Facts About Watering and Soils for Plumeria

No matter what you have heard water or watering your plumeria in winter will not harm them. This is a fact. We have been watering ours in the winter when they become dry and doing this for over three decades. We never move our plumeria under a protective shelter. We have several thousand growing out of shelter in this environment at this moment. And many years we have three inches of rain in a month and in Corona, Riverside County, California.

The enemy of all plumeria anywhere is growing in an improper soil. The native soil or planting mix is where all this concern should be not the rain. In the original plumeria native locales, tropical Mexico Central America and the Bahaman Islands and other tropical places such as Hawaii, Fiji, India and Thailand in the short daylight months there can be torrential rains. As an example there would be no plumeria in Hawaii if it wasn’t for the well draining volcanic soil and that’s because it has heavy rainfall at that latitude during the dormant season. Our climate is cooler so it is even more import to have a well draining soil for our plumeria to grow in. There is no scientific evidence that watering a plumeria in the winter will harm it. It is just the opposite. If your plumeria are dry they are stressed and more susceptible to frost or freeze damage and that is a well known scientific fact. More attention and conversation in the fall and winter time of year should be placed on learning about planting mixes that are well aerated and well draining.