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Originally Posted by Charlie PridhamFor Wisteria to flower you have to trick them into thinking they have
reached the top of their tall tree (which is where they live in the wild)
Light is important but we normally put them on a west or south wall so
that's taken care of, the next thing is what happens to the stems when there
is nothing more for them to climb - they bend over, which restricts the sap
and triggers the formation of the flowering spurs. we try and make this
happen by summer pruning in August cutting the long trails back. you can
also achieve much the same bending the stem down to the horizontal.
You will probably find the plant that - is - flowering was damaged near the
top the previous year.
Hope you have a very large house and have planted Wisteria floribunda not
sinensis as the latter can grow to 120' !!
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Charlie, gardening in Cornwall.
[url
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk[/url]
Holders of National Plant Collection of Clematis viticella (cvs)
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Charlie,
Despite reading and attempting to obey wisteria pruning instructions for several years, I can't get any flowers on my Wisteria Floribunda "harlequin", even though it is now a 6 year plant. It is growing quite fast, despite pruning off prodigious amounts, furthest point now about 6m from the roots, though I would like it to be much longer. I've got part of it on a south-facing wall, the bit nearest the roots, but unfortunately I've only got a little bit of that (the main south wall is a narrow passage facing next door) and the rest of the plant is on east facing walls. If it gets about 8m further, it can then be turned onto a hot south-facing fence.
In contrast, a Wisteria sinensis, white fragrant form, is growing very slowly (only 1.5m on 4 year plant growing in very dry soil fighting other next-door's leylandii behind the fence) but flowering freely from year 2 without ever meeting secateurs.
I have for example read the RHS advice he
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0600/wisteria.asp
This talks about reducing summer pruned shoots to two or three buds in Feb. I can't make any sense of this when I look at my plant. The summer-pruned shoots on my wisteria don't have buds, they have short laterals with 4 to 6 buds per lateral, which turn into leaves whether I leave them alone or shorten them to 2-3 buds. Is this a message that I didn't do the August pruning right? Should I be reducing those short laterals to 2 or 3 buds, or am I cutting off the potential flowers? (I have tried both.)
Or is a more likely reason phosphate deficiency it refers to (though the other Wisteria is flowering in a much more nutritionally compromised location).
Or am I just expecting too much to have flower on it yet, despite my luck with the other one?
Thanks
Ivan (on dry sandy/pebbly soil overlying clay in the Chilterns).