Cold Hardy Lantanas!

I love a good hardy tropical. Okay, I'm not showing a tropical. An annual. I love the hardy begonias. I love that I have Tradescantia that comes back for me every year here in Zone 6. The hardy bananas. The Hidikium Hawaiian Butterfly Ginger. And now, Lantana? Yeah, Lantana. One of many plants that we usually grow as an annual, those of us who live north of Zone 70, Zone 8. But there are some hardy varieties you could try. I have a box full of them right here. Same with Verbena. Lantana in the same family as Verbena. Verbenia. Verbing. S-A-E. Whatever. Good stuff in here. I've tried multiple hardy verbenas. They have done well for me. There's more selection of verbenas good into Zone 6. These right here are said to be good in Zone 7b, which I think is being conservative. Being a little bit conservative. Overall, we should probably just talk about Lantana in general and why they're such awesome plants. Lantana is a really great free flowering plant. Very drought tolerant once it's established. Hummingbird. Love it. Pollinators. Love them. And they're pretty deer resistant, too. You can't always predict what the deer are going to eat, but typically deer will leave Lantana alone. Well, these are really in there. Gives it a nice pull. See if it'll come out. Tight fit. Plant delight. They do a good job with their packaging. Got a whole bunch of them in here to look at. They're just great because once they start flowering, they don't stop. They just do that all season for you, all summer, into the fall, and they'll just keep going. Sometimes they can spread like wildfire, so if you live someplace where they can be invasive, well, I don't know why you're even watching this video because I'm talking about these for people who live places where these are maybe not cold hardy. These might be cold hardy, but your typical Lantana, maybe not. I have, what, four different varieties in here. I believe I have two of one kind and then one of each other, so that's one, two. Yeah, I don't know, math. You can see there's not much to look at with these just yet. Yeah, they're just great. Not seeing any flowers on them. I'm sure we'll get some flowers on them this season, but next year is when I'm hoping these will become really impressive. This video was inspired by one of you who left a comment on a video where I brought home a really pretty Lantana called Passion Fruit. Talk about how it's one of my favorites. You know, talking about your ham and eggs, and I was like, wait a minute. Ham and eggs. The ham and eggs Lantana. That's one of the more hardy ones. I don't know if you can hear the background noise. The neighbor's kids are having a whole party, so there's a good amount of yelling going on. I'm just gonna, you know, accept it, move through it. They're having fun. Nothing wrong with that. Okay, so the ham and eggs Lantana. Well, that is a sport of a very popular, pretty cold hardy Lantana called Miss Huff. She's in here somewhere. We got a couple Miss Huffs in here. I'm really happy to see that these are nice looking plants. It's plant delights. I usually assume the plants are gonna be nice looking. With the Lantana, sometimes you may just end up with, you know, a bunch of these, and there's some green growth. So far, the two that I've opened, they have nice woody stems on them. These look pretty darn nice, don't they? Like I said, we have four different varieties here. The ham and eggs is what made me think of the Miss Huff, so I have the ham and eggs and the Miss Huff. Ham and eggs is a sport of Miss Huff. Miss Huff is kind of the OG of the most cold hardy Lantanas. I believe this came from a grower, maybe her name is Miss Huff, I honestly don't remember, in Athens, Georgia. Just kind of mid Georgia. This is good, zone 7b and up. Yeah, this is the Miss Huff right here. I don't have their stats memorized. Some of these do have some different sizes on them. This one is 36 inches wide. Probably about two feet tall would be my guess. Maybe three by three. Really pretty multi-color flowers like you love out of a Lantana. And I think I have these over here more of a solid one color. Really pretty, very cold hardy. So Plant Delights reports their Miss Huff content, I think in the negatives, at least once before and sailed through it just fine. I think that's the case for all of these here. They've grown all of these and they've all experienced some pretty severe cold. Classic Lantana look to them. The ham and eggs is more pink and yellow on the flowers. There's always some variation with these Lantanas. This one goes, what does that say, 24 inches high. Well this one says high but not wide. Well I'm gonna say 24 by 24. I don't think it gets quite as big as the Miss Huff but also very colorful just like the Miss Huff. Rivals it for cold hardiness. I know Miss Rovia, Miss Rovia, jeez Monrovia, they say this one's good to zero degrees. So that's 7a, zone 7a. Plant Delights lists them as hardy to zone 7b. Yeah, I just, it's an experiment. We're gonna see what happens. We'll talk more about that when we get through these other two. I went and grabbed my passion fruit Lantana to put in the background. I just, it was hurting me talking about Lantanas without getting to see the beautiful flowers. I think this is the one that gets huge. I'm pretty sure it is. I don't think it'll say that on the tag. Wouldn't this make for a nice bonsai? Look at that, which you could do. Use Lantana for bonsai. They actually do very well as bonsai. This one is Lantana Chapel Hill Yellow. So this is a sport of the Lantana. I