Blue Adenium: A Slow Growing Bonsai Plant

Last Updated on January 6, 2023 by a Friendly Gardener

Adenium plants or Adenium obesum plants are better known as desert roses. The blue Adenium plant grows slowly and is used as a bonsai plant since it looks a little like a bonsai. These plants have thick trunks and thin leaves that come in different colors.

Most plants produce red or pink flowers, but some of them are blue as well and that’s what we will talk about. These plants are tropical succulents that are distinctive because of their fat trunks. They can be small even after they mature with the flowers on top of a stem.

Blue Adenium Plant Care

The blue Adenium plant care is not very difficult, but there are a few details you should know about their life cycles. Once you do, taking care of these plants is quite easy and you will have the pleasure of watching blue tubular flowers grow.

For starters, these are ornamental garden plants that are to be grown in USDA zones 10 and 11. If you like in a cooler region, you should grow these plants indoors because while they are tropical plants, they don’t do so well in a lot of heat. Of course, you can keep them on the deck or the patio in the summer.

Here are the rest of the care instructions for these plants.

Light

These plants are essentially succulents. So, they like bright sunlight, which means a southern window sill or a sunroom is a good place for them. This kind of light will help them grow and produce healthy flowers.

You want to protect them from direct sunlight, especially the kind you see in the afternoon because this light tends to scorch their leaves. So, you might even consider growing this plant outdoors with a little protection from the noon sun.

But the plant should not be covered by the shade of taller plants because that will impede its growth. It needs enough lighting throughout the rest of the day.

Water

If you don’t water these plants properly, you are pushing them toward their death. As mentioned earlier, these plants are succulents, but they are from tropical regions where there is a healthy monsoon reason after which there is a dry season.

So, the watering schedule should reflect that growing culture. These plants grow well in the monsoon season and go dormant when the weather is dry. You replicate that by making sure that in summer and spring, the soil is moist.

But in winter and fall, you reduce the amount of watering because that’s when the plant goes dormant.

Soil

These plants are originally from places that are hot and sunny with poor and gritty soil. So, you should make sure that the soil is never overly moist, just as you make sure that the light is never too harsh but not limited.

These plants grow well when they are in cactus soil that is mixed with lava rocks or gritty sand. The second part is so that they drain water well. These are a type of desert rose plants that like dry climates and grow well in gravelly soil.

So, you should make sure that the pH level of the soil is just around 6, which is between neutral and acidic.

Temperature

Coming from a tropical climate, these plants don’t do very well when they are exposed to temperatures under 40 degrees F. They are not frost-tolerant and will die if they are out in freezing temperatures. But if the temperature is around 90 degrees F, they will grow very well.

So, the lesson here is to make sure these plants are in warm temperatures no matter what the weather outside is like. If the temperature is less than 50 degrees F for a long period of time, they will die.

The ideal temperature for these plants is in the range between 65 degrees and 90 degrees F. If the plant is outside, it won’t live long when the temperature drops. And as mentioned earlier, humidity is also a key aspect of this plant’s growth.

Fertilizing

You can fertilize these plants once a month when they are in their growing season. That includes most of the year except winter when the plant is dormant. You should dilute the fertilizer to 50 percent and give it 20-20-20 plant food once a month.

This addition of liquid fertilizer will help the plant grow, but it might also produce more flowers.

Pests

Spider mites, scales, and mealybugs are common problems with these plants. But treating the infestation is quite easy as well. You just need to get some cotton balls, dip them in alcohol and wipe the plant to make sure that these insects stay away.

Pruning

And finally, here’s how you prune your blue Adeniums. Pruning is a way to make sure that the parts of the plant that might not have survived the cold are removed. You should do this before the growing season of the plant starts.

First, you should clean all the pruning equipment with a solution of bleach and alcohol to make sure that they are sterilized. If you are going to prune more than one plant, you should sterilize them again before you get started with the new plant.

You should look for long stems that are lanky so that the plant grows with symmetry. This is also a good time to make sure that branches that are crisscrossing and rubbing with other branches are removed.

You do this by cutting right above their corresponding leaf node or the place where one stem joins the other.

In Conclusion

So, these plants are easy to care for if you take care of a few things. They need sunlight all day long, but not when it is scalding hot in the afternoon. They need to be watered, but overwatering is a problem. These plants have fat trunks where they store moisture. So, plan the watering schedule accordingly.

And if the trunk is not looking swollen, they might be running low on moisture. These plants grow well in a humid climate, so their surroundings should get too cold. That’s also because they are not frost-tolerant.