"Charlie Pridham" added...

after "Bob Hobden" wrote

"solaara" wrote

my friend has a wisteria, which bloomed very well last year...this year
no flowers except one or two at the bottom...whats wrong?

Once your Wisteria has extended to the furthest point you want it you
then
prune back all other shoots to two buds just after leaf fall (Christmas
week
for me). This has to be done annually.
Any shoots that extend too far during the growing season can simply be
pruned back to a few buds and I do this a few times every season to keep
ours tidy. These then get a final severe prune to two buds (don't be
tempted
to leave more!) during the winter like all other shoots.
What you are after are long permanent stems as a framework with side
shoots
all along these stems that eventually look a bit like a stags antlers (or
fruiting spurs if you are a fruit grower) and it is from these you get
the
flowers.


The above is all good stuff and will certainly help to get a good crop of
flowers, but in my experiance once a wisteria starts flowering it carries
on
unless something happens and I suspect that the something this year may
have
been frost in spring, you will find in a given area some wisterias
completely fine and others debudded just depends on their precise
location.
The plants themselves are of course bone hardy so gardeners are often
mystified as to what has happened especially if the buds were small so you
don't see them go all limp!

Too true, forgot that one, our's has never been touched by frost (it's on a
S. facing wall of our house) but one that is free standing in the open at
the Savill Garden a couple of miles away is often damaged so badly all the
spring flowers are lost. All they are left with is the odd summer flowers
one gets.

One thing I've thought of since I wrote the above, was your friends wisteria
shaded by anything last summer? Has a tree grown? Neighbour built an
extension? They don't like shade and to flower well they need sun, as much
as possible.

--
Regards
Bob
In Runnymede, 17 miles West of London