just got a 4" pot of this this weekend at Annie's Annuals. I put it in a larger pot, but just wondered about growing conditions. I'm getting conflicting advice in my research. Right now I'm doing am sun, pm shade. Much appreciated !
*This is a pic from their website, mine is still small.
They can handle a range of sun--I've got one in full afternoon sun in my backyard and it's doing fine. At my old house I had it in morning sun/PM mostly shade and it did fine there too. Winters are a different story--mine died back quite a lot over the winter this year. It's coming back nicely, but unfortunately since it blooms in late winter/early spring I think any year it freezes back it probably won't bloom. So you might want to try and find a nice little microclimate for it where it won't freeze and die back. At my old house in Martinez (which was USDA zone 9b instead of 9a and Sunset zone 15 or 16 instead of 14) it never froze back and bloomed nicely so it should only need a degree or two warmer in winter to be fine.
Gee, mine blooms late spring and all summer into fall. I have mine in a pot and it is desperate to be potted up to a real big pot. It is about 5 feet tall. I repeatedly bring it to the brink of death then water it everyday for a few days and it bounces right back so it will take lots of abuse.
Mine is in full sun too.
Here is a mature one in the ground so you can get an idea of what it will look like.
I didn't have mine that long, the year I moved was the first year it bloomed but the bloom period definitely wasn't that long, a month or two at most. I don't know if it's the hotter weather or that it was still small. That gives me hope that maybe mine will still bloom for me this year--I was so bummed when it died back!
oh fantastic - thank you both. This year I'll keep it in the pot so I can move it around if need be. Nice to know it can be abused, I like that in a plant.
Wow, that's a new color! I had the red for a few years in a big pot, did great but I didn't have room for it anywhere in the ground which I really think would do it justice as Kell's picture shows so it got scraggly looking and I eventually tossed it. I was tempted to get the new yellow one, never saw this fun colored one.
I was so not looking for this when I was there ... but the color on the bloom was too tempting to pass up.
I'm trying to think of a spot where it could be backlit - now that I know full sun is ok, perhaps by my backdoor.
This is the first year I've seen Hot Pants at Annie's, in previous years she's just had the plain red and the yellow. (I have all of them of course!)
... it looks like a flower the hummingbirds would like, have you noticed any visiting yours?
I think I need one.
No...but mine only bloomed that one time and I didn't have as many hummingbirds visit me at that house as I do here. The color and tubular shape are good, but since the blooms hang down like that I'm not sure if they'd have as easy a time getting to them as they do with more upturned blooms, so it may not attract them. I grow Phygelius which does a similar thing with the blooms hanging down and I don't see them visiting those, but they love things like Agastache, Salvia, Grevillea where they can just fly up and stick their beak right in.
well I have plenty of those for the little hummers....
you know back in OR the Anna's hummingbirds loved my phygelius - I had two in pots on our patio they would hit every flower. In fact I gave them to my mom when we moved (she had seen them in action).... but they didn't visit the phygelius 'pink elf' that was in the ground nearly as much ??
Maybe the ones in pots were higher up off the ground and it was easier to get to them? All of mine are in the ground and I've never seen a hummingbird at them. Of course I've got tons of other stuff they like so maybe they just never felt it was worth the extra effort!
