Hi Rob, That's a beautiful bonsai bench you've made & a very nice Adenium too. I can imagine how nice that bench will look full of Adeniums. Thanks for sharing.

Hi Hyn Patty, thanks for the welcome & glad you enjoyed this thread.

Rachel :)

One of our reds, blooming today :)

Your desert roses are beautiful, I finally got to see the double, triple and different colored flowers actually growing on a real plant, they do really exsist!

I have recently become addicted to growing and buying Desert Roses. I was attracted to them for the unusual caudex's, my girlfriend likes the flowers. After researching the DRs I needed to have at least one of every kind, obesum, arabicum etc, I had gotten seeds from the web even though many said they would not grow. So I planted them in late December and three days later had seedlings. These are my first of many hopefully. Next I bought larger plants and just the other day received my favorite adenium arabicum! Hopefully I can upload the photos for viewing.

Ray

That is a really nice collection of DRs. Yes the double and triple flowers really do exist and they are beautiful. Do yourself a favour and buy them from a well known and trusted grower like Mr Ko Ebay and with a bit of patients you will be smiling from ear to ear like the rest of us. This site is priceless it gives growers tips on how to prevent disasters that have happened to us all in the last few years. Most of all don't give up if something happens to one of your DR's learn from it. We are always here to ask what happened and try to prevent it from happening again.

Happy Gardening Maria

Tweed Heads

Hi all, and great Adenium collection Rachel, I am new to this forum and just started growing Adeniums from seeds a month ago. I live in Perth WA great weather for DRs. I am hesitant to buy seeds from Thailand due to the heavy customs and quarantine procedures in Western Australia. There are 2 great Adenium seeds importers in WA who advertise on Ebay. Most of the imported seeds from both importers sprouted, probably germination rate over 90%, my DR seedlings are between 2 and 3 weeks old. I also got 2 grafted Adeniums from bunnings, one has great shape and caudex, I will turn them into bonsai.

I will upload pictures of my seedlings soon!

:-)

Nice Adeniums Ray, love your seedlings :-)

Here my Honey DR seedlings

My little Golden Honey DR seedlings 2 weeks old. They seem to do well, all seeds germinated.

And 2 mixed seeds

Hi Ray, and welcome to 'Adeniums Anonymous'. :D That's a great collection of desert roses you've got there. Your seedlings look great and I'm sure you will have as much fun as the rest of us growing them to flowering stage. Nice arabicum too.

Note - As Maria said Mr KO EBay is a great place to buy seed from and is trusted by so many on this forum. Also, we have germinated some seed in the little peat/pellets like you have some of yours in, & we always remove the mesh outside cover before potting on. We do this because the mesh stuff can sometimes stop the roots from getting through. You may wish to do that too.

Ray, if you go to 'Your Houzz' page, and 'edit profile', you can put your country in so we can all tell where you are from. Enjoy your growing.

Rachel :)

Hi Agartta, Welcome to the forum. This is a great place to get info from other Aussies, on how we grow our plants in our climate. It is also invaluable to get information from our overseas cousins/growers as well. as they also have much to teach us & so many beautiful photos to share with us.

I know your quarantine regulations are stricter then ours here in Queensland, but if there's any way to order seed from Mr KO EBay, then I would recommend him. I do not know anything about the seed importers in WA, as I have never ordered seed from them, hopefully you will get something nice.

Would love to see photos of the grafted Adeniums from Bunnings, as our Bunnings only ever sells seedlings. Good luck with your seedlings and happy growing.

Rachel :)

Hi Rachel, yes my Bunnings sells Adenium grafts not seeds. I have 2 DR from Bunnings, they dont look like much at the moment but one has small leaves and the caudex looks a bit like a baby elephant, cute, its the one on the left

Your Adeniums look really happy, and I love the red ones you have.

Hi Agartta, thanks for showing us the photos. Do you know what colour the flowers are on your grafted ones?

Rachel - The one on the left was pastel white with light pink with a pink line, and the one on the left Im not sure, the leaves are different.

Rachel - I thimk my left DR flower looked a bit like one of your flowers.

Agartta, yes this is a favourite flower of mine. I hope you enjoy yours too.

Btw - I just left a message on your thread "New adenium addict from Perth".

Thank you all for your positive responses, Rachel I took your advice and added my location. right now the weather is around mid 70s during the days and upper 50s at night with a couple of nights dropping below 50s. under 50 I bring the DRs in just to be sure being new at this I want to limit any mistakes. I've learned a lot from this forum and get wonderful inspiration from seeing everybody elses lovely plants (even though I and from what I've read here a lot of others treat them as our children)LOL. Rachel I can't believe how beautiful your DRs are and how well developed the caudexs are at 6 years old. I can only hope mine do half as well as yours. I can't wait for our spring to begin so I can really see how all my Babies do! Good Luck to all and happy growing and look forward to more pictures. Agartta like how chubby your seedlings are already.

Mr KOs selection is beautiful but hate having to bid and wait for an auction to be complete.

