Potting Hibiscus and Hibiscus Care

You know, things can't always be perfect. Hey, what's up garden friends? Jeff here, it's me, doing well, I'm great. One day for the next three weeks where I can film a bunch of videos to come out during the week, so that's today. And yesterday we had a little tornado, microburst, no one's really sure, blow through here and it just, it messed some things up. Made an opportunity though to pull the furniture out and really get the ground clear over here, so that's good. Had some damage, but nothing too bad at all. So thankful for that. There's lots of background noise cause everybody's outside working on fixing things up. Like I said, nobody was hurt. Oh, I just happened to hit record as soon as my neighbor decided to use their power washer. Need a pot to set my pot on top of. Okay, I need to repot a hibiscus. 50 seconds in, hadn't even said the whole point of the dang video. So yesterday, this palm tree was blown over right on top of one of my favorite hibiscus here. It has some damage, but we're gonna press forward anyways because this needs to be done. Here's the pot, look at that. I found this in my attic. Listen, put this next to my mic. You hear that? It's foam. Y'all remember the foam pots from the like 2000s era? Yeah, and it's pretty, I like it. That's a good enough looking pot, it'll do. Well, here's the hibiscus we're working with. Oh, this is the perfect size pot too. So I should say, I'm speaking specifically, hibiscus rosa sinensis. You pick up a tropical hibiscus from your big box store. Maybe you thought you'd grow it as an annual and then had it around for a while and said, hey, maybe I'd like to keep this around. This video might be for you because you'll want to repot them. It's a good idea. I waited a while to pot mine up. You know, usually you want to do this around May. The only downside to this container is I would actually like for this to be a smidge bigger. Here we go. A nice, well-drained, organically rich potting mix. It's a spider out here, it's about to start moving. I was like, you know what? That seems like a jerk move to fill this up with soil where there's a spider running around inside of there. Okay, so he's out. Hibiscus, let me get to the point here. Oftentimes, people used to say to not overpot your hibiscus, and I used to agree with that, but I've noticed over the years that my hibiscus typically have their best growth when I go ahead and just go for it. These are such thirsty plants, so as long as you're doing this when you have nice, warm temperatures, not a big deal. Go ahead and bump them up to whatever size container you want to. I know that that's off, that's not the normal advice, but we used to always say the one to two inch outside diameter thing, and sometimes that's just BS. Yeah, when you're working with warm temperatures, you can get away with things differently. I think that's good. I don't want it up too high. I want to be able to give this plant a considerable drink without water spilling over the top and losing soil. It's actually probably perfect right here. So this is in a 12-inch pot right now, and it's going up to, I believe this is an 18-inch container. Might be a 20, that might be a 20-inch pot. I think it probably is a 20-inch pot, yeah. And that's fine. It's going to enjoy that. I could go even bigger, as I said, but I don't think that's necessary. Hibiscus typically do not want their roots to be messed with very much, but if they're really root-bound, then go ahead and do what you need to do. I'm just giving this a very gentle tickle, just very lightly touching the sides so the roots come out, and that's it. That's all that's going to need for those roots. Double-check that height again and see if that looks about right. I think it's good. You can't even see what I'm doing, can you? There we go, yeah. So it's going to be down about, I'd say, an inch. That's, you know, pretty standard. See the thing about hibiscus, pretty much all of them, whether it's a Rosasinensis or not, they like moisture. They want a lot of moisture, and they let you know very quickly when they're not getting what they need. It becomes apparent. Once it's in that nursery container, it's much harder to keep it hydrated, so bumping up into a larger container, it just makes life a lot easier. Don't get me wrong. You, of course, can keep your hibiscus in its little nursery pot for the entirety of the summer if you want to when you pick them up, but they're going to do a lot better when you move them inside, if you're going to move them inside, if you've repotted them, and they're going to have a lot more growth if you repot them too, especially if you do it when you should, which is, you know, right around May, June, when it's nice and warm where I live, that's probably the best time to do it because then it gives them a few weeks to settle into their mix and everything, and then they can put some roots out and really put on a sizable amount of growth. Not bad. Now that I'm about halfway up the pot, a little bit further than that, actually, probably three quarters of the way up, I'm going to add in a continuous release, something that has got some nitrogen in it, low on phosphorus, not too much potassium either. Hibiscus do not want much phosphorus in their fertilizers, so be careful with that, using blooming fertilizers and those things. They don't like it. It might increase your bloom yield for a little while, but ultimately it tends to cause more harm than good. The hibiscus gains pretty good. I actually, the Jax Classic Petunia Feed, they really seem to enjoy that with the liquid feed. This just helps keep their growth nice and green, doesn't do much to encourage flowering, but by having just things balanced and healthy, you should have a nice plant that's going to flower a lot. That's