A Note About Gardening

This posted is prompted by the kind comments left about my poor frangipani tree. Thanks girls, and here's a few things that I have learnt about them, which might help you guys out with your slow growing trees (apart from the fact that you are a fair way south and its much cooler than up here)

1. No matter what they say, Frangipani's DO like water, and once I started watering mine more often, they started to grow big time. Again, hot weather helps. Don't saturate them though.

2. They are heavy feeders - ie they draw a fair bit of nutrient from the soil, so the application of the right sort of fertilizer regularly will help (ie Osmacote etc).

3. You can get an evergreen frangipani - it's the sort with the big white flowers with yellow centre. Well, up here they keep their leaves year round, whilst the other ones tend to drop their leaves gradually as it gets cooler, and altogether if we get a frost. (grr). I've just found them available here at Garden Express which is a great Australian garden mail order company.

4. They will grow in a pot and grow well! I took some cuttings and shoved one in a big pot that was empty - its grown so well that I don't want to take it out of the pot! It also is in a spot that gets really hot for a couple of hours a day (against a corrogated iron wall). I think that it gets watered twice a week and fertalized a couple of times of year with all of my other pot plants has aided its healthiness.

I'll take some photos of my frangi's in pots one day and share.

Hope this has helped you! Oh, by the way, the blood pressure has receded now and I have gotten over (well, until I look at my wounded tree mournfully!) the tree accident, so now I can look forward to have LOTS more of the same tree around the place, if I can find enough bigger pots to put them all in!