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The Impatient Gardener

Garden, Plants

HOW TO GET THE LOOK OF THE TROPICS IN THE NORTH

September 20, 2016

There’s no getting around it: At this time of year, the garden is starting to look tired. Foliage is tattered and sun faded, flowers are flopping, everything looks a bit haggard. But one plant is just now coming into its own, the ever tropical-looking Castor bean. 

This plant will surely catch your key from across the garden.
Before I go any further, this is one plant I feel requires a warning. There are a lot of poisonous plants out there that I wouldn’t bother with a warning on, but this one is a biggie. All parts of the plant and especially the seed are poisonous (this is where ricin comes from, after all). Don’t eat any of it let anyone or anything eat it. My dog has never shown an interest in eating plants and he’s never outside unattended, so I feel comfortable growing this, but you may not be.
OK, preamble done. Castor bean (Ricinus communis) ticks all my tropical plant boxes. It has huge palmate leaves in the most lovely shade of purple or green (I’ve only grown purple varieties), and crazy pokey-looking red flowers. 
The flowers are unlike any others.
They can get very large, so I’ve grown smaller varieties: ‘Impala’ last year and ‘Gibsonii’ this year, and both have topped out in the 5- to 6-foot range. I start them from seeds in spring and like all beans they are very easy to get going. When I plant them out in early June, when it’s plenty warm (they will flat out sulk on chilly nights) and they are about a foot tall and then I mostly forget they exist until all of a sudden one day in mid- to late-August, there they are, standing proud a few feet tall. From there, their growth rate is unbelievable, reaching for the sky and developing a main stem (trunk?) that is about 1.5 inches in diameter, even on the smaller varieties.
They are also pretty good about not needing staking. I suspect the secret is a good amount of water, which we’ve had plenty of from Mother Nature. I keep meaning to cut a few leaves to take inside to see if they hold their shape once cut, but I haven’t gotten around to it and I suspect they won’t. 
At a house I was at recently, a huge variety of Castor bean occupies a corner of the vegetable garden, which, now that I think about it is a little ironic.
I was at a house with beautiful professional landscaping a couple weekends ago for a party and noticed that their gardener used tall Castor beans in lots of spots, including a tricky, tiny corner of soil near the driveway and at the entrance to the vegetable garden.
I’m always torn about where to plant Castor beans, because they want sun and heat, if you can give them that, but they would look great in a far corner of the garden where their big leaves beckon and invite visitors for a closer look. Still it’s a fantastic annual (here, anyway) that offers a look that’s hard to get.
Have you grown Castor beans?

castor bean
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
4 Comments

About Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

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Comments

  1. Lisa Greenbow says: September 20, 2016 at 11:05 pm

    I have grown castor beans. It was a long time ago. I had more sun then. They are a striking plant. I can imagine seeing a castor bean with a banana tree for a really tropical look. They have a banana tree that survives here in zone6. My neighbor has one that has lived at least three years.

    Reply
  2. Karen says: September 21, 2016 at 6:03 pm

    Don't they reseed like crazy? I thought I heard that.

    Reply
  3. Ms. Wis./Each Little World says: September 21, 2016 at 8:07 pm

    Even the smaller varieties are too big for my garden but I love their look.

    Reply
  4. Stephen Andrew says: September 23, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    I have a giant aqua pot and I might try one in that next year. It could kind of look like a Japanese maple on steroids. I was reading about giant leaf rhubarb and am thinking I might try that. I remember a few years ago in Martha Stewart someone spray painted the leaves of the rhubarb silver and left them like that for a few weeks before the cut them off and threw them away. I always kinda liked that idea. Can't imagine it's good for anything in its surrounding though.

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Here’s a combo I’m totally digging this year: Wicked Witch coleus with Compact White Sunpatiens. I should have planted more Sunpatiens because they haven’t filled in as much as I expected in this part sun spot, but it’s a great look.
When you leave your garden in the middle of summer you know there’s going to be some clean up on the back end. It’s amazing how the little things we do every day in the garden, even when we’re not “working” in it—pulling a weed, propping up a plant, tucking tendrils into a trellis—add up to important jobs. And you don’t realize that until they aren’t being done. 

When I came home after 8 days away I was planning to whip the whole garden into shape and ended up spending all day in the vegetable garden where things went awry quickly. 

I was rewarded though with lots of cucumbers and zucchini and a few pretty bouquets to put around the house. This is Madame Butterfly Bronze with White (a name I don’t understand at because I wouldn’t use any of those words to describe the color) snapdragon and Apricot Shades strawflower. 

Check the link in the bio to see the whole video and what I found when I first laid eyes on the garden after some time away.
It’s a nighttime hunt in the garden and it’s the best time to find hornworms. You’ll need a black light and a tough gag reflex but you have to remove these guys from your tomato plants or they’ll be gone quickly. If you find a hornworm with white things that look like grains of rice in it, that is parasitic wasp larvae that will eat them from the inside (everything about this is gross). Remove those hornworms from your plants but don’t kill then as you’ll be aiding the beneficial bug population by allowing those parasitic wasps to hatch. For other hornworms you can kill them or feed them to chickens or put on your bird feeder. They do turn into beautiful, big moths but you want to make sure they can’t get back to your plants if you let the hornworms live.
When it comes Echinacea, @garden.evolution (aka Coneflower king) and I don’t often agree, but I think we both feel the same about Color Coded ‘The Price is White’ being an outstanding variety. The flowers are big and flat, hold their white color really well, are sturdy and, well, put on a great show. I’m loving them growing with Rock ‘n Grow ‘Back in Black’ too. Both are @provenwinners varieties from @waltersgardens

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