Month: April 2012

First of all a desert rose plant is NOT a rose bush. May times every year we get questions concerning rose bushes when people read desert roses. The “desert roses” is the common name for adeniums plants. Adeniums are semi-evergreen succulent’s plants with spectacular flowers.  Adeniums will drop leaves when they experience cold weather, when transplanted or when sunlight is greatly reduced.  It’s normal for desert roses to go dormant for several months during winter periods or periods of drought. Desert rose plants are easy to grow and maintain if planted properly.

They are fantastic container plans, however, they do require a good amount of sunlight to grow and flower. Over the past few years adenium plant flowers have be cultivated to produce flowers that rival “Rose Bush” flowers.

Adenium plant hybrids are cultivation with colors ranging form pure white, mauve, pink, bright red, yellows, purple, violet and some with almost black edge. Plus the adenium flower hybrids haev multiple layers of pedals with some that look just like rose bush flowers but not. They are highly prized by collectors throughout the world in all climates. One note of caution the sap from the adeniums are poisonous is quantity.  If you want to see samples of adenium desert rose plants flowers go to Epic Grower Company’s photo gallery. The photo gallery is continually updated with new hybrid adenium flower plants for review.

Desert rose plants, adeniums, species: Adenium swazicum, Adenium somalense, Adenium arabicum, Adenium boehmianum, Adenium multiflorum, Adenium crispum, Adenium obesum. The adenium, desert rose, plants are now available in many spectacular hybrids. The plants are very similar in care as orchid plants and other succulents. They like to be crowed in pots to develop large caudexes (exposed root systems).

The main secret that you show know when developing a bonsai look for you adenium plant is to raise the roots a bit every time you re-pot to expose a portion of the old root above the soil line. In our area, many times we need to re-pot or raise the roots once every six months. On adenium seedlings we re-pot the plat at 3, 6 and 9 months. Then the adenium plants are re-potted every 6 months depending upon the plant development. Usually by 9 months the caudex is 1.5 to 1.5 inches in size (the caudex width) on desert rose seedlings.

In addition you will need some fertilizer to increase the root/trunk size of the adenium plant. Before applying the fertilizer to your adenium plant, water the desert rose plant it slightly to avoid burning of the roots and leaves.Look for other articles on fertilizer and how often to fertilize desert rose plants.

This will be a short post on adenium plants, desert roses, growing tips concerning minerals and fertilizing the plants. There are many articles on how to fertilize your adenium plants and seedlings. Most articles say you do not need to fertilize much or if you do make sure the nitrogen level is very low.  What many of the adenium plant growing tips do not mention is the micro minerals you need to add to the soil if you are having problems blooming and if you have leaf discoloration. Not all cactus and succulent fertilizers are the same. Many do not include micro minerals all adeniums and other succulents need to produce flowers and green leaves.

Recently I have started to experiment with different fertilizers and micro-nutrients for my adenium plants – also know as desert roses. I started to added cold process seaweed extract and a root hormone to our regular fertilizer to see if the desert rose plant grows more flowers, produces richer green leaves and faster caudex growth. This is based on a recommendation from some Thailand growers.  This is a liquid not time release micro-nutrient supplement.  We will spray the base of approximately 50 adenium plants (control group) over the next four months (once every 3 weeks) to see if the adeniums grow faster or better than ones using our regular time released fertilizer. We will post updates to this experiment as the adenium plants growing progress.