Folks who appreciate succulent plants drool over owning a Donkey Ear of their own, the genuine Kalanchoe Gastonis bonnieri from Madagascar. This succulent seems to be everyone’s favorite for its unique leaves, the way new baby plants form, for the big and bold flower stems, for the blooms, for the hummingbirds which love the flowers.
First, lets look at the leaves. They’re light green / gray-white when young/new. As Donkey Ears grows, the leaves become more prominent and bold in size. The “ears” can become 12+ inches long and a deeper green with more prominent “mule” spots. Planted in your landscape, those baby plants at the leaf tips would root into your soil and automatically make new separate plants. Sometimes the baby plants just fall off and you can re-plant elsewhere or into pots like we do here. Otherwise, you can remove baby plants at some reasonable size and re-pot or plant out. After about a year, the mother plant Donkey Ears suddenly sends up a shoot that can easily grow to 2-feet tall. At the tip of the shoot, flower buds begin to form. Here in Fort Lauderdale this process of sending up a shoot and developing flower buds takes several months …it makes us crazy waiting to see how tall the flower head will rise. After all that, the flowers begin to open. Very cool, eh Hummingbirds show up to take a drink. You can grow your own Donkey Ear plant outdoors if you keep it frost free …plant into your landscape as a low-rise specimen plant, from full sun to partial shade (some shade is best for leaf coloring). You can grow your Donkey Ear in a pot like we do. Here’s one we gave a BIG POT and fed aggressively… Then bloomed into the major show off plant below …it’s very easy placed outdoors or in any bright window indoors during cold months …minimal water, a little pellet food, that’s it.
The plant you will receive is growing in a 4″ pot.
Proper name: Kalanchoe Gastonis-bonnieri
Carl Pool’s advanced formula BR-61 Plant Food is a special blend of essential nutrients and minerals specifically designed to promote healthy growth, maximum flower buds and larger, more colorful blossoms. It supplies the vital elements needed to sustain plant growth and flowering, and it encourages strong root developement of newly planted trees, shrubs, bedding plants and newly seeded or sodded lawns.
HULA GIRL is a 6 to 8 inch single bright yellow with light red center. Great bloomer, bush and hedge. Ask the people at the Magic Kingdom.
Forsythia set their buds on 1-year old branches and begin to do so shortly after flowering. That’s why you need to get out there and prune your forsythia early; late summer or fall pruning will remove next year’s flower buds. So it follows that a fall blooming will also have some impact on next spring’s flowering. However, late season flowering is usually not extensive. The weather seems to change before the whole shrub bursts into bloom, so there is still reason to expect a decent show come spring.
