Really, really late bloomers

In the spring I found these hot pink Gerbera Daisies at a local big box.  I built a new bed for annual color at my front door and thought these would be great as part of a small planting that was to include Lantana ‘New Gold’, although that never happened.This bed I built was small, about 3 feet long by a foot and a half wide, and curved like a banana to fit the curve of the pavement. And this was what I call a ‘dump’ bed, where I simply ‘dump’ the ingredients for the bed on top of the ground and plant directly in it. It is great to do this for drainage (important for Gerberas and other annuals) and for elevation (to raise little plants up a bit to make them more noticeable). It is quick and effective and the plants love it, but you do have to have plenty of stuff to build a bed like this.  In short, dump beds are probably the most expensive option, but for small beds of annuals, perennials, or for really pricey shrubs, it is well worth it.

I used my own compost blended with some really good soil I borrowed from another spot in the garden and added a generous amount of Osmocote fertilizer to the bed. The soil looked good enough to eat. It had that wonderfully earthy smell that just screams, “I’m gonna grow some great stuff!” Well, grow stuff it did. In fact, it grew the Gerberas so well that they didn’t bloom. Yep. No blooms all summer. No blooms in the fall. No blooms until now…and it’s late December.

Huh? Really?

How can that be? Healthy plants would be blooming plants, right? Not necessarily.  Sometimes the growing conditions are more favorable for leafy growth than bloom-y growth. I think I went a bit too far to build a great bed and the plants just reveled in their great soil and just didn’t need to bloom. They looked like cabbage.

The gardening books say Gerberas are a half-hardy perennial in the Atlanta area, which means they are about half as likely to croak in the winter as they are to survive until next spring, and mine are blooming at a time when they should be, according to the books, be laying down for the winter. I suspect  they simply used up the good stuff in the soil about now and decided it was ok to bloom now.

I often make the point that plants don’t read gardening books, and this is a good example. So let’s see if these make it to April.  Maybe I’ll get around to adding those lantana then.