My senna alatas are blooming! Thanks to my Carolina Forum friend for the seeds!
Senna alata blooming
These are spectacularly beautiful!
Thanks, Entlie. They produce lots of seeds, but last year I didn't know I had to harvest them before a freeze. I enjoy this plant throughout it's growth.
They are beautiful and real show stoppers .. when I grew them a few years ago I had people knocking on my door wondering what they were. They are suppose to be hardy in zone 8 but they never came back for me .. I like the fact they bloom from seed the first year .. if anyone wants seeds, I have elebendygazillion of them - they are hard coat seeds and stay viable for years.
Thank you for the seeds, MmeX! The blooms are beautiful harbingers of autumnal weather.
You're welcome! Never though of them that way, as harbingers of cooler weather but you are most correct! Lol .. the harbingers of cooler weather for me are having to set my automatic timers for my lamps inside the house back every few weeks.
Have a feeling our GH's are going to be crammed with tropical 'stuff' this winter. If there's any winter precip, I'm hoping it's a brief snowfall instead of a crippling ice storm. I'm thinking about getting a kerosene heater for my GH just in case of a power failure.
Other indicators of summer waning are out of control morning glories, pampas grass plumes, and spider webs everywhere that I usually wind up wearing during my morning walkabouts.-)
I don't think a kerosene heater would be a good choice for the greenhouse unless it's a really big one .. they put out tons of very dry heat .. I use one in my living room/computer room to save on electric (though the cost per gallon of kerosene keeps creeping up - almost 4 dollars a gallon now) and it can get my living room and computer room about 35' x 15', over 90 degrees in about an hour. They don't come with thermostats either.
This message was edited Sep 1, 2012 8:52 AM
Okay, scratch the kerosene heater. must check out generators as a back up. Thanks!
I just did some checking and there are small kerosene heaters available but I can't find any with thermostats and you might even consider propane as well - they might have thermostats. I don't know.
I've found that passive solar heating helps a bit .. merely take some 2 ltr soda bottles, paint them matte black, fill with water and lay on side .. collects heat in the daytime and releases it at night. I put all my extra tropical hibiscus on top of the bottles .. I've found that pretty much all plants will tolerate temps in the upper 30's with no lasting damage.
I'm definitely going to use the passive solar method you explained. There was a terrible ice storm here in 2005, almost a year before our move. My father and everyone else around here were w/o electricity for almost 2 weeks! Must check out the small kerosene heaters - seems like I've read that plants like the carbon dioxide(?) they produce. Must make certain that my GH has proper ventilation. Thanks!
Hi I am newbee to Dave's Garden and I love beautiful plants outside as well as indoors. I live in Asheville NC and I thought if you have any extra seeds I would love to try this beautiful plant here. I am more than willing to pay you for any and all seeds that you might have to spare. Thank you, Kitteney
I wish I had room for one of these!
Barb
Okay, this is embarrassing, kitteney, but I lost all my seeds to a light freeze last fall - for the 2nd year in a row the seeds in the pods were mush by the time I got around to collecting them. 2 weeks ago I dug up a few, and put them in on my backporch, but they're not looking happy. In fact, they're looking dead. Still, hope springs eternal, and I've moved them to a sunnier spot and have high hopes for a recovery. There are some very generous folks on this forum and others who would share seeds for postage.
Know what you mean, Barb, these plants really do take up a lot of real estate. But you get to breathe the fresh salt air and not worry about killing temps below 20f.-)
I cut off some seeds before we had that cold weather early on. Big mistake, they were not quite ripe and they quickly rotted!
As long as you left some on the bush, you still have a chance at viable ones.
I'm having the same situation with my Pride of Barbados. Seed pods on the plant that aren't quite ripe yet.
Barb
Your Senna are outstanding, mine just got started this year, one of the very few plants that gives you great winter color,my pride of barbados didnot bloom this year so no seeds for next year,still have summer plants in bloom,mexican heather,gerba daises,and soft caress mahonia as well as rose verbena,and others guess its been a mild winter here on the island
Hoiter are you saying we can grow this plant in the winter here?
I Don't think I have ever seen it before.
Kinda looks like my old candle stick plants that died last year.
Lavina
It is the candlestick plant and it would be an annual in cold winters but last year was so mild mine lived through easily. Who knows what this year will still bring.
Its an evergreen tropical shrub,cold hardy to 30 20 ,as i said this is my first year hope it will look like donascreation,since ive got different micro climates on my five acres on the island,different plants make it,many of my new plants such as senna I plant in large containers to see how they thrive.also because one third of my gardens are subject to huricane flooding,and the seem to servive better.Will know better next year after I transplant this in an area where it can spread as I understand it reseeds itself.LOL Walt
They are suppose to be hardy to zone 8 but I've never had one come back for me .. I'm thinking it's probably a zone 9 or higher.
They rarely come back here either. X, the ones you sent me 2 summers ago did come back because last winter was so warm and we never had a freeze but that was not the norm. Most consider them annuals around here (zone 9) and start seeds each year.
It may be that they do better on the west coast where the zones are the same but the growing conditions are so very different.
Last Winter was awesome .. because it was so warm we had more flying insect pollinators than usual and plants that had never set seed, like my Mandevilla's did! I was thrilled.
This is one of the poor S. alatas and we have not even had a frost yet. I am not going to cut it back and maybe it will sprout from the roots this coming spring.
I am growing this from seed again this season. I saw above someone looking for seed - if you still need some send me dmail please. :)