Before we start, I always start with the word “Organic Gardening” which uses natural and organic sources of fertilizers and pesticides. Please avoid the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to protect our mother earth from the hazards of chemicals. Now, Let’s list out the 10 organic secrets and tips to boost flowering in Hibiscus bush.
10. REPOTTING: Most of us think repotting is the first and foremost task as soon as you bring your plant home from a nursery or a garden store. No! This is not true. Do not repot immediately. Allow your plant to settle down for at least one week to its new place and then consider repotting. During repotting, you need to mix some important ingredients into the potting mix like for a 12-inch pot, roughly about 1 tablespoon of steamed bone meal powder which is a great source of phosphorous. Phosphorous strengthens the root system and a strong root system is indispensable for flowering and plant growth. The vegan alternative to bone meal is Organic rock phosphate. Optionally you can also mix the Mycorrhizae fungi – the beneficial fungi or even pseudomonas and Trichoderma powder. You can check my detailed posts on these topics from HERE.
9. CONTAINER SIZE: A simple concept to remember while choosing your pot size is: if you choose a deeper container, the plant will start focussing more on root development due to increased soil space and less on flower production. Though this may be useful in the long run. But to get faster results and boost flowering, the best one is a container that is wider than the usual nursery pot, but still not too deep. Like for instance, if your plant came in a 6-inch container, go for a 8 inch container. If you choose this method, you might need to repot it every year in a graded manner like increasing 2 inches every time you repot.
8. LOCATION: Keep your plants away from the traffic and pollution. Dust accumulating on the leaves can impair photosynthesis – that’s plant food production, which in turn reduces plant growth and flowering. It can also reduce the flower size. So, you might want to remember this tip to get big sized flowers. The solution to this problem if you have no option to shift the plant to a better location is – misting the plant with water and cleaning the leaves with a soft cloth. Or if you have lots of plants, then using your watering hose in shower mode and gently pressure wash your plants while watering.
7. SUNLIGHT: Place your plant in a location where you get adequate direct sunlight. Hibisucs needs at least 6 hours to 8 hours DIRECT SUNLIGHT for proper flowering. Without direct sun, you cannot expect hibiscus to flower. If it’s too hot like in summer season or to protect it from noon sunlight which can sometimes cause leaf burning and drying, you can install a 50% green shade net in summer season.
6. WATERING: If you are growing in containers, daily watering is must specially in summer season. Here you don’t need to check using moisture meter or finger dip method. Just daily watering and deep watering. If it’s winter season, it may need less frequent watering depending on the zone you live in. One most important thing to check is the drainage hole of your container. Check for its patency. Make sure water flows out of it after you thoroughly water your plant. Water stagnation can result in root rot and death of your plant. Do not worry about over watering if you have a patent drainage hole and also if you are using a well-draining soil mix. We will discuss about the potting mix shortly.
5. PEST CONTROL: Controlling pests is very important step to keep the plant healthy and blooming. Examine the plant closely for pests and insects including underside of the leaves. Common pests like whiteflies, aphids, mealybugs can be easily eliminated using organic neem oil + liquid soap spray weekly once. Depending on the ppm concentration of your neem oil brand, you add 5 to 10 ml of neem oil per litre of water and few drops of liquid soap. Shake well and spray this once every week to treat pests and once every 15 days as a preventive measure.
4. RAKING OR TILLING THE SOIL: This is just loosening your top soil using a raking or tilling tool. This is an important step everyone must follow before applying any fertilizer or manure to your plant. Raking or tilling the soil is recommended once every 15 days, which improves soil aeration and has many benefits. Make it a habit to rake the soil and then apply your fertilizer every 15 days.
3. POTTING SOIL: Here you should remember few important factors like:
a) Soil PH b) Thing to mix in Potting soil to get more flowers c) Keeping the soil well-draining. The First factor is PH. Hibiscus prefers a slightly acidic soil like around 6.0 +/-0.5. If you have a PH testing meter, you can alter the soil ph to acidic by using Alum powder hack. Even if you do not have this meter and your plant is not performing well, you can roughly add about 5 gms of alum powder in one litre of water once every 15 days to maintain this acidic level, which is very important for absorption of nutrients in the soil. The other alternative to Alum is to use 1 – 2 teaspoon of white vinegar per litre of water weekly once to make your soil acidic.
