New here, figured I'd introduce myself.
I've been keeping Plumeria for twenty years, give or take. Mostly small stuff- I've always had them around. When my grandma passed I got her monster, a beautiful towering 10-ft mother. It has white/yellow blooms. It was mine, it was always mine she promised. It's been with me for several years now.
In years previous I've tried different wintering techniques. Some winters they are uprooted and stored in the garage with a small rootball secured in burlap sacks, some I simply stored them in their soil- of course watering sparingly keeping the area clean of debris etc. This year, however, was different.
Last fall my wife and I arranged for a trade of some goods (her scrapbooking "excess", bonus we're cleaning up that area!) for ten more large plants, for the most part labled with bloom colors etc- from someone who wanted to pare down her well-cared for collection.
So this year I wanted to do something different. Rather than allowing the plants to go dormant, which significantly delays spring growth and reduces summer bloom, I installed two T5 High Output 4' 8-lamps to keep them awake, with a heater and fans. The results so far have been very positive!
At first I did loose nearly all of the leaves, just like when the go dormant. A part of this was due to waiting until the very last minute to bring them inside as we do every year- and then the two week delay until the fixtures were installed, since I had not planned this. My other thought was that the T5 lamps were not a good choice for a species with such high light needs. Slowly but surely, new growth appeared, and with a careful watering schedule they are looking like 2019 is going to be phenomenal!
I hope you'll be along for the ride. I'm new here, and haven't read any discussions on this forum. That will change. I'm mostly a lurker on forums, but I'll chime in when I have something to share. This thread is about my 2019 Journey, I hope we can upload lots of pictures- comments and suggestions are welcome!
This picture is from last fall, the day all of the plants were homed for winter storage.
RootRunsDeep