believe they said the parent was probably New Gold which is a Lantana camera crossed with the Montevidence, I believe. Well, it's similar to that. Has a yellow flower. It's called Chapel Hill Yellow. Yeah, it's a yellow flower and a massive spread on this one going I 14 to maybe 24 inches high at the max in height and they are very good spreaders. Plant Delight says theirs is about 14 feet in spread if I was reading that properly. That's quite the spread. That's a very big vigorous plant. They say theirs have sailed through winters at 9 degrees Fahrenheit. So, you know, that's getting up there to the zone 7b zone 8 area but still hopefully pretty hardy. At the very least, very vigorous. Pretty pale yellow flowers. And now back here, last but not least, oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I probably should have gotten two of those. The Southern Fried Lantana. It's another sport they have up there at Plant Delights. I think they said theirs are like three feet tall by six feet wide. Supposed to be very vigorous and when the temperature's cool, well, you can kind of see it on this one. Lighting's a little awkward today but they get yellow speckling that you see a subtle variegation on the foliage in this one which I think that that's just freaking awesome to have a slight variegation on these when you start to have cooler temperatures. Probably just cooler evenings is usually all that takes to show mild variegation of the foliage. And the color on this one, it's orange and orange, kind of an orange and red sort of I guess is how you would describe it. I don't see colors all that well. I don't see distinguished shades very well. To me it looks like it's orange with hints of coral but it's mostly an orange flower on it. It's supposed to just be a really strong, tough, vigorous grower. I think they said theirs go like three feet by three feet in a single season. That's important. Vigor is very, very, very important when talking about plants that you're going to experiment with outside of their hardiness range because if you have a really bad winter and you're thinking, oh, this plant may not make it, that's probably going to be true if it's a very slow growing plant. That's why I don't mess with a lot of the sable palmettos because if you have spear pull on them, I'm waiting a whole season maybe to get a new spear or two or three out of the entire plant. Just doesn't work out all that well. That's why windmill palms do better here because they have more vigor, right? That's why I'm also experimenting with the Diffuniac Springs. It's supposed to be a faster growing option there. So with this, you have that vigor, so hopefully if you have a bad winter and maybe it'll die to the ground, you'll still get a good amount of growth out of it that year or the following year. Now, Lantanas. Fast growing, evergreen in the right climate, very floriferous, drought tolerant. There's just not much to dislike about Lantana other than if you live someplace where maybe they will seed all over the place. I believe, I don't know if this was all of them, but the Miss Huff or the Hammond eggs, one of them is supposed to be mostly sterile, so that's good. It's good to have a Lantana that's mostly sterile. If you live someplace where these will spread around where I live, that shouldn't be an issue. I'm hopeful. This is going to be an experiment and I'm going to have to do some things to try and pull this off. One, soil needs to be very well drained. Cold and wet, kiss of death. So wherever they go, I'm going to make sure that soil is amended and maybe have the plant raised up just a smidge like I would do with, say, a lavender. Usually I have to raise this up just a little bit above the surface level. And then in the wintertime, that's why that drainage is important, you don't want cold and wet around the base of the plant, around the roots especially, around the wood. You have to remember to not prune these in the fall or the wintertime, that just opens them up and can cause lots of problems, so pruning needs to be done as they're emerging from dormancy, which is going to be mid-spring into summer. Depending on where you live here, I'm guessing they probably, if they survive, wouldn't break dormancy here until probably May, not until we have consistent temperatures into the mid to upper 70s. The ground needs to get nice and warm, you know, well, close to 70, something like that in the So I'm not going to be planting these right now, I'm actually thinking I'm going to repot these, I'm going to pop them up, I think they need to be bumped up, yeah, I should probably bump these up, bump them up a pot size, and I'm going to have to overwinter these in the greenhouse because they need an entire season to get their roots down and to do some developing and to have lots of hard pruning. Lots and lots of hard pruning equals thicker wood, thicker wood, more cold tolerance, maybe, doesn't always equal more cold tolerance. With plants like crape myrtles, where I live, you plant them and they're just scrawny little nothings, just twigs, they're probably not going to come back for you except for from the roots, but that wood's probably not going to survive the wintertime. So I'm just going to operate off the same principle with these that I want to get them really nice and thick and establish their first year in the ground, so as soon as it's warm enough, next year, these will go in the ground and they'll be fertilized and just treated really how I would treat an annual lantana, which is where I feed them on regular occasion, even