Author: epic_admin

Q:  Pruning and cropping is the same thing right? When you have a adenium plant that’s a little leggy and the graft lines are high, how do you prune them to let the trunk catch up.  Thank you for your help

Answer: Pruning or cropping adenium plant branches is need to grow fatter plants. Adenium plant leaf and branch growth mostly occurs are the end of the branches. Sometimes you may get a stray branch that pops out on an older branch below the current leaves but not often.  More branches/leaves means faster growth. Faster adenium plant growth requires more roots to grow which results in a larger caudex on the desert rose plant.

Here are the general rules we use to force the desert rose plant caudex to grow wider and to grow more branches:

1. Use a bonsai pot so the roots do not grow deep but wide
2. After each growing season repot the plant (use same post if wide enough) but expose a bit more of the roots/caudex.  Do the repotting when you still have at least 30 days of your growing season let and after you see new branches below the cropping on your desert rose plant.
3. Do not crop until the plant is in a new growing season and once you see new growth. Many types of plants you can crop while they are dormant, however, cropping an adenium plant produces the best results (not rot, no branch die back) during the spring  after you already notices some growth.
4. Crop above the graft about 2″ to 3″.
5. Once your crop / prune the adenium plant you must let it heal over for 5 to 10 days depending upon your growing environment.

There are several other articles on this blog about cropping your adenium plant.  make sure you are using the correct soil, proving enough sunlight and use a root growth hormone such as Dyna-gro K-L-N each time you re-pot the plant.  These are the procedures Epic Grower LLC uses on the plants at their nursery.

Adenium bonsai starter plant project

Several clients requested a sequence of steps in creating a bonsai adenium plant from a standard size 4.5” pot size desert rose plant. The first step is to following the instruction received with the adenium plants and soak them in a rooting hormone like the one we use Dyna-Grow K-L-N. After soaking the desert rose plant for 30 minutes do not water it for 2 days. Now to creating a bonsai starter plant.

The adenium plants from the AdeniumRose nursery can all be made into classic bonsai plants. First you need to select a bonsai pot based on the plants style. In our example, I’m using a standard 4” x 6” x 2” bonsai starter pot with plenty of drainage. You can select a round one, an square, oval or other type of bonsai pot – just make sure the pot is less than 3” deep and gives you around 1.5” all around the root system for 1 year of growth. Do not select an oversize pot which will actually slow the growth of the root system.

The soil we use is “soil-less” which basically means it contains no dirt which is offered on our website designed for cactus, succulents and other water thrifty plants. It’s a fast draining non-binding (does not form a top crust or clumps). The bottom holes of the bonsai pot are covered with screen material to prevent the loss of soil during watering.

Adenium Bonsai Orientation

Now I orient the adenium bonsai starter plant in the pot to see how I want it to be placed in the pot. Since the branches of the plant has a natural up curve I will use that as the focus of the design. The last 6 months I placed the plant on an un-leveled surface to force the branches to grow at an angle towards the sun to give it a curve. This is a common way to change the growth direction of branches when they are too young to wire.

Now put ½ your soil into the pot and then the plant. If the adenium bonsai plant does not stand properly on its own get something to support the plant as we are doing here with a wedged shaped rock.

Bonsai Adenium materials

All the rocks we use are non-porous so fungus will not grow on it. Now put in the remaining soil around the desert rose plant leaving some room for decoration rock on top.

The decorative rock on top is not just for looks. The rocks hold down the soil so the perlite does not float to the top. The perlite in the soil gives room for air flow in the soil. Air flow is important to prevent rot root with succulent plants.

This adenium plant will grow in this port for approximately 1 year. I may wire the branches when they get thick. The plant used is a variegated sapphire adenium plant.  The main appeal to this desert rose plant is it unusual leaf type.  As this desert rose plant grows we will start to wire the branches them towards the left to give the appearance of wind blowing.

