Thursday Thoughts - The Hibiscus

If you follow me on social media or have for any length of time, you know that for the past who knows how many years, for Mother's Day I buy my mom a hibiscus plant.  This year was no different.

Well, sort of.

The past few years I have been getting mom a bush, which is easier to transport home in the car and what I learned this year was one of the reasons it would stay where we put stick the plant without having to put it in the ground.

This year I bought my mom a hibiscus tree.  Adam's (where I get all my hibiscus plants) did have bushes but I liked the colors of the trees a bit better.

Here is the problem with the tree.

When we had some really bad winds associated with fronts and things moving through,  the tree tended to fall over.  A lot.  So the tree was moved to in front of our porch where it seemed to be protected from the wind.  But didn't seem to be thriving - at all.  Before long all the leaves turned yellow and we barely had any flowers on the tree.

So I decided I would put it back where we always had the hibiscus.  But I planted it.  I dug a hole for it, put it in, and packed not just the dirt I had removed to make the hole but also some potting soil.  It started to do better.

Then I remembered something.  We get a lot of cold stuff sent to our house between medication for my dad and my niece.  The coolers that are sent always have those gel ice packs that we either save or throw away.  Well, something that came had a different type of gel pack.  If you let the pack thaw out, you could either dump the remnants down your sink without fear of it being bad for the pipes or environment or anything OR you could use it as liquid plant food.  Yes, you read that right.  Liquid plant food.

So, I used one of the packs and gave the hibiscus tree some liquid plant food.  And I am happy to say it seems to be really thriving now.

The hibiscus as of 6/8/2022

There are a lot of flowers on it.  There are no yellowing leaves.  There are buds and leaves starting to come back.

I am glad that I made the effort to plant the hibiscus.  And that I remembered about that plant food!