though these probably don't really need it. Lantana don't need a ton of fertilizer. They're pretty vigorous on their own. One thing that's just so awesome about them, right? You can take a lantana and put it in a spot where a lot of other things won't grow and they'll usually just flourish, which is also why sometimes they can be invasive. Yeah, I wouldn't try planting these out in September if you don't live in maybe zone eight, you know, eight or south, probably okay, but for the rest of us in zone seven and down, probably not a great idea. Unless maybe you have a really extremely mild microclimate that you can work with. I feel like that sounded awkward, but you know what I mean, right? You got a warm spot in the yard somewhere. I've had just regular old lantana survive winters here before, but well, they were very mild winters. They were exceptionally mild winters. I had a lantana in one spot in my front yard that came back for two years in a row and it was just a, I don't remember what it was. It was just like a no name annual type lantana. So I'm hoping in that same spot that these ones that are already said to be more cold tolerant, maybe they'll keep going and doing their thing. I know I have a lot of different varieties here because there's a lot of experimenting I'd like to do with them. And the one that is looking like a bonsai, honestly, the Chapel Hill Yellow, which I did want to try in the ground. I'm going to have trouble resisting putting that into a bonsai pot because it already just, oh gosh, that's so cute. I said lantana, if they make bonsai, they thicken up really, really well. They respond just fine to pruning, especially once you have some wood on them. Yeah, these are pretty nice looking plants. Now I don't know about a lot of the, like the more specialized ones, you know, the Chapel Hill Yellow and the Southern Fried, but the Hammond Eggs and the Mishoff, you can probably find these at a local nursery. I occasionally have seen the Hammond Eggs. It's not that rare of a plant. So it's just one to keep your eyes out for. You know, maybe you'll see it. Sometimes the nurseries get a lantana with their fall plants. I don't know why, because they're not a plant that looks particularly nice after they've had frost, even though frost doesn't really kill them. They don't really look very good, but it's the color thing. So sometimes once they have the more orange on them, you'll see them. Anyways, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to show you all these lantanas and talk about, you know, plants that we typically think is an annual that maybe have some good potential as perennial here in Zone 6B, 7A. I'm right there on the line. I'm not quite committed to saying 7A, even though we have been reclassified to Zone 7 in St. Louis. We still drop below zero every single year. So even though it's only a couple of days, that's all it takes. Those zones don't factor in the number of days of cold you have. It's just taking an average of those coldest days. I just, I don't know. Not that useful, really, when it comes to growing plants anymore, because winters have become so erratic. But, you know, it gives a ballpark idea of what's going on here. And these are said to be hardy into Zone 7. Plant Dwight says 7B. Monrovia says just down to zero, which would be Zone 7A. You know, we're gonna see. We'll experiment and report back, not next year, but I guess the year after. I did order two of some of these, two of the ham and eggs, two of them as stuff, because I was thinking that maybe I'd say, you know, we should go ahead and pop a couple of them in the ground. I haven't made my mind up on that yet. I think it's a bad idea. It is technically August, you know, so these would still have some time. It'll be September when this video comes out, but maybe even October, actually. I have a lot of videos that are prepping ready to come out, but I don't know. If that is the case, then you will find out in the garden tour that comes out after this, whether or not I decide to put any of them in the ground. Seems like I probably shouldn't. I feel like I should really wait until next year, but also I don't really want to try, just even because I just want to grow some Lantana, but I don't think I need to just plant $21 Lantana. I could just go to the nursery and get one of the ones that's like $5 and doesn't have a name on it and plant Zone 7. Try these next year. Okay. Yep. I think I've said it before. I'm gonna say it again. I'm done. That's it. We talked enough. Things to experiment with, experiments I'm looking forward to. I'm always trying to find new plants that I won't just have to replace every year. It's the nice thing about a Lantana is they just bloom and bloom and bloom, bloom, bloom. That's why I love the hardy begonias because once they start blooming, they bloom like a powerhouse. Pretty much just the same as the dragon wing begonias do, but they're perennial. I love that. Hey, I hope everybody's doing well. Are you growing these? I know at least one of you is growing the ham and eggs because you mentioned it. Are you experimenting with these in Zone 7? What about Zone 6? Like I said, Zone 6, I feel like it's really pushing it. We're a very warm Zone 6. We're a very cold Zone 7. That's probably pushing it, but maybe with some mulch and maybe a pile of leaves on top of the plants, that might be all it takes to get them through the winters. We'll see. All right. Just say hi. I love talking to everybody. Comment down below. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye.