5 gardening tips for growing four o'clocks

If you work during the day, you'll love coming home to the evening blooms of four o'clocks. These late-blooming flowers are easy to grow and maintain. Here's how:

• The colourful, tubular flowers of four-o'clocks emit a heady scent of sugar, lemon and spice that varies from plant to plant.
• The 0.6-metre-tall to 1.2-metre-tall (two-foot-tall to four-foot-tall) plants look festive when grown in masses.
• They resemble leggy shrubs more than annuals, making them suitable for use as a seasonal hedge.
• Even before the five-centimetre-long (two-inch-long) blossoms emerge, bright green leaves add a fresh accent to the landscape.
• The richly hued flowers are intensified when paired with magenta petunias or pink flowering tobacco.

• Four-o'clock colours were once limited to yellow and magenta. Today's flowers still tend to be mottled with those two colours, but more choices are available.
• A newly rediscovered variety, 'Broken Colours,' produces hundreds of trumpet-shaped flowers. They range in colour, including raspberry, orange, lemon yellow and white.
• Some of the flowers are striped or dotted with several colours.
• Specialty nurseries often stock a solid yellow variety, simply called 'Jalapa Yellow.'

• Four-o'clocks are easy to grow from seed.
• In cold climates, start seeds indoors five weeks before the last frost.
• Soak seeds in water overnight before sowing them on the soil's surface.
• Keep the soil moist and at 21°C (70°F) until seedlings have several sets of adult leaves.
• Set seedlings out after danger of frost has passed, spacing them about 35 centimetres (14 inches) apart in a sunny site with fertile, well-drained soil.
• Four-o'clocks will bloom the first season.

• Four-o'clocks are perennials and will form tuberous roots.
• You can dig the tubers up in the fall after the first frost, the same way you would dahlias. Store them in a dark, dry place that remains above 10°C (50°F) over winter.
• Plant the tubers outdoors in spring as soon as the ground warms. Saving tubers is a way to keep a favourite colour year after year.
• In time, the tuber becomes very large and can then be divided just before planting. Pot the tuber and place it in a warm place to sprout new shoots.
• When growth begins, unpot and cut into smaller pieces, each with new shoots. Treat the cut surfaces with powdered sulphur and pot individually.

• Because four-o'clocks have fleshy stems, they will wilt quickly in dry soil. Water as needed during droughts to prevent wilting.
• Small and spindly plants may need fertilizer. Apply a monthly dose of balanced, soluble, all-purpose plant food, as directed on the package.
• Pests are few but do include the metallic green Japanese beetle, which chews holes in blossoms for a few weeks in summer.
• Plants recover quickly when the beetles' feeding frenzy ends.
• Handpick beetles early in the morning, when they're sluggish, and drop them into a bowl of soapy water. Or, spray the plants with insecticidal soap according to package directions.

Four o'clocks make for a colourful addition to any garden. You can grow them from seed and keep the tubers over the winter, which means you can come home to beautiful flowers year after year.