Now the potting mix recipe. To get adequate flowering, you can follow a simple formula: 30% Garden Soil, 30% Compost like cow dung or vermicompost and 30% Cocopeat or Peat moss. 10 percent additional stuff like bone meal powder, neem cake powder, mycorrhizae, Trichoderma, etc as discussed earlier.
2. FERTILIZER: In this video, I will be talking only about organic fertilizers and not chemicals like NPK or DAP.
You add a handful of decomposed cowdung or horsedung or even goat dung or vermicompost on the top layer of the soil once every 15 days after nicely raking or tilling the top soil. This should be the minimum fertilizer use and frequency to get big sized flowers as well as increase flowering. If you want to get still better results, You can also use compost tea sprays or even mustard cake tea sprays or watering and other foliar feeds once in a while like once in month. You can also prepare a Cocktail Fertilizer Powder containing most of the useful organic fertilizers available. You can check a detailed post on how to prepare this mixed fertilizer powder.
1. PRUNING: Yes this is another important step which many of us neglect. Some newbie gardeners actually hesitate to trim the plants. But this should not be the case. Pruning or trimming the plant branches encourages the formation of more branches and hence more flowering. You can soft prune or trim the plant all round the year. And you can do hard pruning once in a year. You can check detailed post Pruning Tutorial – on when to prune and how to prune and what pruning tools you need. You also need to perform deadheading of the flowers from time to time. Dead heading means removing the dead and dried flower along with its twig or branch and this is another important step for maintaining blooms as this will divert the energy to plant growth and more flowering rather than seed formation.
Hibiscus plant needs no introduction. It is one of the most
common flowering plants grown at home gardens. Generally all hibiscus plants
are very much durable plants and perform well if proper care tips are followed.
However if you wish to achieve maximum flowering and get big sized flowers, you
need to apply some extra hacks and tricks.
Let’s discuss all these points one by one:
8. SUNLIGHT: Hibiscus needs 6 to 8 hours DIRECT SUNLIGHT not only for its growth but also to produce flowers. Here, One very important tip on sunlight: If your plant is newly bought from a nursery or if it’s recently repotted, then you have to protect it from scorching noon sunlight like from 12 to 2 pm. Too hot sun, specially in summer at this time of the day can cause stress on the plant. Using a Green shade net is a good idea, especially in summer.
7. WATERING: Simple rule for watering hibiscus in summer is – Daily Watering. In other seasons, specially winter, its always better to use finger dip method to check the soil for moisture before watering, because over watering can kill any plant. Make sure to check drainage holes of the container. The Water should freely flow out of the container while watering.
6. CHOOSING THE CONTAINER: Hibiscus actually performs well when its slightly root bound. So when you see this root bound plant, do not jump into repotting it in a very large container. Prefer to choose only a slightly the next size of the container.
5. POTTING SOIL: This is very important.
a) The PH of soil should be slightly acidic like 5.5 to 6.5 is the ideal PH for hibiscus. A simple PH testing tool like this can be very handy. If PH is on higher side, you can alter it by adding some 10 gms of Alum per litre of water and add this to your container. You can also use white distilled vinegar about 1 to 2 teaspoon per liter of water once in a month.
b) The potting soil should well draining. So add stuff like coco peat or peat moss, perlite and compost in proper proportions to your garden soil. One such potting mix recipe is discussed in one of my articles.
4. FERTILIZERS TO INDUCE FLOWERING
AND INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE FLOWERS: You can add 1 table spoon bone meal per
container while making your potting mix or if its already potted, add this
little deeper into the container after removing the top soil, once every 3 to 6
months. This is very important if you want your plant loaded with flowers.
Then, you can add compost like Decomposed Cow dung or vermicompost into the
container once every 15 days or atleast once a month after tilling or raking
the top soil.
3. PEST CONTROL: Controlling pests is very important step to keep the plant healthy and blooming. Examine the plant closely for pests and insects including underside of the leaves. Common pests like whiteflies, aphids, mealybugs can be easily eliminated using neem oil 10 ml + few drops liquid soap in 1 litre of water. Or adding oils like Clove Oil or eucalyptus oil increases the efficacy specially if its heavily infested. You can use neem oil spraying once 15 days or monthly once for maintenance even if there are no pests and weekly twice for few weeks if its loaded with pests.
2. FOLIAR SPRAY WITH EPSOM SALT: Once in a month foliar spray of 1 teaspoon Epsom salt per liter of water provides magnesium needed of chlorophyll and makes your plant lush green and improves photosynthesis and overall growth and flowering.
