I was one gardener that really disliked Oleanders. In Las Vegas I thought they looked awful, and they did. Then I went to Texas iver a year ago and as were driving through a neighborhood I asked my DH to pull over. I wanted to see what this beautiful Red flower was on this bush. When I got to the bush, I could not believe it was an oleander. The leaves were a dark green and the blooms were outrageous. I had some dwarf oleanders separating my neighbors and our driveway. They were the neighbors oleanders. They were ugly. I hated them and some nights I would contemplate their timely death, maybe a Las Vegas hit man!!!! Last spring they went to Europe for two weeks and asked would I watch their cat and keep an eye on their landscape. He does their landscape so no gardeners would be there to interfere with my plan. He has a drip system that is right at the base of each plant. We are good friends and he is 20 years younger and moved to Las Vegas from California 8 years ago. He is still trying to garden the California way but is learning the desert way. He asks every weekend how is the competition going and I say, YOU ARE LOSING, LOL......
I know, get with the story. Anyway, I got one of the old time small sprinklers that just put out a slow, low trickle of water. I deep watered each oleander for 24 hours. There are 5. Then I got into the inside of the plant, tore the hell out of my arms. I trimmed out all the dead wood, opened up the canopy so the breeze and air could flow through the bushes. There was more dead wood inside than alive. After the intense watering, I feed them and then deep watered again. The neighbors came back from Europe and noticed I had cleaned out some of the dead branches in the oleanders. I had worked on their landscaping before, so it was not a surprise. I did not mention the aggressive watering. I knew the root ball was so dried that the water was just running by to nowhere. Once the root ball got wet, it started absorbing all the nutrients I laid down, and probably some he had laid down earlier plus the moisture. They burst into new growth and bloom and have bloomed all summer. Since we are neighbors and I back wash our Koi pond during the summer once a week, I give these oleanders some of the fish emulsion water. He is at work during the day and his wife is at the "Club" so they did not know about the extra water. This water used to go down the sewer drain. That is a lot of water. I got smart a couple of years ago and that water
now goes back into the landscape. About a month ago he said over the oleanders, can you believe how wonderful these are doing this year. I said, "Isn't that amazing". I am on the Board for the HOA and in charge of landscape and liaison with the contracted landscapers. I told them about my experiment so we tried it on the border oleanders on the greenbelt. Again, all we had to do was get the root ball wet then the regular watering system took over from there. You must understand that from November 1 thru end of March, we can only water once a week. The landscapers and I have also now arrived at the same conclusion for the Roses in the greenbelt. We deep watered them and they thought they had been moved to Hawaii and started to grow. I had always done this at the beginning of spring but did not know no one else did so. LOL. Now they think I am a genius. No, just some one with a lot of common sense and I love to fix gardening problems. Where do I find all those wonderful oleanders in those wonderful colors?
