Mulching is one of the great, modern gardening practices--- controls weeds, modifies soil temperatures, protects the soil from insulation and water loss from evaporation. If mulching with organic material, the breakdown products, particularly humus, acts as a buffer, by taking up and slow releasing nutrients. In my small garden I use pine bark. It seems to do all the things it's supposed to do. It is at a depth of about 2-3 inches. I'd like it a bit deeper but cost has to be considered. - John Richardon, February 4, 2003.

Mulching is so important when growing hibiscus in the ground. It is particularly important to me as our soil is a sandy loan (or perhaps a loamy sand) and would dry out very quickly without mulch.

I have used spent mushroom compost extensively in the past and found this to be excellent, but as it breaks down fairly quickly, can be quite expensive. We currently use pine bark which lasts up to 2 years. As well as the pine bark, we use the mulch from our 8 H.P. garden shredder which is mainly shredded palm fronds (not the leaf sheath) and this lasts for approximately six months. When applying mulch around the plant, I also add a couple of handfuls of dynamic lifter - (pelletized chicken manure). But remember, whatever you use for a mulch, anything is better than nothing - Allan Little February 4, 2003.

Mulching is one of the most important things you should do if you are growing plants in the garden, and also it helps preserve moisture if you are growing in pots.

Mulching helps stop water loss in the hot days, and keeps the roots nice and cool and moist, and the weeds are kept at bay most of the time if you mulch, and if a weed does appear it is much easier to remove as the soil is moist and the roots come out very easy.

It helps to provide humus for the soil as it breaks down, and the worms love it as the soil is kept moist and they can come towards the top of the soil. I usually apply about 3 to 4 inches of mulch on the beds and I leave an opening around the trunk of the bush, because if you pile it up around the trunk you run the danger of introducing rot into the bush.

The fine surface roots love to grow just under the mulch, in the moist cool soil, and they cannot do this if you do not have mulch spread, as the soil on the surface dries out and kills off any surface roots, so it aids the growth of the bush, because if you have a healthy root system you get better flowers, and that is the name of the game to produce better and more flowers.

I have used different types of mulch over the years, but any sort of organic matter will do, and it depends what is available in your area. At the moment I am using sugar cane mulch, which is made from the tops of the sugar cane which have been chopped up, and they bale it and sell it at the nurseries, but I have used pine bark fines, compost made from mushroom compost, sugar cane bagasse, grass clippings which have been composted, Tea tree compost made from the remains of the tea tree when they extract the oil from the plant, any thing which will shelter the roots and add humus to the soil as it breaks down.

It also saves on water in these days of paying for all the water we use, and I do not have to hose so much, as the ground stays moist for longer, and as it heats up here in OZ we have to be prepared and apply the mulch to keep our plants going through the hot months, or they soon tell you they are under stress as the leaves start to wilt, from lack of moisture, caused from the plant using so much water in the heat and if you do not mulch, the plant cannot get enough moisture, as the ground dries very quickly, but if the surface is covered the moisture is retained and your plants are not so stressed - Jim Purdie, September 30, 2002.

From the Editor: As a continuation of our review of old articles detailing the history of hibiscus rosa-sinensis, this article is based on a speech delivered by Dick Phillips during the May 3, 1990 Australian Hibiscus Society Convention. Dick Phillips was a member from Fiji, a horticulturalist government officer, consultant, nurseryman, newspaper columnist and radio program host with an interest in all types of plants but with a special interest in hibiscus.

The Perks grow little else but hibiscus and Ken has been heard to say that orchids would be wonderful plants if they had flowers like hibiscus. But they are breeding hibiscus of world quality. On a recent visit from the Waimea Arboretum on the North coast of Oahu, Hawaii, Keith Wooliams, who with Garry Powell has developed a hibiscus evolution garden, expressed very considerable surprise at the enormous variety of old and new hybrids that we have in Fiji.

