Castor plants

13 years ago

Has anyone else here had trouble with these this year? This is the first year I've grown them. I got the seeds from Baker Creek. I used them for a garden border to deter gophers on 2 sides of the big veggies garden. (Should have surrounded it!) They haven't bloomed yet. They're almost 10 ft tall and are just one, strong, straight trunk. The tops are beginning to bush out slightly and all but 3 are bright green, the others are deep red. This isn't at all what I thought they'd look like. They are planted in full sun and received the same amount of water and fertilizer that the veggies all received. We have sandy soil that we added compost and manure (lots) before planting. Is it possible I got some bad seeds? I'm really puzzled and disappointed. Just thought I'd check with you guys and see what your experience has been.

Paula

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Comments (4)

slowpoke_gardener
13 years ago
Pauls, I dont have castor plants here but at my old house they grew like mad in the deep sandy soil. I finaly got them killed out a few years ago. They had been growing in the same spot since I was a kid. We never gave them any compost or anything else. I have used Castor plants and Gopher Purge and still had problems with the pest. The plants may have helped but they did not get rid of the moles and gophers.

I have had better luck with box traps for gophers. Moles give me fits. The only way I have had any luck with moles was to kill their food supply, and I did not like doing that. The next best thing was having young, bored dogs and cats.

Larry
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gldno1
13 years ago
Larry, I gave up on controlling the moles too. You can't mow my yard in wet weather for fear of burying the mower wheels.

I think this was just a very strange gardening year. My Yvonne's salvias just got about 24 inches tall, not the 60 inches like last year.

My red Castor Bean seeds that I think were from Baker Creek weren't red at all the last year I grew them!
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spademilllane
13 years ago
I grew them this year in very large pots on my patio. Someone on the container gardening forum had pictures of them in pots in Chicago and they looked great and bushy.

Mine did not get bushy at all. More like spindly. They also flowered early and I cut a number of the early seed pods off--and they have started to regrow where I missed one or two in the mulch. Either they had too much moisture or too much heat or perhaps the potting soil was too rich for them, but whatever the reason they didn't do well and turned out tall and spindly & I probably won't do them again next year.

I don't use them to try to contain the moles and gophers. I try to use cats for that (doesn't work well, either) and just give up.
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
13 years ago
Paula,

I've grown them off and on for years and they usually get tall first for me and then branch out and fill in a lot once they are close to their maximum height. In my soil, with adequate moisture, they tend to get about 10' tall in clay and about 15' tall if I grow them in our small band of sandy soil like I did last year. I grow both the green-leaved one and the reddish-green one.

For me, bloom usually occurs in July if I planted them in April but I won't get bloom until Sept. or Oct. if I plant them in June or July.

I don't grow them to repel gophers. I just grow them for their gorgeous foliage. The flowers are an afterthought since they aren't all that spectacular. However, it is nice if they are able to reseed themselves, which mine sometimes do.

I agree with Larry that a better control for gophers is trapping them or having a cat or dog who likes to kill them. When we moved here in 1999, we had gophers everywhere. Our cat, Moose, spent all day every day that first summer patrolling the property for gophers, moles, voles, bunnies and field mice. Everyone who had gophers or moles needs a cat like Moose who, sadly, is no longer with us.

Dawn
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