Adenium Plants growing questions

We received a couple questions about growing adenium plants just received or recently received. The adenium plants from Epic grower LLC are growing in southeast Florida which is a tropical environment unlike any other areas of the USA.  It’s hot, extremely humid (90 to 100% everyday), very long hours of sunlight (10+)  plus we get many inches of rain every week during the summer. All of our plants are grown in the open in plastic nursery pots – no cover, no screen, nothing. The soil never dies up during the summer months.  The soil is critical here to prevent root rot and we have to fertilize every week since the nutrients in the adenium plants soil is leached out due to the rain. Yes, we do lose a percentage of plants to due root rot (about 2%) or other issues. We would lose many more if our soil was not correct.

Question from a client:

Just a quick question. I bought 4 jumbos last July and up to now they have no leaves but there are couple flower buds on two of them. I only water them little ( just enough to wet the caudex)  once every two days since I planted them in a pot. the weather in San Diego has been 75F during the day and around 60F at night. Most of my adenium has very little leaves. Is it because I gave them not enough water? I’m so afraid of root rot.

Answer:

If you are using the right soil you should not get root rot – use plenty of perlite (75% of mixture). Perlite gives the soil space to allow air flow which is critical to prevent rot root. The roots need water and nutrients. Water transport the nutrients to the roots so if you do not have enough nutrients or water the plant will grow slower. Use coir instead of dirt soil. Do not use moss in the mixture. In this blog there are many articles on soil. Use the search feature (top of blog) and put in the word “soil”.

Question from another client:

I received my order few weeks back. I checked my order and one plant that is 3 in 1 has all of its leaves are dry up. I was thinking when I plant it down new leaves will come out. Typically the leaves turned yellow and new ones come out. This plant came with leaves wilted. I planted in a pot with new soil for about 2 weeks now. As of today, no new leave comes out or any new development.

Answer:

Adeniums are desert plants. The majority of the time we cut off all leaves prior to shipping because the plants go into water conservation mode (leaves dry up and drop along with any buds). If you planted it per the instruction in the packing slip (right soil, root hormone, etc) the plant will recover faster. New leaf growth depends upon nutrients in the soil, amount of sun and hours of sunlight.  When we receive plants from Thailand (no leaves) it takes 4..6 weeks for the plants to recover (start to grow leaves). We are located in Southeast Florida so the plants get 9..10 hours of 100% unfiltered sun with temps at night between 78-83 degrees and day 88-95 degrees everyday during the summer (which here is late April through October). This is optimal for succulent type plants. If you lived in our area you know summer does not start on June 1st.

It is normal for the adenium plants to produce flowers first and then leaves.  Several of the just released jumbo size (releases this week) and standard size adenium plants bloom before we saw any new leaves. They were received in June and we started to see buds late in July (6 weeks later) and then leaves.

It’s mid summer and there is still another 2 months of good growing season left in most parts of the USA.  Now is the time to give the plants a boost of nutrients including some time released fertilizer.  The summer rains and numerous watering of your adenium, plumeria and hoya plants have depleted the nutrients in the soil which needs to be replaced.  This is especially important to the adenium desert rose plants, plumeria plants and other non-house indoor plants.

It’s easy to overlook the micro-nutrients during the growing season because the adenium plants and plumerias look so green.  However,  the current condition of the plant is due to the previous 30-60 of nutrients in the soil.  The desert rose plants and plumerias have been sucking up the water and grabbing what they need to grow from the soil so now the soil has less nutrients.  In order to prevent the desert rose plants and plumeria plants from dropping leaves early you need to give them a boost. If you have not fertilized on a regular basis then start slowly at 1/2 strength for the first 3 weeks.  Also, make sure you include silica in the micro-nutrients (Pro Tekt) otherwise the plant will lose its ability to obtain the nutritionist you are supplying.

If you have hoya plants then it’s time to add some general liquid fertilizer such as Dyna-Gro grow to you weekly watering. Hoyas, use more water so the mineral are depleted faster.  Yes, you can use a time released fertilizer but most lack many of the micro-nutrients hoyas need to bloom.  Many of our publicalyx varieties of the hoya plants are blooming now at our nursery including red button and splash.

The publicalyx hoya plants are great fast growing and produces tons of flowers.  Hoyas are great indoor plants to grow in 60-70 percent light.   The carnivorous plants (pitcher plants, Venus fly traps, etc.) are great companion plants to the hoyas since they like similar environments.