Frangipani (Plumeria) 2 September 2021

Frangipani/Plumeria. Bought two new ones, big, but quite cheap. One is standard white yellow, but the other is pink and yellow! It has just one flower now, I can still hope it’s a multicolor one, like we lost a few years ago. The best thing is their smell. Luvvly!

lost...

Big Frangipani!

Yesterday dropped by the garden center to look for new bougainvilleas, preferably yellow. And a blood orange tree./ But, "even better": a very big frangipani for 25 €. Standing alone at the back, leafless (normal in this season), loveless, in a very small pot. But that doesn't matter with frangipani, they can do with very little soil. All will be well. Lucky day!

And luckily I have a roofless car, else I could not have transported it.

This already is the new pot, I don't have a bigger one now.

Compo Insana - 1 m³ soil

Unhappy frangipanis. This one is happy, but it is planted in a pot with a bag of BlumenErde:

But this one is not happy, while it was almost as big as above one, a month ago. It's planted in the existing soil, with added compost as feed, and sand for permeability. Alas, only sadness. Losing leaves, sad flowers, blackening as a bud. Same for thyme, trumpet vine (campsis), and Bengal Clock vine (thumbergia grandiflora). The local soil here is some sort of clay. A bit like concrete in the dry season. Draining: no. The localos are sort of lyrical about it, but that's localos. I think it's quite rubbish for frangipani, and was worried about it for my frangipanis from the start. They like a well-drained soil. Clay gives them wet feet, losing leaves and black flower buds.

What to do. Well, you buy 10 80-liter bags of Compo Sana Universal @ 15€, dig out the old soil, and in the new.

And see:

And now hope all frangipanis will look like they should:

It looks like a small ditch that was dug out, but it's about 1 m³, and lots of wheelbarrow loads. Sweaty job.

And now it's raining, which is nice.

Plants 2 - Frangipani

Frangipani, or Plumeria in Latin, is a plant we know from Australia, although originally from Mexico, Brazil and Central America. Plumeria is a relative of the Baobab, and you'll see it by the strange stem.

But it's all about the flowers. They are fragrant as frangipani. Sweet, but not yucky sweet,
if you get my drift.

There are white-yellow ones,

and pink ones, although the flowers of this one are white-yellow, though they have a pink edge when just open.

oo, a wild colors version!

Oh well, bought another few. They're very well suited for un-deep soil as we have at the edge of the terrace. Frangipani is great in containers too, as they don't have large root systems. And, very important,
they're from tropical regions, so they love the full sun.

So today's task is to turn the soil once more, add more compost, remove the stones, and prepare for planting.

And a job it is, in this weather. Lucky we have a pool for cooling off. Funny, our pool is green-yellow-white, too.