Here are my 2 mac and cheese plants and a tomato soup.
You can see the mac and cheese are pretty thick plants... strong stems and branching.. though they have less basal branching. Very large flowers for being a plug at the start of the year.
The tomato soup is thin stemmed but has a lot of branching at it's base. The flowers are much smaller then the macs. Nice color though!
tomato
mac n cheese- Comparison of an older flower to one that is just now opening. They seem to hold their color fairly well.
Mac and Cheese looks good. If they come through to next spring for you that's another one for the need to get list. Are they supposed to get really tall or stay on the short side? Thanks for your pics, it is very helpful to get comparisons of size of bloom and growing habits.
My Tomato Soup looks great and is full of blooms but the Mac n Cheese isn't growing much at all. They were both plugs planted at the same time. I guess I'll have to try the Tomato Soup without the Mac n Cheese on the side. LOL.
What size plants did you receive when you bought your plants? I had to order mine online and received tiny plants!
This message was edited Jul 17, 2009 1:24 PM
I got them early spring. They were in quart pots... but i could see the plug dirt form protruding from the surface. So i assume they got the plug in a potted them not to long prior.
My Mac N Cheese is doing so well that I picked up another 1 gallon today at the local garden center. They do not lose their color at all and are still blooming like crazy. Echmaniac, don't give up on Mac N Cheese! They may take a little longer to "blossom" from plugs or it may be like the Tikis, the bigger plants do better. They are one of my favs in the garden.
I'm not giving up yet. As long as this plant is growing and green, it's still alive. You can't find gallons of it around here. Yellow isn't my favorite color in Echies though so it's no biggie. Luckily, my Rudbeckias from seeds are blooming like crazy before this PLANT did! LOL.
Yep, I'm going to have to try Ruds next year. No point in getting them this late in the game, but next year definately!
Nice photos Nevermore. I get soooo jealous that you guys can go to a nursery and find these plants. Really jealous. Makes me want to get in the car and just drive 800 miles. LOL
Yes. Which garden center is this in North Carolina? I might have to go on vacay soon! LOL.
It's Homewood Nursery in Raleigh. Love, love that place. They even guarantee their plants there (what local nursery does that?) If your plant dies, they will do a one time replacement per plant. Very cool. I just hope they don't give up and not do echies next year b/c of the bad luck they had with tiki! I would so be crying in my shoes!
By the way, those huge ruds were between 7 and 12 bucks, I thought that was a good deal for such a large specimen.
What happened with Tiki?
They lost their whole crop except for one single plant (which is the one that I bought, found it by the edge of the bridge - their hiding place for stashing echs so that they can watch them bloom). She said that they were VERY hard to grow and keep healthy from plugs, even in a greenhouse! I sure am glad I found that big one b/c it is gorgeous and doing very well. It was funny b/c a few weeks after I bought it I was talking to her about what they were going to do with echs next year and she was telling me about their tiki woes. She said "We had one that survived and someone bought it, it was over beside the bridge away from the other echs." Of course, I fessed up and she laughed and said that only an ech nut like me would have even spotted it. I told her it was like a big blinking beacon to me, couldn't miss that bright orange bloom for anything, even if it was just one bloom, LOL!
I feel better about my two Coral Reef Echies now! Some of these are very difficult to grow.
