🌸 Adenium, Coffee, and Donuts

Smokey: Desert rose. One caudex. Multiple grafts. Different flowers.
Sunshine: So it is a team plant. Everyone blooms, nobody agrees.
Smokey: Yet it grows just fine.
Sunshine: That is the secret. Coffee and donuts.

Adenium Plant Facts

Botanical name: Adenium sp.
Also known as: Adenium, Desert Rose, Impala Lily

USDA Zone: 9 - 10

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🌸Featured Adeniums

Recommended by our Horticulturist, Tatiana Anderson

Moung Kusuma

Deep magenta flowers with a velvety look and a darker, almost black edge. A bold, elegant adenium that stands out immediately.

Sunshine

Bright yellow and mauve swirls across layered petals create a warm, cheerful bloom that lives up to its name.

White RabbitClean white petals brushed with playful pink streaks. A reliable bloomer with soft ruffled flowers.

Thong Samsee

Known for its three-color effect, shifting from yellow to pink to nearly white on the same plant.

Candy

Cheerful yellow petals dipped in cherry red with bold ruffled layers. Bright, playful, and impossible to miss.

Black Sheep

Nearly black petals with a glowing red center. Dark, dramatic, and different.

🔮 When the World Around Becomes Too Gray: Plant a Tree. Eat a Donut. Keep going.

Sunshine: Smokey, what do we do when the world around becomes too gray?
Smokey: Plant a tree.
Sunshine: And if that does not help?
Smokey: Plant another one.
Sunshine: And eat a donut.
Smokey: Not strictly necessary, but statistically beneficial.

If you have been feeling a little worn down lately, you are not alone.

You already know about the headlines. We do not need to list them. You have probably seen them today before breakfast.

We are not here to pretend that is not happening. It is happening. And it is a lot. But here is the thing we keep coming back to, the thing that has been true for as long as people have had hands and a patch of ground: when the world feels out of control, you can still plant something.

Gardening is not an escape. It is an answer. When you put a tree in the ground, you are making a quiet statement. You are saying that you expect there to be a future. That you intend to be in it. That shade and fruit and flowers still matter, and you are going to make sure they exist in your corner of the world.

That is not naive. That is courageous in the most ordinary and underrated way.

One tree, planted this season, might give you fruit in a few years. It might give butterflies somewhere to stop. It might give a bird a place to nest. It will almost certainly give you something to look at on a hard day that reminds you the world still contains beauty, and that you put some of it there. And if one tree does not quite do it? Plant another one.

Dostoevsky said beauty will save the world. We think a mango fruiting in your backyard counts. So does a Magnolia opening on a quiet morning.

Do not skip the donut.

A donut is a small, simple, completely unnecessary thing. That is exactly the point. It is not productive. It does not solve anything. It is just good, and sometimes that is the whole reason. In a world that constantly demands you be useful and informed and concerned, eating a donut is a quiet act of being human. You are allowed to enjoy a small thing on a hard day. You do not have to earn it.

Rest a little. Then go put something in the ground. Anything that will grow and flower and remind you that beautiful things are still happening whether the headlines mention them or not.

We have the plants. You bring the donuts.

🛒 Plant a sweeter world: grow color and flavor

📚 Learn more from our garden Blog

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By Ed Jones, the Booster Guy

Q: I have a large collection of Aroid plants, different Monsteras, Philodendrons, and several unique varieties of Caladiums. I've been always told that Caladiums should not be fertilized, they don't like it. Is it so?

A: Caladium farmers often say that these plants don't need any additional fertilizer and that they really don't like it... The thing is, caladiums do not like DRY fertilizers, and this is why. Most Aroid plants do not like being watered too often, so dry fertilizers in combination with infrequent watering create excessive salinity for the root system. We have run some tests on the proper fertilizers for caladiums and the best results were performed after using SUNSHINE Robusta. It is amino acid based, so the delicate, large-leaved Aroid plants will not have to work quite so hard to take up the nutrients, and there will be no nutrient lock up in soil. The nutrients are readily available to these plants.
In this article, you will see some test results of caladiums fertilized with SUNSHINE Robusta vs. other brands of fertilizer, with more vigorous growth and larger leaf size occurring after use of Sunshine Robusta...

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