Hi, my name is Byron Martin, here at
Logee’s Greenhouses, and today we’re going to be talking about the Desert Rose, and
how to grow them. The Desert Rose is an Adeniums, and the particular variety that
we grow is Obesum, and some of its hybrids. And they’re African natives to
the dry, hot regions of Africa. And, really that is the key in being successful in
their growth. So, one of the things that Adeniums do is,
they form what’s called a ‘caudex’ or this bulb at the base, and that actually
creates sort of the attractive part of the plant, as well as they have these
beautiful flowers. This would be what the species look
like; they’re single flowers. This is one with a pickety edge, but they’re often
pink, like this, and have a bit of a bright edge to them. And then we have this
one, here, which actually has some yellow in it, as the flower ages
multicolored flowers. Here’s another double with some frosted edges to them. So
there’s a tremendous amount of color forms in them, and they make great container
plants. In growing them, that’s the key. Heat and sun, and anything less than that, and the plant actually doesn’t do as well, and it can actually suffer. So,
with heat and sun, we also need to remember that they have a, somewhat of a
dormancy, in the winter time, here, in the northern temperate areas of our world.
And, so, we need to sort-of reduce water, and kind of conserve– they end up dropping leaves, they can actually, actually be deciduous under some stress. And then they come out in the spring time, and flush into growth and
flower during the summertime. So, in culture, that’s what we want: hot, hot, hot. In our Adenium house, we
bring it up over 100 many, many days. We like to see it over 100, and
they thrive at temperatures that are that hot. And we really don’t like to see them
go below 65, although they will take short dips below, we really want to keep them warm. One of the things that’s happened in
recent years with Adeniums, is they’ve created all these wonderful hybrids, and
then they graft them. So, cuttings don’t usually form a caudex, so if you want to
have this caudex form on them, they generally are either seedlings, which–
these are seedlings, right here, with the caudex forming– or you want to have a
grafted plant. And, you can see the graft is formed, right there. Remember, that in all grafted plants, if
sprouts form below that, you want to rub them off, so that you encourage the top
growth to be the dominant side to it. In growing them, summertime comes along; they
need more water. And that’s the time where they can be given fertilizer.
They’re not heavy feeders, but they certainly can have applications of a
balanced fertilizer, periodically through the summer– maybe every couple weeks or
once a month, give them some feed so that they have
something to go on. We do see insect problems with them on occasion. One of
them would be, spider mite can get on to the leaves, so you want to be cautious and
watch over that. It starts with a little pitting on the leaf, simply some ice-cold
water, taken over to the spritzer– spray them off, or neem oil can control that.
So, thank you for watching today. There’s a little bit of information on
how to grow the Desert Rose, or Adeniums. Quite easy to grow, if you have the right
conditions, and very rewarding plants, in terms of their flowers. If you would like more information on
our Adeniums, you can go to Logees.com

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