Hi sue, that is beautiful! Wow! I can tell that you have been taking care of it for a couple years. I worry you are a target of jealousy in your neighborhood now ;-) The "tree" probably costs a couple hundred dollars if you buy a similar one from nursery.

You see roses are great but they require a period of cold dormancy. Gardenia just goes on and on. I can tell you are in very cold zone 5 because it will grow much faster in warmer climate. Remember to add peat moss into the potting soil to keep it acid. You can do this after they flower next summer. Thanks for posting the pictures.

I remember the sweet scent of Gardenia. For me, their fragrance is filled with clear water, sun-shine, life and joy. How wonderful!

hello, snasxs, thanks for giving me so much credit. i have to confess: I bought it at the beginning of this summer (june, 2007) and this is my first winter with it. thanks also for your kind words. I will remember about the peat moss.
sue

Your stephanotis looks great. I don't have any problems with gardenias but my stephanotis was never that nice and full, even in the summer.
Karyn

hello, Karen, thanks for looking at my pictures. re stephanotis I fertilized it alot this summer with superthrive, balanced fertilizer, and heavy bloom, epsom salf and have sprayed it regularily with spray & grow. this is the second time this year that it has flowers. usually i flowers only once a year.
sue

Sue, both your plants are just beautiful. I am most interested in your Gardenia Tree. I just purchased my very first Gardenia Tree at H. Depot yesterday (Great Price). I know you have had it for 6 months, would you mind if you shared some of your great success about its care. Mine is grafted Miami Supreme variety. It is potted in a clay pot. I have read many, many posts here but it is always nice to hear from people that are succesful with it. What brand of fertilizer do you use. By the way I live in Florida, so I was planning on leaving outside mostly. It gets morning sun and afternoon shade. How cold can these plants take?

Karyn or anyone else has some great tips for me, please let me know. I need all the help I can get with this plant nicknamed "Suicidal Plant".LOL!!

Thanks so much.

hello, puglvr, congratulations on your purchase. this is the first time i have been able to keep a gardenia well this long. also this is the first gardenia tree i bought. i think that perhaps it is more mature than the bushes i used to buy. here is a site which seems to be pretty comprehensive. http://gardenia.myindoorgreenspot.com/ .. however, as to temperature, it was in my sunroom for about a month and the night temp. in it was +/- 45F and daytime was around 50F. i have brought it into the house in an upstairs bedroom in front of south window with the light being augmented with 27W CFL inches away from the tree. mine is in a plastic pot which has holes drilled around the sides of the pot about an inch from the bottom. the pot in on a rack in a saucer (to protect the floor). this way air can circulate at the bottom of the pot also. when it was out side during the summer, it was on a rack so that the pot did not sit drectly on the ground: i was trying to give it good air circulation and hopefully bugs could not go in the pot from the bottom. during the summer ( i guess this would be more relevent for you ), i hose it down when I water it. i sprayed the leaves almost daily: sometimes with pure neem oil with a little liquid soap in water; sometimes with fish emulsion with a little liquid soap in water; and sometimes with "spray and grow". I spray it with these mistures to prevent mites, aphids, etc. and to give it foliar feed. I used in the soil acidic azalea food, epsom salt, vinegar in water. I also gave it chelated iron once. I had repotted the plant with cactus soil (i think it was in July) - I think I had some sheep manure, little bits of bark in it & horticultural charcoal- i can't remember now.
mine was getting sun most of the day. i think that the sun here is not as strong as yours; so getting morning sun and afternoon shade is probably good; hopefully someone in Florida will jump in with their experience. this is a site from Un. of Florida which is also helpful.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG336
mine is still blooming and still has lots of buds. I know this sounds silly but i "talk" to my plants all the time but not usually out loud. Good luck with yours and let us know its progress. if you can post a picture, i would love to see it. Happy Holidays.
sue

Thanks Sue, for the helpful information and the websites you sent. My gardenia tree doesn't have any blooms at all when I bought it.Which is probably a good idea since I repotted it and I'm sure I would have lost the buds anyways. I can only hope I can keep it alive till spring and maybe get some blooms. I'm hoping since the variety is called Miami Supreme, that it means it will do better here in Florida. Hopefully our warmer climate here will not cause a problem.At least our humidity is very high here, I got that going for me. The plant is small appx. 30" tall from the bottom of the pot to the very top leaves. Right now I'll be happy if I can just keep it alive and not have the leaves all turn yellow (seems very common) from reading here. I don't know if you want me to post a picture, there are no blooms, so it looks pretty ordinary, nothing like yours, maybe in 3 or 4 months? Unless I kill it...

Thanks again

hello, puglvr, you are welcome. sounds like you have been doing alot of research; so, you should be fine. Good luck and enjoy. and do post pictures when you have blooms. although the tree without blooms is still beautiful.
sue

Hi Sue,

Well, call me a glutton for punishment, but I went back and got another small gardenia tree and planted it in the ground. It would be interesting to see if one will do better than the other. I also figured I had better post a picture now. I know these trees will not look any healtier than they do right now( straight from the store) so this way I have a picture of what it used to look like. Wish me luck, I'm sure I"ll need it.

{{gwi:812682}}

hello, Puglvr, they are beautiful plants. if I live where you live I would have bought more than one also. I wish you the best of luck with them. let me know how they do.
sue

Thanks Sue, I will keep you posted...

Sue, your plants are beautiful.
About the Steph, what type of light do you keep yours in, and which fertilizer do you use? Also, is yours potbound or not?
My Steph is old, but it has never flowered..It gets west light from a second floor bathroom which also helps w/humidity..In summer out it goes. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Toni

hello, Toni, thank you. i am surprised by the steph. also; and unbelievably, it is getting flower buds again. I used to have it in my upstairs bathroom which gets southern exposure where my hoya is. the hoyas blooms all summer but the steph. would not. i think it was 3 summers ago, i repotted it into a wrought iron hanging basket that is lined with coconut husk fibers (so it is not pot bound) and hung it underneath by balcany outside. it bloomed all summer. when it was time to bring it back in i decided to leave it in that hanging pot and sort of suspend it in a retangular cache pot. the bottom of the hanging basket does not touch the bottom of the cache pot so the roots gets air circulation. when i water it, it never sit in any excess water because it always flows out and i wait until it is almost completely dry and sometimes it is completely dry before i water it again. from that time onwards, in the summer it is in my sunroom with western exposure and in the winter it is in the family room with northeast exposure. this past summer, i gave it a variety of fertilizer: some organic, some chemical; whatever i was giving my orchids, i was giving to it so it was lightly and almost every time i water: 20-20-20; msu; 10-6-16; worm casting, epsom salt, coffee, & sprayed it with superthrive, spray & grow, FE/soap/water mixture, and pure neem oil/soap/water mixture. i still spray with neem oil mixture about once a week (i am paranoid about getting bugs in the house). also check out the info re aspirin on google - had sprayed with that too. I guess I tend to experiment. if the current flower buds mature to flowers, this would be the 3rd time for this year! I hope i remembered everything.
puglvr, if you are reading this too, I also used the above sprays and fertilizer on the gardenia too.(actually, in all my plants) sorry I forgot to include them - I use so many different things and i don't even pay much attention as to how much or when: I just do what i feel like at the time and try out whatever i read on the different threads, and buy whatever i don't already have.
just remembered, i also use hydrogen peroxide in the water once in a while.

sue

Any updates?

hello, snasxs, the gardenia has a couple of buds but no blooms yet. and the stephanotis has buds setting - I guess it will bloom when it is spring. I saw the pictures of the blooms on your gardenia: they are beautiful and it is really uplifting to have flowers and fragrance in the winter.
sue

Hi sue,

Congrats on your buds, lucky you...I have something going on with my gardenias but I'm not quite sure if it is new growth, or possibly some buds?? Will keep you updated as the weeks progress, when I can be more sure. (o:
Keep us posted!