Hi Ray, you can buy from Mr KO website seeds, you don't have to bid on ebay. Yes some of my Adenium babies are chubby little big eatters lol, the past few days we had hot weather, and humid temperature of 38'C or 100 F, too hot for the babies in the sun, they indoors right now under artificial light.

Rachel - OMG look at these beauties from orient-adenium.com

I wish I had plants like that, I wonder if their seedlings will look like the parents.

There is supposedly less than a 10 percent chance of getting purple flowers from purple crosses, or so I'm told from multiple sources. So odds are that no you won't unless you put down a lot of seed. But you could get lucky, like playing the lottery.

I ordered a number of grafts from Orient Adenium recently but Indigo Glaze was still ridiculously priced at $65 for the smallest grafts before adding shipping. If you do internet searches on it however, the color isn't nearly so vibrant in other people's photos of the same plant. It's more a dull black purple but still very unusual.

Hi Ray, good to see your location now. As for the size of our plants, you can read in the above posts about how we grow them this way. As I've said we are very generous with our growing culture & they are grown this way from seedlings. Our plants are outdoors all year round. We do slow down in our watering as the season starts to get cooler & rarely water in Winter, when they are dormant. Come Spring, we repot into new soil & increase watering again as they start to leaf out. You have to grow your plants according to your climate. I see you are from Florida, & I assume you probably get nice Summer weather there for growing DR's. Maybe you could try growing some of your seedlings in the squat style pots (shown above) that we use to see if that works for you. Our squat pots have lots of holes in the bottom for drainage. Very important with how much we water.

(Mr Ko's website is adenium.com.tw)

Hi Agartta, Yes Rinoa has some beautiful selections. I am currently lusting after some of her seeds right now & may order some to grow later in the year.

I posted a message on your thread regarding some of our seeds grown from Mr KO and what the outcome was. Happy growing.

Hi again, just received more additions to the Ray family of adenium. Ordered on Friday and just arrived 2 hours ago! What service! These are the ones I wanted especially as they are different, Arabicum, socotranum etc. I wanted them more for their classification rather than there flowers although that will be a bonus. I won some seeds from Mr KO on E Bay so they will be with my Desert Roses collection for the beautiful flowers. The plants I ordered from Out of Africa website, packagd with much care and attentiveness. Will post progress of all and the progress of the others on this site! Thanks!

Hi Ray, Nice babies. it will be interesting to watch these grow. We only grow Obesum varieties/hybrids, although we have had a couple of Arabicums over the years. We have stuck with Obesums, because that is what we know & love.

If I am right, it is the beginning of Spring in Florida - do you or are you growing your plants outside in the sun now?

You must be getting quite a collection of plants :)

Look at these pictures, make me fall in love with desert rose all over again.

Marie

Rachel - I need your opinion on one of thr DR I aquired yesterday, like you said, I decided to leave them till spring to prune and repot but on a closer look at the caudex on the one flowering I saw this :

Shall I leave it like this?

Anyone has any idea what it is?

Thanks!

Agarrta It looks like root rot but I'll let the people with more expertise advise you. Rachel in response to your question I leave only the large ones out for now and bring them in if the temp goes below 50. i'm going to wait about 2 more weeks before I put out the seedlings and the smaller ones.

Thanks Ray

Agartta, Quick tip - whenever you get a problem like this you need to post a new thread so everyone can see it & thus give you a quicker answer. I am not normally on this forum every day, & you need as many opinions as possible as quickly as possible.

My thoughts - I think this plant has rot - or has had rot & is self healing. No way to know without the plant in front of me. Photos only show so much. This is what I would do if it was my plant.

Unpot the plant & wash off all the soil. Check whether it is hard or soft & mushy. Any soft/mushy parts are usually rot. All rot needs to be cut off or smoothly carved out, leaving as much of the plant/roots as possible. (Rot will usually have a brownish discolouration to it). Use a sharp pocket knife or razor blade cleaning your knife after every cut with methylated spirits or alcohol. Keep cutting until you see a clean white/greenish area. (Make sure to wash all sap off your hands after doing this, or wear disposable gloves). Then sprinkle cinnamon onto all cut areas & leave unpotted in the shade for a couple of days/or a week to dry out. Then repot into the smallest size pot you can fit the plant into, with half cacti/succulent potting mix & half perlite. (I would throw out the old pot & buy a new one). You can also sprinkle some rooting hormone powder (from Bunnings) onto the roots when you repot. (This helps it grow new roots). Make sure your pot has lots of drainage holes in the bottom. Water once lightly & put back in the sun. (Some people would not water yet - that is your decision). The leaves will likely fall off, but they will grow back. When you see new leaves growing you can water once again. (Bottom heat is also good at getting new roots to form). Then keep your fingers crossed. This is something we've all had to deal with. Good luck :)

Rachel - Thank you so much, I will follow your advice.

I agree that I would definitely depot it and have a good hard look at that to see if it's active rot. I second Rachel's advice.

