The Wisconsin Gardener

cc If you're looking for a drought tolerant, full sun plant that's almost carefree, boy, have we got the plant for you. I'm at Rotary Gardens in Janesville with the Director of Horticulture, Mark Dwyer. Mark, we're talking moss roses. Boy, have they come a long way since I saw them and played with them years ago. These are not the moss roses of my childhood. They are not. It's one of those things that in terms of developments breeding developments in particular, the moss roses, or Portulacas are becoming more and more prevalent in our landscapes. Not only for the drought tolerance that you mentioned but the beautiful colors. I remember just single flowers kind of scraggly looking plants and maybe it was the way I was taking care of them. But this bed behind you is just a wave of color and I'm seeing doubles, stripes colors that I didn't even know existed with moss roses. Right, and again the amazing part is the developments in not only the doubles but some of the streaked petals. There's a great variety called 'Happy Hour Peppermint' which is pink with some neat magenta striping and stippling. The Portulacas are native to South America that's Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. What's interesting about their growth rate is they love our hot, dry Wisconsin summers. Better than I do! Great it a container or a drier portion of a bed. Again, that flower power is something that's very prevalent. It begins very early. It's important to mention that the flowers do close up.

00am and 4

00pm. Really? It's a mid-day plant; I didn't realize that. Right. You won't see them in the evening but breeders are now trying to have these portulacas that have a longer period of bloom. They've even refined our traditional perslane which is also a species of Portulaca. Well, purslane is a common garden weed. This is something most of us are trying to get rid of in the vegetable garden and in bare soil. Now it happens to be also an edible garden weed. Right. Are any of the moss roses in that category of being edible? I'm not sure about the traditional grandiflora species but oleraceae, which is traditional purslane we have some varieties that were bred for flower power that are right behind us. They would also be edible. Okay, so check the label. On some of these, you could have flowers and some edible leaves for your salad. For sure and it's important to mention that those leaves as a vegetative plant it's one of the most nutritional plants that are out there in terms of greens. Right, and they do taste great in salads. Right. So, you know, functional, edible, pretty, great. You tend to take one plant, something like this. This is kind of a special display. It won't be here every year. Correct, right. Each year, we like to select a certain seasonal or annual of choice, and we grow every variety we can. So last year for instance, was marigolds. We've done salvia, snapdragons, etc. Moss roses, we've always grown here in those tough, sunny spots and always enjoyed them. So we thought, why not. We ended up locating 65 varieties. Boy, they filled in. They've they've been very low maintenance for us. Few would argue that the flower power is amazing particularly with the doubles which have larger flowers and the very vivid coloration. What about care, full sun? Mm-hmm. Fertilizing, what do we do with these? Well, full sun or part sun. The issue with part sun is you'll have less flowers. Full sun is ideal. We typically will fertilize once a month with kind of a lower-mixed fertilizer a liquid feed, or something of that nature. But if your soil's half-way decent they'll be fine through the season. So, really a carefree plant that way. They can take very lean soils. With nurturing, you'll get more growth and better flowers. We would fertilize four times over the course of the summer. These are all very low growing. Is that pretty much the growth habit that we're going to see? So, if I'm using these in a container they're going to sit there? They're not going to cascade over, or anything like that. It will be a minor cascade, you're right. They don't get over 12 inches in height. They'll spill over in a little way but they're not a cascader. A great ground cover. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. The beautiful stripes behind us are gorgeous. Do you have any favorites? Well, aside from that "Happy Hour Peppermint" there's all sorts of neat names that refer to the colors. Usually, they're in a series. There's Happy Hour Peppermint Happy Hour Banana, which is a beautiful yellow. It goes on and on. There's just such a wide range of colors. It's a subjective thing, we all like different colors. But if you're looking for reds, oranges, whites, peach. There's some that are very light colored in terms like a terra cotta, even. So, it's tough to pick a specific favorite. That's why we encourage people to look at them take pictures, and find them the next year. That's why you do one specific plant so people can really get a sense of what it looks like. Right, side by side. Well, thank you, this is fantastic. When I first saw these, I said I had to get some of these. Thanks, Mark. You're welcome.