what I'm trying to say. There's a lot of distractions today. Of course, the one day I have to do a bunch of filming is also going to be the day after my yard gets blown away, so I'm frazzled trying to keep up with all the different tasks. Hibiscus, keep them wet, all right? They need to drain, but don't let them dry out. Just a little, they can dry out a little bit. Sometimes they're just going to drop dead, but if you really want to get good growth out of these plants, keep them moist. They like the moisture and consistent fertilizing, so if they have that hibiscus gain down there, that's great stuff. However, that is a continuous release and it's more of an organic type fertilizer. It takes a while to break down and actually do anything, so I will still be hitting this with the synthetic every single week, and I'm using that, the Jax Classic Petunia Feed. That's a good one, but really just an all-purpose synthetic fertilizer is usually just fine for these guys. Just want to have that nice, green, healthy-looking foliage. See, these leaves are kind of limp right now. Now, the soil didn't feel dry. That's usually what I would associate with these limp leaves. However, this did have a palm tree laying on top of it for several hours yesterday, so that could have something to do with those limp leaves, too. I also think it's useful to go ahead and pot up your hibiscus because it makes it a lot easier to fertilize. Those containers that they're in, they're so tight that when I water them, a lot of that water just splashes out the top. I have to water them very slowly. Fertilizer, I gotta do it very slowly, and if for some reason I need to treat this with anything, forget about it in those smaller containers. Everything's just easier if you go ahead and bump them up into something that's nice and big that they can handle. Don't go too big if you only have a few weeks before it's time to move your plant inside. Right, I think it's good to have at least probably, I'd say, six to eight weeks at the minimum for your plant to adjust to its new pot before you're going to move it inside. Again, going back to, you probably should have done this, which is much earlier in the year. Yeah, there we go. And again, back to that potting mix. Organically rich, way to do it. Needs to drain really well. Don't put them in something that's really heavy and mucky. These are really prone to rotting out during the winter months when they're indoors, so try and keep them in something that is lofty and drains well. Is there a flower in here? There we go, yeah. Let's look at the good side where you can see the flower. This difference in growth, it's insane when you put these in a pot versus leaving them in a nursery container. Or go ahead and put them into a larger container. Think about how often people take hibiscus, use the centerpiece in a very large planter. Maybe you see that more at resorts and in cityscapes and things like that, very large pottery. Those hibiscus usually, not always, but usually grow pretty well and get very big. Smaller pot, not really the same thing. This will outgrow this pot by the end of next summer. It'll be good in here for a year, easily. Yeah, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. Yeah, in a nutshell, you can ignore that one to two inch diameter thing when you're repotting your hibiscus, as long as, right, as long as it's nice and warm and they're getting everything they really want, which is gonna be a good amount of sun, though I do like mine to have afternoon shade. We're out here in a paved area and sometimes the afternoon sun can be too much for them. But warmth, warmth and light and moisture, they'll root out in those containers within three to four months and really put on a good amount of size, depending on your type. This one right here is a Sealy Tinney. Tinney, I don't know how you actually say that name. It doesn't ever put on a massive proportion. It's one that maintains a really nice growth habit. So this isn't like some of my others, like if I were to just plant a Mr. President or the El Capitan, those, they get really big, really, really fast, but they also get kinda leggy. This is meant to have more of a compact growth habit to it. But I mean, you can see, it's a nice looking plant. So I figured the best thing to do for this to really have it for a long time and have a nice, healthy plant for years to come is to pot it up while I still have a couple of months left for the plant to adjust and yeah, get rooted in there before going inside. I would not do this if I didn't have at least, like I said, six, eight weeks, probably two months before moving it inside. I want six to eight weeks of nice warm temperatures for the plant to adjust to its pot. Minimum, ideally more than that, because having too much excess soil that the plant isn't rooted into, it's just the kiss of death. They will potentially rot because they don't have roots in that surrounding area where that moisture is gonna collect and it just sits there and you get a lot of anaerobic stuff going on. So yeah, you wanna give the plant time for it to move its roots into that fresh potting mix and yeah, they'll be good. Pretty tough plants. Indoors, that's a whole nother thing. I've talked about indoor care with hibiscus plenty of times. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get this potted up now and didn't wanna wait any later because I definitely wanna take this one inside where I'll get to have it for many months inside, enjoy some flowers on it and then mostly just battle spider mites and mealybugs for the entire winter time. It's fun. Like I said though, it's a nice looking plant. Wanted to give it the best shot that I could. That hibiscus gain, it's a good fertilizer. I've used plenty of other hibiscus fertilizer and I've never really been disappointed in any of them, but I also use the synthetic too, so it's hard to say what's doing what, right? But hibiscus gain, it seems to be a good product. Yeah, haven't had any issues with it. Good brand. I don't always deadhead my hibiscus. That's a little thing people always ask me about. You can. Go ahead if you want to, but typically mine do end up getting deadheaded because I send these flowers over here to my iguana and my tortoise. They enjoy eating them. It's the sixth plane in the last hour. You done? This is the side that needs that recovery. Yeah. Also, if you have a plant that's really stressed, get them hydrated. Don't just repot them. This is hydrated, so it was one of those things where I was like, I should just probably go ahead and just do it. Just rip the bandaid off. It just got smashed. Get it into a new container. That way it can recover. If I need to do a cut back, it's going to be doing that into a fresh potting mix, so cutting it back sends that auxin back down and encourages new root tips and you end up with, you know, a nice bushy plant fairly quickly, actually. They adjust really fast. Get them up on drip if you can. Oh my goodness. Hibiscus grow so fricking fast if you can get them on drip irrigation. This will be on drip, and I would hope to see, even though this is not a hibiscus that necessarily gets that really long, quick growth to it, like I said with some of the others, this should put on, I would hope, another foot of growth easily by the end of this growing season, and it just has this fresh flush right here, so hopefully it'll keep doing that to about a pure. I'm hoping to have a shrub that's a good three and a half to four feet tall here in a few months. Making sure that it's getting afternoon shade helps with that for me and all my pavement and things get really toasty out here. Full day sign keeps them blooming. If yours aren't blooming, they might not be getting enough sun. If there's really long stems without a lot of leaves in there, maybe not getting enough sun. They do need a good amount of light to keep them flowering properly, and something that I don't think gets talked about enough is that when you buy a hibiscus, they're typically going to, I'm talking, again, tropical hibiscus specifically, they're probably going to bloom for you just abundantly that first season you have them. Then you'll notice that they're not doing that anymore, and you're thinking, oh, what did I do wrong? You didn't do anything wrong. These are pumped full of hormones before they're shipped out because the nurseries and the Lowe's and Home Depots and Walmarts, they want these plants to have flowers on them. They sell better when they have flowers on them. That's the same reason where I live, but you almost never see a crepe myrtle for sale at the nurseries here until late June into July when they're starting to bloom, which isn't ideal because we live in a marginal place for them. It gets pretty cold here, so we need to plant our crepe myrtles in like April, but the nurseries don't get them in until later than that. They're not usually put up on the availabilities for the nurseries until the plants are about ready to bloom because they sell faster that way. So, you know, don't fret if your hibiscus and the blooms start to just seem fewer and further between. That's actually probably just a very healthy plant that isn't, you know, doing the thing with all the hormones and they go through flushes, right? So this one hasn't bloomed much for me in the last two to three weeks because it was resting. It was in a rest phase and now it's absolutely covered in buds right now and it's just started opening up again for another big flush of flowers. Maybe, maybe something to consider when not to repot them would be if you have a whole bunch of buds that are looking like they're just getting ready to open, I don't know, over here on the yoder. No, the yoder's a tough one. That's not a good example. Neither is that one. If you have a lot of buds that look like this, that are just one day away from blooming, then maybe I'd hold off, right? All of these right here, these have another several days to a week to go. Didn't have to disturb the root mass very much. Worst case scenario, you've set yourself back by about maybe a month with flowering and that's if they were ready to go and you've disrupted that flush and then they're gonna have to recover, rest, and set out a new flush. It's worth it in the long run because you're gonna put the bigger, stronger, and healthier plants. It'll produce more flowers, just maybe not all at the same time, but usually more consistently with the flowers once you've established them. Ugh, and scale. The scale gets bad with these sometimes. That's something to watch out for. But that's all indoor care stuff. They can get it outdoors, but I don't typically deal with a lot of pets outdoors. It's more when things come inside. And plant number seven. I'm gonna wrap it up. Hope everybody's doing well. Have a great day. Great landscapes. It's absolutely beautiful for you. Let me know. Tips, tricks, suggestions, some things to do with your potting mixes. There's lots of things you can add to them. I do usually like to add a couple handfuls of compost, which I probably will end up doing that here at some point. This already has all that bark in it that's gonna need to break down. That's why I have to stay on top of the synthetic. Just don't be like me and don't buy a bad soil. Go ahead and get something good. I like the SunGrow, the HP mix, ProMix. Good stuff, just ProMix in general. I like it. It's more of a hydroponic grow though. You're gonna need to add to it, but that's fine. Then you're gonna need to hold on some moisture, but also, all right, yeah. Hey, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye-bye.