As neither Ken nor I are on the right side of 60, we are beginning to get a little worried as to what might happen to our collection in the future. As a result, I am trying to get copies of all Ken and Joy's plants as well as scouring Suva and the other towns - and the other islands, when we get a chance to travel - for all the old hybrids, many of them very beautiful flowers and well worth preserving. It is possible that this duplicate collection might become part of a garden on the western side of the island of Viti Levu - perhaps part of a 'tour' for our overseas visitors. With assistance from Waimea, much of the collection may also go to Hawaii.

What a pity that regulations prevent us from sending plants to Australia. And yet, one of our hybrids is in the hibiscus listings of several nurseries in Australia. This is H. Tomato Lam. This name interested me when I saw it and I was told that the plant came to Australia from New Zealand. The correct name should be Tomato Lani and it is easy to see that on a badly written plant tag, Lani could become Lam.

This is s hybrid from the collection of Mrs. Philippa Day (now living in Sydney) and made at the town of Labasa on the island of Vanua Levu, where Geoff Day was manager of the sugar mill. One morning Phillipa noticed a seed pod on her plant of Honolulu Lani. She had not made the cross so the pollen parent is not known - it could have been Honolulu Lani selfed or Surfrider (Left Top Photo: Mervyn Weis © 2002) which was growing alongside. Two seedlings were of good quality and were named Tomato Lani and Labasa Lani, the latter having a much darker stronger colour with buff edges to the petals. How Tomato Lani got to New Zealand is not known.

Two other old hybrids in Australia interested me, Fijian White - which Gast called Hedstrom White as it was in the Hedstrom garden in Suva that he first saw it - and Fijian Pink, which I did not know but the Perks recognized when I took a plant back to Fiji. We have our share of insect and fungus problems with our hibiscus, though I was surprised to see the extent of the damage done by the little black beetle - if we had 10% of what you have in Brisbane we would consider it had reached plague proportions.

I gather that the reason behind the ban on hibiscus imports from Fiji is a virus but I was assured that you already had it in Australia. A fungus that you do not want is what we call Thread Blight. I do not know its proper name and doubt that our Agriculture department has done any work on it. In wet weather such as we have in Suva (100 inches in the first four months of 1986) it appears as a thick black thread running up the underside of the branches and then spreading out and sucking dry each leaf.

The threads persist and a hibiscus bush with lots of dry leaves is a sure sign of Thread Blight. It responds readily to any good fungicidal spray but only about 20% of hibiscus appear susceptible. As part of their breeding pro-gramme, the Perks do not use plants which are susceptible hopefully breeding resistant plants.

Most tropical soils are of relatively low fertility so that regular fertilizing is essential for good flowering through many of the older hybrids seem to exist and flower their heads off under extremely hard conditions.

I am satisfied that many of the newer hybrids have a limited life span and need to be replaced with new plants grown from cuttings or grafted after six or seven years. Most of our soils in Suva are very shallow black muck over solid soapstone - there are areas of my garden where there is less than 12 inches of soil and 6 feet is probably the deepest. Under these conditions watering in the odd spells of dry weather is essential - drying out is probably the greatest cause of bud drop.

Fred Moffat was one of the better growers (he is also now in Australia) and he had a very regular spraying program with both insecticides and fungicide and he fertilized every month. Each bush was surrounded with a thick mulch of grass clippings - kept well away from the trunks - and each month, each plant was given a handful of a pelleted fertilizer onto the mulch. This is a fertilizer used mainly for sugar cane and so readily available here and simply known as N.P.K. 13.13.13 or 13.13.21. In dry weather he watered regularly. As a result he always had healthy clean bushes, covered with flowers. It was a lot of work, but it paid off. Fred also pruned regularly to keep his bushes in good shape.

For the records the weather in Suva (on the south eastern side of the islands of Viti Levu) is wet and warm. Rainfall is about 120 inches a year though on one glorious day in April, 1986, the official rain gauge said 11 inches, while a private rain gauge close to where I live registered 29 inches ! Temperatures seldom go below 6OF (15C) or above 95F (32C). The western side of the island - near Nadi Airport - has about 80 inches of rain a year with two thirds of this falling in the four summer months. Temperatures come slightly higher and lower than in Suva.

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NOTE - Botanical names are taken from J.W. Parham's Plants of the Fiji islands originally published in 1962.