Star-Bulletin file photo
Fragrant gardenias can be raised in home gardens.
WHETHER people or flowers, cousins don't necessarily resemble each other. Take a coffee bush, a gardenia bush and an ixora bush -- they're all part of the coffee family that includes 5,500 species of plants. Coffee has red berries and a tiny fragrant blossom, gardenias are perfumed ornamentals and ixora flowers in small explosions of red or yellow blossoms. Coffee cousins
worth cultivatingWhile it is perfectly possible to grow your own coffee, the process from bean to pot is so complicated that it is best left to the commercial growers. In fact, you wonder how anybody ever figured it out in the first place. Did somebody once look at a coffee bean on a bush and say, "By golly, if I wait until this berry gets red, and then I dry it out and shell it and store it for a while so it seasons, and then I roast and grind it, I'll have something that I can then boil in water, drink and stay up all night."
So leave coffee production to those in the business, and concentrate on gardenias and ixoras. Both are native to southern China. The gardenia is also native to Japan. There are also three that are native to Hawaii but are hard to find. Gardenia brighamii is the subject of conservation effort and is protected by federal and state statutes as an endangered species.
What you want for your garden is the Gardenia jasminoides or Gardenia augusta, the mainland senior prom corsage when your date couldn't afford an orchid. When this was first introduced to Hawaii from China in the 1860s, enthusiastic lei makers strung them, but the flowers are too heavy, the fragrance is overpowering and the petals turn yellow in a short time.
The late Winona Love, one of the most beautiful dancers of the hula, on very special occasions wore over a dinner dress a bolero entirely covered with gardenia blossoms. People used to have more time.
The ixora for the Honolulu garden is Ixora chinensis. It is one of the most common of our flowering shrubs and far easier to cultivate than the gardenia. Both plants have attractive deep green, shiny foliage and make an attractive landscape plant even when not in flower. While red flowers are most common, ixora also has white, pink, salmon, yellow or orange flowers.
The shrub grows to about 4 feet and makes a dense plant. It flowers throughout the year. It has a good growth rate, neither fast enough to get leggy or slow enough to give up on. If you don't like it where you originally planted it, ixora is strong enough to be easily transplanted.
It will grow almost anywhere on the island as long as the soil is rich, well-drained and kept constantly moist. It is not a beach plant and will not grow in salt spray, and it will bloom best with full sun.
File photo
Glossy, dark green foliage makes gardenia a
garden asset even when not in flower.
A general garden fertilizer should be applied at two-month intervals if the plant is in the ground, and monthly if in a container. It should be heavily watered immediately after each application.If the leaves start to turn yellow, add minor element fertilizers.
Gardenias, too, have a moderate growth rate and make a compact shrub, but the plants will be bigger, up to 6 or 8 feet. Fred Rauch, Hawaii Cooperative Extension specialist in horticulture, says the only pruning it needs is the removal of scraggly branches and faded flowers.
Rauch suggests planting gardenias in full sun in cooler areas for best flower production, or in warmer parts of the island in areas with light, filtered shade.
"In heavy shade, the leaves are thin and weak, and flower production is nil."
Gardenias need a slightly acid soil, well-drained and high in organic matter such as peat moss. The planting area must be free of nematodes, and the soil must be kept moist but not soggy. "Flower production is determined by the night temperature at which the plant is grown," Rauch said. Night temperatures of 60 to 62 degrees guarantee almost continual bloom if the plants are healthy. Unlike ixora, gardenias are difficult to transplant.
Both gardenias and ixoras seem to attract pests in droves. Sooty mold, a black sooty covering on parts of the plant, is a fungus disease. It lives on honeydew secreted by scale insects, mealybugs, aphids and whiteflies. If left on the plant it interferes with photosynthesis, the process by which green plants trap energy from light and use it for chemical reactions such as the formation of sugar.
So the cure lies in getting rid of the bugs that secrete the honeydew. Mealybugs leave cottony masses in stem crotches or on the underside of leaves. If you have lots of time and patience, you can remove the stuff with a cotton swab saturated with alcohol. Or you can spray with Malathion, Sevin or Diazanon. Aphids are small soft insects that cluster on stems, leaves, buds and flowers. They suck the sap, which deforms buds and discolors and curls foliage. Spray all parts of the plants in two treatments, two weeks apart, with Malathion or Diazanon.
Whiteflies feed on the underside of the leaves, and will be discouraged if not eradicated by successive sprays of pyrethrum or Diazanon. Whatever spray you use and for whatever purpose, read instructions twice and follow to the letter.
Ixora grows well as a potted plant, gardenias take more care. Potted gardenias should be planted in large containers since the plant will grow rapidly. The pot should be filled with equal parts of top soil and compost to which a small amount of general garden fertilizer has been added. Fertilize monthly and water regularly so that the moisture is kept at a steady level. Don't let the plant dry out and then sock it with gallons of water.
And don't be discouraged. Growing gardenias is tricky, and longtime gardeners say that a gardenia is harder to grow than an orchid.
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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