I agree that I would definitely depot it and have a good hard look at that to see if it's active rot. I second Rachel's advice.

Hi...I've got 2 adenium plants. 1 hdo flowers but now the buds are turning black n falling off before it blooms.

2nd adenium is approximately 15month old and hasn't yet flowered or grown much. Could any1 here guide me please

Just a comment about your pot. Because the pot is a lot larger in the center then the top of the pot, you may find it difficult to ever remove this plant as the roots will spread to the widest part of the pot.

Hi all. Man I love this group, so interesting. Rachel I have finally managed to re-pot at long last. Below is the result. I am a bit worried about the yellow leaves other than that I think they handled the transplant. I gave it a watering with seasol and planted them in cacti/succulent soil. Is there anything else I need to make sure they grow as beautifully as other on this page

Hi Noelleen, I think you did really well with repotting. Those small pots are a much better size for your plants & the pebbles around them will warm with the sun and help to keep the plant & roots warm - especially through Winter. Don't worry about the yellowing leaves, this is normal & they may lose more leaves yet. Be careful not to overwater while they are adjusting to the repot. I would feel the soil & only water lightly when they feel almost dry. (As a general rule - less leaves = less watering!) if your plants have no leaves, they will use very little water. Make sure your plants are getting plenty of sun & don't expect them to do much for a few weeks.

Being located in Tamborine, Qld, I think your weather cools quicker then mine. I have already noticed in Brisbane that we are getting some cooler mornings, as I assume you are too. I have noticed some of our plants reacting to the cooler mornings & some yellowing of lower leaves. It is particularly important to keep them fully dry once morning temps reach 10-12degrees. Through Winter I would only give them an occasional water on a warmer day & only wet the top of the soil/don't wet all the soil. (Maybe water once a month in Winter, just to stop them dehydrating.) I would also bring them into the house during the night to keep them warmer & place them back outside during the day. By next Spring, you can go up a pot size - if your plant has filled its pot with roots.

Great job, happy growing. Rachel :)

Aanya, maybe your plants just need to be repotted. If they have been in the same pots for a year or more, that's probably the problem. As for buds turning black, they may simply be being burnt from the sun, especially if the soil has been left to dry out too much. As Marlene said the rootball may be too big to get out of the top of the pot, so you may have to smash the pot to get it out. If it is Spring in your location I would repot. That's the best advice I can give.

Noeleen - Not only do you have some flowers going on but, do I see some seed pods forming in the 3rd pic down?

Rob

Noellen, Rob is right, you do have a seed pod! Good eyes Rob. :)

The very top of this thread, the second photo of the pale striped flower. I really, really love that one. I hope I can get something like that. Lots of nice ones on this thread.

Hi Hyn Patty, this one was grown from one of KO's seed (Elegant Ballerina)

I think it turned out much better then the mother/seed I purchased... I actually got 2 like this from one packet of seed & the others were similar to the mother plant. I sold off the others & kept the 2 bolder stripe ones for my collection. I love this flower too, the stripes are beautiful & it just screams tropical to me. I would love to try & breed a double of this flower one day.

Below is a photo of the mother/seed I purchased from Mr Ko's website. Maybe you should buy a packet too. Rachel :)

Thanks :) Seed pods, now I need to learn about that. LOL. I guess I let them develop to almost bursting?

Nice, Rachel! It is beautiful and I agree it is much prettier than Ko's original. Most of my obesum seed is from him but I didn't order anything from him with stripes last year. To make up for it, I actually ordered /three/ grafted plants that will have stripes over various background colors so I think I'll have it covered. They are all three doubles or triple flowers but I should be able to get some nice singles from their seed as well. Sometimes the clarity of a single can't be beat. Yours is really nice.

Hyn Patty, Yes, these days a lot of people would overlook buying seed of a single flower. I love my double & triple flowers but I still love the simplicity of a beautiful single.

Hi everyone

I don't know about everyone else but I am now seeing the first of the yellow leaves and the weather cooling off. This is telling me to slow down on the watering to once a week. No more grafting till spring. No more fertilizing. Temp is just sitting above 18 degrees over night. Ok I am happy this has been a good summer with plenty of nice surprises. Just waiting for the heavy rain we are supposed to be getting the week. I think I will be pruning and shaping getting rid of the annoying tall growth from too higher Ammonium Nitrates fertilizer I used but will be waiting for a nice warm fine day.

Happy Gardening Maria

Tweed Heads Australia

Hi Maria, we have got a few plants, with some yellow lower leaves just starting too. Some mornings are cooler now. Our plants are still flowering away, but we are also slowing down on our watering now. Not looking forward to the rain, but our lawn will love it. Rachel :)

Hi Rachel, you plants are beautiful. I just planted my seeds for the first time. Hoping they'll grow to be just as heathy.

Rachel, you have beautiful plants from seeds. Like like like

Marie

Wow back to the future nice but i like the fire plant can u graft that one

Noelleen - How about an update on those seed pods?

Rob