Group/Class:  Sweet Talk™ Series

Brand:  Ball

Description:

Small, free branching shrub or subshrub presenting unusual true-red tubular flowers with purple calyces; great for bedding, shrub borders, and containers; continuous blooming from spring to fall; great for attracting pollinators; heat and drought tolerant

Ornamental Features

Sweet Talk™ Red Cuphea features showy red tubular flowers with purple calyces along the branches from mid spring to mid fall. Its tomentose pointy leaves remain grayish green in color throughout the year.

Landscape Attributes

Sweet Talk™ Red Cuphea is a multi-stemmed annual with an upright spreading habit of growth. Its medium texture blends into the garden, but can always be balanced by a couple of finer or coarser plants for an effective composition.

This is a relatively low maintenance plant, and is best cleaned up in early spring before it resumes active growth for the season. It is a good choice for attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Sweet Talk™ Red Cuphea is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

Sweet Talk™ Red Cuphea will grow to be about 10 inches tall at maturity extending to 14 inches tall with the flowers, with a spread of 14 inches. When grown in masses or used as a bedding plant, individual plants should be spaced approximately 12 inches apart. Its foliage tends to remain low and dense right to the ground. Although it's not a true annual, this plant can be expected to behave as an annual in our climate if left outdoors over the winter, usually needing replacement the following year. As such, gardeners should take into consideration that it will perform differently than it would in its native habitat.

This plant does best in full sun to partial shade. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. To help this plant achive its best flowering performance, periodically apply a flower-boosting fertilizer from early spring through into the active growing season. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider covering it with a thick layer of mulch in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder microclimates. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.

Sweet Talk™ Red Cuphea is a fine choice for the garden, but it is also a good selection for planting in outdoor pots and containers. It is often used as a 'filler' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination, providing a mass of flowers against which the larger thriller plants stand out. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.