(2-3 differing reds now), white, burgundy, pink, white w/ pink centers and that's just the hardies. We have probably a dozen different tropicals that must be brought indoors every winter. It's getting out of control IMO, way too many plants these days. I had a small plant room and we needed more space. So now we have a 1000 watt Metal halide growlamp set up in our bedroom! It's like having our own little sun indoors, the dogs even lay in the light as if it were sunlight! LOL It sure helps combat the winter blahs too plus it's always nice having blooming plants all winter long.
Do you guys have any seeds from your different hardy hibiscus? I'm always interested in trading for new colors or other cool plants. I need to go through all the seeds we have collected this year so I can get a trading list organized. Right now, it's just paper bags inside of bags inside of bags. It's out of control i tell ya;)
JD

Wow JD you are addicted to hibiscus! *bg* I bet they are just beautiful! Right now I only have three hibiscus plants plus my Tx. Star. I have two of the plants in pots and one in the ground. I have decided from now on to put my hibiscus plants in pots. I have had them in the ground in the past and it just takes way too long for them to come up and bloom. The growing season is almost over by the time they finally come up and bloom. The one I have in the ground will be potted up soon to overwinter.
JD don't feel bad I have seeds in envelopes tucked here and there. I also need to get them organized. Right now I don't have any hardy hibiscus seeds to trade.

Lin

Sparky- how neat to have strawberries in the winter!!!

We have not yet had our first 'real' frost but our temps have dropped to 34 deg. I picked two small red tomatoes yesterday from my plants. Pretty soon I will be picking off all the green ones and let them ripen inside. I really hate to see the end of tomato season! Love those things.


Lin

Sorry this was a double post missing the photo, don't know how this happen, I suppose it was just one of those senior moments.

This message was edited Nov 2, 2005 8:12 AM

I have 12 hardys in the ground. I have 2 trees and a bush and about 15 potted hibiscus in the greenhouse for the winter. Then I have a bird of paradise, a Variegated Macrorrhiza, Rice Paper Plant, some Mother of Thousands, Alocasia Plumbea and a Black Velvet and then a Illustris and also about 5 potted Brugs. I think that is the end of what I have in the GH. All my Hibiscus are still blooming like crazy, they really like it in there. They are also loosing a few leaves, but over all they are doing pretty good. I just hope everything goes will for the winter and I don't loose any. After the freeze we had, my yard really looks bare. So I go into the GH and drool over all the blooms.

Those are beautiful!!! Oh to have a greenhouse. sigh
I like whatever that is over to the right that is variagated. Pretty!

Lin

I just tossed a handful of pictures I could quickly access to show you what much of our collection looks like. All of the hardy hibiscus stay in the ground all year, we have to bring all the tropicals indoors. Here is a collage of the tropicals from this summer.

Here is a collage of some of the Hardy Hibiscus.
Our oldest Hibiscus have been in the ground for 8 years and grows 6-8 foot tall and every bit as wide. We build cages from 4 foot tall fence around the bigger ones about 2-3 foot in diameter. This helps them grow taller and keeps them off the ground. We've also learned to prune them back 2-3 times by early to mid June otherwise they will grow too lanky and stretchy. When I say prune, it's just wacking them way back. When they get 1 foot tall, my wife snaps every stem in half. We will repeat that process a minimum of twice to three times. The end result is usually atleast 25 individual stems growing from the ground and just multiply over and over all summer. These are all the giant varieties with flowers as big or bigger than dinner plates. They are amazing "bushes", the only problems I ever have is an annual white fly infestation come August. That is usually under control with 1 application of a systemic or Safer's insecticidal soap.
We make sure to cover them with grass clippings and leaves that I run through my leaf blower/vac/mulcher/pulverizer. It's a weed eater brand blower/vac that can turn 10 bags of whole leaves into a single bag of super fine mulch like stuff. We build a mound on top of most all of our perinnials with this stuff and this alone can make a full months difference in spring. The plants will grow out of these mounds atleast 1 month ahead of other plants with nothing on them.
Well that's enough babbling on, I better shut up as I've created yet another "marathon" post.
I'll take a little more time to find more pictures for a more complete collage of our collection, I know I left a hand full of them out.
Thanks, JD

Beautiful! Dotti

2pugdogs - How are you planning to heat your (beautiful) greenhouse ? It looks awesome... can you take a pic of the outside and post ......

JLD - great collection..... I have several hardies but was told they don't all come back true to seed which I've proven with some Kopper King seeds..... I never gotten a good answer on which ones come true to seed and which do not.....

vs71099
Your absolutely correct, those seeds are "Like a box of choolates...You never know what your gonna get". LOL Well that isn't exactly true. When I 1st started collecting seeds, I only had white, pink and maroon giant hardies. For some very odd reason, my 1st maroon/red would never produce seeds. The white 1 did and the results were either giant white, red/maroon or white with pink center. So the seeds were predictable to the extent of knowing you'd get those 3. The picture below are the 3 flowers I'm trying to describe.
Shortly after growing some from seed plus we bought another small red/maroon (which I'll call red from here on out), the new reds started producing seeds too. I have no explanation for why the 1st red never produced seeds, very odd IMO.
We haven't had time to grow out seeds collected from all the other colored hardies I posted in the collage above. I've gotten some new reds and pinks. Red Texas star, Disco belle red, a deep pink w/o a tag and a couple others in between. I wished I knew the propper names for them, I'll post them individually soon and find out what they are. I've collected so many new seeds from all these new colors and made sure I labled them correctly from where they were collected from. So this next spring we'll find out how much more variances I'll get from these as they're all naturally cross pollenated.
I would bet we could better predict the outcome of collected seeds if we grew them in a way that would make sure we knew where the pollen came from but that isn't an option.
So we end up with a bunch of hybrids which isn't such a bad thing as we also get whats called "Hybrid vigor". That's just a fancy name for explaning how the majority of the seedlings can turn out stronger plants as the better genes from the parents tend to be dominant if I understand correctly. I can't wait to see what these new seeds will do, hopefully they'll turn out nice. Time will tell.
I'll have a bunch of seeds to trade, I have little paper bags/plates laying all over the place! LOL I need to gather them all up to get organized ASAP.
Thanks, JD

Wow, JD, those pictures are great!!

My Texas Star survived last winter here in Delaware. I hope it comes back next year. I had some in containers that same winter and they all died.

Joseph

Joeseph
Containor plants always freeze so much harder here and rarely does a plant ever come back around here. I rely on heavy mulching with super finely mulched leaves and grass clippings. By building a miniu compost pile on plants, I can get some up as much as a full month sooner than ones left alone. Hopefully this winter will be kind aswell and allow my mulched plants to survive.
I hope for yours too;)
JD

Thanks, JD, I will plan to mulch around both my Hibiscus coccineus and H. laevis plants this fall.

Joseph