On Sun, 18 May 2003 16:04:36 +0000, news.verizon.net wrote:

Hello all,

I have a (sometimes) lovely wisteria vine growing in my side yard, here
in Arlington, VA. I built what we call our garbage gazebo, an open
structure with an 8' high slatted top and planted the wisteria to grow
up and over the structure. Like many others, I waited patiently for the
vine to become established and finally flower. Two years ago I had
beautiful blooms. Plentiful, heady fragrance. Then I made the mistake of
either pruning too hard or at the wrong time so that last year I had
virtually no bloom. This year I simply left the vine alone and got
blooms but they were hidden in the center of the plant, almost out of
view. Now I have this mass of lush green growth, well beyond what I want
in the space allotted. I know that the proper way to prune is to do a
partial pruning in late August with a final harder prune in late winter.
But will I cause major damage to next year's bloom if I cut back on the
vine now, especially on the vines that are cascading down, forcing you
to walk under or around the mass? My thinking is that I should go ahead
and trim back pretty hard, even now, just to regain the space and that
I'll be ok in terms of next year's bloom so long as I do the further
pruning at the proper time and leave the proper number of buds on this
year's growth. Any help appreciated.

Michael


Generally I tend to shape them in the spring after they bloom and do my
major thinning in the winter when I can see into the shrub. I would think
that you could get away with shaping it now and regain your space. I have
'blown' the blooms off a wisteria once with a high nitrogen fertilizer. I
fertilized with straight 16 ( 16,16,16 ) in the begining of march ( a bit
heavy mind you ).Feeding with fertilisers that have high nitrogen content
will encourage excessive vegetative leaf-growth at the expense of flower
production. Hence the lush green growth with few blooms in the center.
This is also true with the laburnum ( golden chain tree ). I blew the
flowers off a customers tree this year when I was fertilizing the bedding
plants at the base of the tree. Thankfuly it was a non-damaging accident
and a learning moment for me and my customer.... 80)

A tip to the wise about your wisteria. I have see what a mature wisteria
can do to houses/gazebos due to it's shear weight. It has been reccomened
to me be a nursery owner that the structure you train a wisteria to should
be able to hold 700 pounds at least. At first I thought she was being a
bit dramatic about it, untill I got a call about a wisteria clean up. It
was about 25 feet tall 7 feet wide, connected to the side of a house and
it came down in a wind storm. It ripped a lot a siding off and some
gutters also. The dump weight was 2600 pounds!!! Yes a ton of wisteria.

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