Frangipani Info

Frangipanis are very easy to grow as long as you do not over care for them. The most common cause of death is from over watering. These plants originally come from desert type terrain so they do not need a lot of water, although they love a drink during the warmer weather.

Flowering on your plant can be directly linked to how you take care of your plant, frangipani build up for their flowering a season in advance. So if you water, feed and give your plant lots of sunshine this season, then your next season’s flowers will be much better. Potting a "rooted" cutting

When you receive our frangipani select your pot size by the height & width of your cutting, you want to make sure that the pot will not tip over from too much "top weight" and don’t purchase a HUGE pot for a small plant. You should be looking at a pot somewhere between a 10-12 inch pot. You can use most pots for this but we use black plastic pots as they generate a lot of heat in the sun and this improves their growth rate as it keeps the roots hot, the roots are very important to your growth and plant condition.

Use a potting mix without any water crystals as these retain moisture, the mix has to be free draining. Put some stones in the bottom of the pot to help drainage then put in your mix. Make sure that the root system is spread out then top up your pot, tap it on the ground or table a few times to settle the mix, put in a bit more and tamp it down, we usually have at least 1" to 2" of mix over the roots & stake the plant. Water it well until you see the water seeping from the drain holes, you can add a seaweed fertilizer to the water as this will help "de-stress" the plant and feed it.

During summer you can also add slow release fertilizer to the pot, a high nitrogen one will promote root and leaf growth but for flowering you need a high potassium fertilizer, orchid bloom food usually suffices for this. You will not need to water it again until the pot is dry; in summer this can be 2 or 3 times a week but in winter when all the leaves have dropped you do not water at all as the plant is dormant and will rot if watered.

You can feed your frangipani a slow release fertilizer at the start of the season and when it is in full bloom, this will give it the added boost it needs. You can also foliar feed it every 2 weeks, all of this helps to improve your frangipani.

Frangipani the size you have purchased, will only flower every second season from the growth tips, this is also where your plant will start new branches. You only need to re-pot when the plant has out grown its current container or becomes too top heavy for the pot. If you are going to keep your plant in a pot, make sure you re-pot about every 5 years. Give it some fresh soil and trim back the root ball. Over winter you can move your plant into a protected area so that no frosts or very cold weather hit your growing tips, and then move it back into full sun when the cold weather is finished.

The same applies for planting in the ground – the ground temps will stay higher during winter than in a pot and obviously once planted in the ground, you can’t move them about as you can in a pot.

Frangipani World Cobaki – 07 5590 7832 (answering machine) .