Experience with Adenium

 

As a compulsive ‘plant buyer’ I tend to pick up a lot plants from the flower shows & exhibitions,

without knowing or researching much in detail about them. I do it the reverse way. I buy it on an

instinct and then go about reading and searching out details about them!

One such plant I bought was an Adenium more commonly known as Desert rose.

This tall branch is my adenium

In my earlier apartment, I had a west facing window sill space for all my plants. So, the new plant

had to share a small space amongst the other plants I had picked up or propagated myself. To 

name a few plants that I possess, there are Mint & Basil plants that I propagated from the store 

bought stem, a Ficus (Peepal) tree picked from the roadside, a Mili that I got from the apartment 

complex’s common garden and some orchids.

My plant grew spindly and long (as you can see in the second picture )as there were just a few

hours of sun, which led me to research more about it. After few days of intense ‘google-ing’, I

came to know that it was called a desert rose and it was a succulent. As I got to know more about

the requirement to grow this plant, I understood that it’s most important need was to grow

receiving maximum sunlight, which I couldn’t provide due to the way sunlight falls on my

apartment. But reading further I learnt that I could prune it to give it a shorter height which may

be beneficial for the plant’s growth. And it is during all of this, that I  came across the term 

‘regular pruning’ and ‘hard pruning’ for the first time.

Pruned plant with more branches

Pruning is done to encourage plant to give out more branches. The plant will spread out rather than

just growing upward. Hard pruning is when you cut the entire top half only leaving the caudex. Ideal  

is 6 inches however people who experiment has done much more. There are many methods to get

more branches but that will be for later.

Now coming back to my plant, as I love to learn new thing the ‘hard way’, I could not resist

trying hard pruning even though I wasn’t sure were that would lead. I always like to jump first

and then look, even though this way you can fall flat on your face more times than not.

Something always pushes me to do things recklessly or let’s say ‘trial and error’ method (I have

tried umpteen times grafting another rose scion bud to a plant when I was a kid and of course all

failed(all that remained of my trials were the scars on the mother plant). I never shy away from

that, but of course it’s another story whether my plants make it or not!

So, one fine day I sat with my plant which I uprooted and realised the root had swollen up inside

the soil. I was equally excited and nervous to see and verify my new learnings. In all that

excitement I trimmed some roots, hard pruned the caudex, repotted it in soil, watered it heavily

and left it.

Hard pruned plant

 I came back to check every day only to see no activity or progress on the plant’s side. On third or

fourth day I realised the caudex was becoming softer (I did not realise what was happening). In a

few days more the rot took over and that was the end of my first Adenium trial. Waaah! I was sad

having lost my plant and another experiment gone sour! Determined, I started looking for reasons

why it rotted.

And finally, after consuming many YouTube videos on this subject and online search, I found the

reason! My greatest mistake was watering a plant with exposed and not healed roots. So, from

there I learnt few things more.

 

My first one to flower

Never cut the roots and plant it directly. I might have picked up such ideas from seeing videos by

expert who planted it in that manner but they might have taken other precautions as well! So, the

best method is (for all the newbies like me), when you prune do not repot the plant at the same

time. Make sure you trim the roots and let the plant dry and heal  for 4-5 days before repotting.

The potting media must be free draining so add 50 % sand. 

Do not water for a week. Adenium have enough water stored in their caudex to survive a long 

draught being a desert succulent.

So, these were my takeaways from my first plant ‘pruning’ experiments. I have collected a lot more

plants since then, but luckily or with more knowledge I have not lost any more of my plants! And the

learning process has been awesome and I have been rewarded with amazing blooms!!