OK, here's the portulaca (Moss Rose) baskets. Cuttings originally planted June 6th, so 1 month old and blooming lightly in dappled shade at 4pm.

Fantastic, Peggy!

The trees have really grown taller on both sides of my yard since last year and these are only getting full sun 2 hours a day (those got full sun for 4 hours a day last year!). Not sure that's going to be enough sun for plentiful blooming. They are producing blooms, but very few still:

I may have to consider pruning back the surrounding crepe myrtles and letting our tree man thin the elms (when he comes to prune my half-dead loquat tree this winter) that cause the lion's share of the shading, it appears. I want my baskets to be flowers, not more boring greenery. The lady before me only planted non-blooming evergreens and crepe myrtles. B-O-R-I-N-G on the landscape in my opinion. All my neighbors have nothing but non-blooming evergreens in their yards as well. It has always been a really shaded street all except my house on the end, that is. Now, even my house is succumbing to being overtaken by shade. A valued commodity in Texas, but not if you're wanting to grow some colorful flowers.

Ooohhh... I think you could have a lot of color. Most of my most colorful stuff is in mostly shade. When I am @ home later, I can post some pics that may give you some ideas beyond just Coleus & Begonias. I usually rely on leaves for most of the color, and if there are flowers, they are a bonus for me & the birds/bees/hummers.

For now, you could imagine a couple of baskets of these gorgeous Syngonium vines... spotted crawling around in the tropical house @ Denver Bot. garden last week:

OK, here are some colorful plants that would love the spot, and can outshine a lot of actual blooms... sorry for the delayed reply! I hope you're ready for a wild ride.

Coleus & variegated Peperomia


Coleus again, Tradescantia cerinthoides, Plectranthus verticillatus & argentatus.


Kalanchoe blossfeldiana. Blooms start around the end of the year and keep going through most of the summer, where I am.


'Snow White' waffle plant & Tradescantia zebrina & T. cerinthoides.


Neoregelia!! Potmates with an Aloe.


More Coleus, Begonia 'Beefsteak', a little false Aralia tree.


Begonia 'Sinbad' and Dracaena cultivar.


Portulaca umbraticola (ornamental purslane,) Tradescantia zebrina, Plectranthus verticillata, a stem of variegated zigzag (Euphorbia tithymaloides) right in the middle of the pic.


Bird nest fern (Asplenium) makes a great, dramatic hanging basket. With Tradescantia zebrina & Tripogandra.


More P. umbraticola with Plectranthus amboinicus (Cuban oregano), Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi, Tripogandra.


A pot of heart-leaf Philodendron LOVES to hang in mostly shade for summer (in the middle)


Coleus & Gibasis geniculata.


A few different Begonias toward the top, more Tradescantia zebrina & Gibasis geniculata.


Dragon wing Begonia, Syngonium, T. zebrina, sweet potato vine (Ipomoea).


Syngonium @ the bottom, Tradecantia spathacea @ the top. About as colorful a the most colorful blooms.


IDK what you might actually see for sale, but don't let "them" tell you where to put it. If it loves the spot and you want to put it in your hanging pots, you should. : )

Oh, Tiffany, I hadn't thought of Tradescantia spathacea or the zebrina strain. Those would be lovely dripping down over those baskets! And any Kalanchoe is gorgeous anywhere! I'm not familiar with Your Neoregelia is just beautiful and the plant itself actually LOOKS like flowers! It appears to be a succulent
but I just read they are in the bromeliad family? These baskets do get hit every 3rd day with spray from our automatic sprinkler system. That may be too much for them. I sure like it though, so I may try it somewhere else in the yard, or maybe up on the front porch itself on the front sun-exposed edge.

Thanks for all your suggestions. Some really nice & colorful baskets you have there!

Happy to suggest! I usually water everything every-other day in this heat.

Neoregelia are kind of strange. There's an original part of it with roots in the soil and then the rest of it is connected by stems in the air. I top-off the water in the cups every-other day when I'm watering.

I put a few little snips of Sedum in a couple of them. They seem to like each other.





Not that I think this is a way to grow Sedum, just satisfying my curiosity, and it demonstrates how there's always water in the cups.

3-4 days ago I decided to remove all fuchsia-colored cuttings from my new salmon Portulaca baskets out front. I'm sure the vendor didn't mean to include those cuttings in my shipment of salmon. I like the color fuchsia, but not mixed with salmon. I carried the cuttings out back and poked them into a non-functioning water fountain "planter" in my back yard. Watered daily. Today, I looked at them and two are sporting blooms already! New shoots/leaves as well! Man, oh, man, does this variety of Portulaca ever root fast! I didn't dig up the roots on those out front, so I will take more cuttings as more fuchsia blooms make their presence known out front and add them to this grey fountain/planter to fill it out faster. I think the fuchsia will look nice in the gray planter when it fills out.

The salmon Portulaca are looking nice this week. They ended up being more visible in these baskets than I thought they would. Time to fertilize them again tomorrow.

I am growing Portulaca from seed. The thing I have learned is that Portulaca seedlings hate direct sunlight. The seedlings will wilt if exposed to it. Mine are getting along quite nicely, albeit slowly...

Peggy, that looks so much better than mine!

Good luck, Gardener!

Here is what has become of P. grandiflora, pitiful.


P. umbraticola is rockin'!

purpleinopp said:Peggy, that looks so much better than mine!

Good luck, Gardener!

Here is what has become of P. grandiflora, pitiful.


P. umbraticola is rockin'!

What happened to your grandiflora?

Some combination of dry soil, in the sun too long, heat, humidity, it just doesn't like me....? This happens every time I buy this plant, periodically for decades. I think it might go better if I ever got seeds to sprout, or happen to find plants without peat stuck hopelessly to the roots. I'm not devoting space to this again for a few yrs, taking a break from it breaking my heart and optimism. It's not in the same league with P. umbraticola, at least not @ my house.

I have strange experience with moss rose, when I try to take care of them, they will die, but when I ignore them, they will grow healthy and produce colorful flower.
Last time I made a major prunings, cut everything, then I selected the healthy, fat and big cuttings, grew them in a nice pot with rich garden soil media. For all the left over, the small , skinny , deteriorated ones, I tossed them on another pot that I grew fruits, hoping that they will de-compost and become a fertilizer, at the end this last one grown better than the selected ones..

Beautiful! Are they in mostly sun or shade?

2 to 3 hours direct sun daily, infact they are neglected, I never take care of them, almost never water them, but they will get some spill over water, when I water other trees daily, and from rain.

Thank you. : ) It would make sense to cut these off @ soil level and give the snippings so they could try with fresh roots formed without peat moss, more shade.

I kept my 3" cuttings bought on ebay in a virtually full shade setting for nearly a month. I waited until they were over 8-10" long to move them to part shade and nearly 2 months before moving to my lamp post out front. There, they are getting about 2-3 hours direct sun from 11am to about 2pm. They are shaded early morning by an oak tree and are in dappled shade late afternoon by hy neighbor's driveway trees. They seem happy there. And you know how hot it gets in Texas this time of year, so I think they will do just fine. I lowered the baskets this year on my lamp post so they would get hit by the automatic watering system every other day otherwise I can forget to go out and hand water the baskets.

A few years ago, they would never have survived the sun nearly all day long hanging on this post. All the trees in my yard and surrounding yards have grown quite a bit taller the last few years, noticeably reducing the amount of light hitting this lamp post. I've pretty much been ignoring these two baskets.

Thank you, Peggy. : )