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South Australia - 20th January 2003
I had an enquiry from a Wendy in Blackwood about why
her Philadelphus mexicanus is not flowering. She has used potash supplements and
seaweed extracts in an attempt to foster flowering. The plant is known to be
mildly frost tolerant (that’s -2°C) so climate is not the restriction. They
do best in partial shade and fully protected from the wind, which may be your
problem. Certainly no more nutrient encouragements!
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I recently tried a locally made product called a Potclip® that is a simple poly extrusion that you clip to a pot with a rim and can support it from other pots or a fence or trellis. Dead easy to use, very effective and a local invention, now available in stores nationally. Well-done Guy. Hills residents know that the one planting site that is always trouble is a windy shaded area with shallow soil. While filming a segment recently at Wittunga Botanic Gardens I was taken by the variety of forms of “Annie’s Cape” that they have growing there in such a situation. I’ve planted one recently to train up a trellis. It’s already 1.5 metres high just by removing the laterals. Various Anisodontea species have been used for the hybrids. One is called ‘African Queen’ but there are many others and they hail from Transvaal in South Africa’s high arid regions. Left unpruned they make a spreading 2 meters shrub to 1 metre tall, cup shaped pink flowers all year round. If you have small children starting to take an interest in gardening get them a packet of Kohl rabi and one square metre of space. They will be enchanted and the purple swollen stem is edible and easiest grown vegetable I know, with or without fertilizer. A Glenside retiree asks about the best time to prune Bougainvilleas. Unfortunately the answer is not all that straightforward, since we have cultivars that are winter flowering (well actually it’s the bract we grow them for not the flower) and they get pruned in early summer after the bracts have fallen, while those that flower through summer are best pruned in autumn. The Bougainvillea spectabilis and the B. x buttiana cultivars such as ‘Thomasi’, ‘Coconut Ice’, ‘Hawaiian Gold’ and ‘Klong Fire’ can tolerate hard pruning such as you might use on a hedge, but the B. glabra and B. peruviana cultivars such as ‘Mrs Butt’, ‘Easter Parade’, ‘Harrissi’, ‘Singapore Pink’ and ‘Temple Fire’ as well as most of the modern dwarf forms will not tolerate hard pruning, so on those it’s a light tip prune after flowering. As for fertilizing Bougainvilleas, once again it is difficult to be prescriptive, since it really depends on the background fertility of your garden or the containers in which you grow them. However assuming a fairly poor soil, first use superphosphate at planting time as a top dressing (30 grams per plant) and follow that up with monthly water-soluble foliar sprays in the growing season. Organic pellets tend to encourage soft leaf growth and long canes on most cultivars, which jeopardizes development of flowering bracts. Use organic pellets on the dwarf container cultivars, by all means, but use them sparingly on the rest. |
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