1. PRUNING or trimming your plant: Yes this is another important step which many of us neglect. This promotes more branching and makes it more bushy and hence more flowers. The best time to hard prune hibiscus is at the end of winter or just the beginning of spring. Also deadheading of the flowers from time to time is the most important step for maintaining blooms. Dead heading means removing dead and dried flowers form the plant and this diverts the plant energy from seed formation to plant growth and more flowering.
Well, Lets list out the 10 tips on increasing blooms and know what to do in brief. Always Remember one principle for blooms – the plant performs better when its free from stress.
- REPOTTING: This is generally your first task as soon as you bring your plant home from a nursery. Do not repot immediately, Allow your plant to settle for atleast one week to its new environment. During repotting, you need to mix some important ingredients into the potting mix like for a 12 inch pot, roughly about 1 tablespoon of steamed bone meal powder. Optionally you can also mix the mycorrhizae fungi – the beneficial fungi or even pseudomonas and Trichoderma powder. You can check my detailed video on Mycorrhizae and other important videos related to this topic from links in description of this video.
- CONTAINER SIZE: The concept here is: if you choose a deeper container, it will focus more on root development and less on flower production. The best one is a container that is wider than the usual nursery pot, but still not too deep. This way you will make your plant strong and make it produce more flowers.
- LOCATION: Keep your plants away from the traffic and pollution. Also in a location that’s not disturbed by frequent movements from people or animals and even your pets.
- SUNLIGHT: Place your plant in a location where you get adequate sunlight. Atleast 6 hours to 8 hours DIRECT SUNLIGHT is compulsory for flowering plants. If its too hot like in summer, protect them from noon sunlight using a green shade net.
- WATERING: If you are growing in containers, daily watering is must specially in summer season. Do not worry about over watering if are using a well draining soil.
- PEST CONTROL: Controlling pests is very important step to keep the plant healthy and blooming. Examine the plant closely for pests and insects including underside of the leaves. Common pests like whiteflies, aphids, mealybugs can be easily eliminated using neem oil + liquid soap in water. Or adding oils like Clove Oil or eucalyptus oil increases the efficacy. I have one very important video on pest elimination using one powerful method. You can check these related videos from card links at top right corner or in description.
- RAKING THE SOIL: This is anther important step before applying any fertilizer or manure to your plant. Raking the soil is recommended once every 15 days. Make it a habit to rake the soil and then apply your fertilizer every 15 days.
- SOIL: Here you should remember few important points like:
- a) PH of soil , b) How to make the best potting soil for flowering plants c) Keep the soil well draining. The First factor is PH. Plants like Rose and Hibiscus prefer slightly acidic soil like around 6 to 6.5. If you have a PH testing meter, you can accurately use this hack to use Alum powder to make your soil acidic. Even if you do not have this meter, you can roughly add about 5 to 10 gms of alum powder in one liter of water once every 15 days to maintain this acidic level, which is very important for absorption of nutrients you add to your plant. You can also use 1 – 2 teaspoon of white vinegar per liter of water to make your soil acidic. Again you can watch my related videos on these topics from links in description.Now When you make a potting mix, you can add extra 10 percent additional compost like decomposed cowdung powder. And also bone meal powder as discussed earlier.
- FERTILIZER: In this video, I will be talking only about organic fertilizers and not chemicals like NPK or DAP.
Add a handful of decomposed horsedung or cowdung powder or vermicompost on the top layer of the soil once every 15 days after nicely raking the soil. This should be the minimum fertilizer use and frequency. You can also use compost tea sprays or even mustard cake tea and other foliar feeds if you want better results. What I use once every 15 days is My Cocktail Fertilizer Powder. You can check a detailed video on how I prepared this mixed fertilizer, from a link at top right corner of this video and also from description links. - PRUNING: Yes this is most important step which many of us neglect or some newbie gardeners think like – its plant cruelty. But this is not the truth. Pruning or pinching and also deadheading of the flowers from time to time is the most important step for maintaining blooms.
Generally Pruning which is of two types Hard Pruning and Soft Pruning. Hard Pruning is done in early spring that’s in Feb end or March beginning. If you missed that, No Worries! You can still perform Soft Pruning or Trimming. Trimming sparks new growths specaily in rose bushes.
So that was our episode on the 10 surefire ways to increase blooms. If you have any other hacks and tips, please share in the comments section below.