Adenium Arabicum Care

Adenium arabicum care is relatively an easy task. It will pretty much exist on its own. All you need to do is plant it in a good soil, place it in an ideal location, provide water once in a while, and shower with a little fertilizer.

They can be grown indoors or outdoors and are quite sensitive to frost. When grown indoors, they can get larger than other common houseplants. They have thick trunks, dark green foliage, and beautiful trumpet-shaped flowers.

Adenium Obesum is relatively low maintenance once they are established. Provide them with the right soil mixture, proper sunlight, water requirements, and they can live for years. Although they are easy to care for, occasionally they can develop problems. Many of these problems can be avoided when care is adjusted.

How to Care for Adenium Arbicum Desert Rose

Light

Provide your adenium with bright light. You should provide the exact Adenium arabicum light requirements as much as possible in order for it to thrive. Bright light is much needed for optimum growth and flowering of your adenium plant.

If kept indoors, choose the brightest spot of the room for your adenium. This is critical specifically during the growing stage. Your plant is needing as much food to support growth and development.

A full-day light is much preferred. If light is insufficient, the plant will grow weak and spindly. You can also expect that Adenium arabicum blooming will be delayed.

Watering

Watering of Adenium arabicum is a critical task. Since this plant is succulent, its body is characterized by having the ability to store moisture. This serves as a reservoir for the plant in order to survive arid conditions.

Do not overwater your adenium because this will cause root rot. This plant prefers to be on the dry side so twice a week watering will do during the dry seasons. Make sure the soil is dry before watering again. During cold seasons, lessen the watering frequency to about once a month especially when the leaves are no longer present.

Make sure to drench the pot so the soil is well-saturated. However, always ensure that excess water drains out of the pot. Large adenium plants need more frequent watering than the small ones.

Temperature

Remember that adeniums are native to areas with dry, and warm climates. You can’t expect them to withstand freezing temperatures. In fact, anything that goes below  10oC (50oF) is already detrimental to this plant.

It’s safe to maintain the Adenium arabicum temperature always above the critical level. So, when the cold season comes, bring your adenium plant indoors. Place it in a bright spot or provide artificial sources of light to keep the room well-lit and warm.

Always check whether the species is suited to the existing climate of your area before buying one. USDA Zones 10a to11b are the best locations to grow Adenium arabicum.

Air Humidity

Humidity is the amount of moisture in the air. Succulents wouldn’t normally like high humidity. Remember they have plenty of moisture in store in their roots and caudex. Additional moisture wouldn’t benefit them.

Your Adenium arabicum succulent prefers an environment where humidity is low, around 30%. Keep it away from your humidifiers! And never ever mist them as you would with your other indoor plants. Otherwise, your adenium is prone to rotting.

Keep your Adenium arabicum humidity low by displaying it in a location where there’s not much moisture around. Avoid placing the pot in kitchens or near your bathrooms.

Soil

To avoid root rot, you must prepare a well-draining potting mix for your arabicum. The commercial succulent mixes that you see in garden stores are suited for this plant. Add draining materials such as perlite, vermiculite or sand. Mixing in organic matter such as compost will help improve the soil’s structure and fertility.

Check how fast the soil drains by pouring water into the pot. If the water seeps out just minutes after watering, then drainage is good.

The Adenium arabicum soil must be slightly acidic (pH 5.0 to 5.8). You can check this using a soil pH meter.

Fertilizing

As a desert dweller, this pink flowered rose is a survivor even with little nutrients supplied. Desert land is practically barren, that’s why only a few plants could survive. Luckily, adenium is one of them.

This means that you need not to worry about constantly feeding your pink flower potted plants. A sprinkle of diluted balanced fertilizer once a month will do. Just make sure they go directly to the soil and not the leaves. Or, you’ll scorch them!

Increase the content of phosphorus fertilizer like bone meal during the blooming stage. This will help induce desert rose flowering.

Propagation

There are numerous ways to make propagation of Adenium arabicum successful. The most classic way is using seeds. However, this method will take a lot of time. If you want to cut the process shorter, use the vegetative process of propagation.

Other than using Adenium arabicum seeds, cuttings are a great way to start new babies. Just cut a healthy portion of the adenium, dip into a rooting hormone, and plant in the rooting medium. Once roots are established, the new adenium will continue to grow as a separate plant.

Other ways include air layering and grafting. You may try any of these methods.

Re-Potting

Re-potting Adenium arabicum should take place during the plant’s active growing stage. The perfect timing is during springtime. At this time, roots will grow faster. As a result, the plant would easily settle on its new container.

Adenium is a slow growing plant. So, there’s no need to re-pot every year. They don’t even mind being a little pot bound. Once you notice that the roots start to come out of the pot, then, that’s a signal to repot to a bigger container.

You can use any type of pot but it must be sturdy enough to hold the growing adenium.

Pruning

Pruning is the way to keep the Adenium arabicum shape. By cutting off the undesirable branches, you can train the plant to follow a specific structure. It also helps regulate the height and size of your adenium.

There’s no exact time of when to do pruning. This depends entirely on the growth rate of your plant and the desired outcome that you wish to achieve. You can conduct pruning to induce profuse flowering. Or, you can prune to simply remove dead and diseased leaves and flowers.

However, as a rule of thumb, pruning Adenium arabicum should be done during its active and growing stage.

Adenium Arabicum Common Problems

Even the strongest plants have their weak points. For this beautiful succulent, root rot makes a downfall. There is no easier way to kill an adenium than over watering them. To give you an idea, following are common Adenium arabicum problems you’ll most likely encounter as you grow your own.

Pests

The typical Adenium arabicum pests are scales, mealybugs and spider mites. These tiny sap and sucking organisms would mulch on the plant’s tissue. The damages left include lesions on the leaves, formation of brown spots, yellowing and even leaf drop.

If you’re growing Adenium arabicum indoors, expect that these pests are more likely to be persistent. They’re difficult to spot unless their population is already dense and the damages noticeable. Mealybugs form a white powdery appearance while the scales look like small, rounded lumps. If silk webs are present, then, that’s the spider mites on the work.

Spray them with diluted neem oil mixed with dish soap. You may also swab them off with cotton dipped in alcohol.

Diseases

Adenium arabicum diseases are few. Bacterial and fungal root and stem rots are the most common. All of such are triggered by overwatering and excess moisture. These unfavorable conditions trigger the growth of pathogens.

It starts with the roots. Damaged roots would result in less vigorous plants, stunted growth, and yellowing of leaves. In this case, you have to uproot the plant to check the condition down there.

To avoid diseases, use sterile soil as a potting mix. Sterilization kills the pathogens that might be inhabiting the soil. Avoid overwatering at any cost. And always drain the pot after watering. Keep your adenium in a well-lit and warm area.

Growing Problems

If the environmental conditions aren’t favorable, expect that Adenium arabicum growth rate will be slowed. Such cases include the lack of light, erratic temperature, drastic humidity changes, and moisture problems. Climate has a huge impact on the growth and development of all plant species.

To overcome these challenges, you have to be aware of the environmental cues. Check the prevailing environmental conditions and make a move before any damage is done to your adenium. For example, if the temperature is expected to go really low, bring your adenium inside. Provide insulation to add warmth to the surrounding. Install additional light sources.