Quote:
Originally Posted by bioturbation
Hello ,
This is my first post so please be gentle with me .
This is the story of my pet plant .
When I was a 7 year old , I was given a bizzie Lizzie by my teacher . Every day I would come home after school and pull the plant out to see if the roots had grown. Luckily the plant survived this torture , and has been my pet plant for 42 years . Every photo taken since then always has my lizzie lurking in the background somewhere . When it was looking straggly , we would take a cutting and grow it on , so its a bit like Triggers broom , same broom but has had 12 heads and 24 new handles .
However , I have noticed that over the past few years that none of the cuttings are showing any of their lovely pink flowers anymore . We still get the sugar on the stems , and the plant seems healthy enough , but no flowers .
She seems to not like too much water , so I wait until her leaves start to wilt before watering , and she doesn't like the sun to strong . If I put some cuttings outside , the leaves get very small and very green , but still no
flowers . We have put new cuttings in compost , fed with miracle grow but still no flowers .
I'm not a gardener , but I am very fornd of my Lizzie and I was wondering if anybody could tell me why she is not flowering anymore .
Is it possible that her DNA is being weakened by continually growing on from the original plant ?
Many Thanks
Nigel
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The DNA won't have weakened as each cutting is genetically identical to the mother plant.
The problems may arise from the growing conditions of the plant.
Firstly, change the feed from miracle grow to tomato food, miracle grow is way too high in nitrogen, which will just encourage lush leaf growth, you need potassium for flowers.
And feed them once every 10-14 days in the growing season.
Also what soil do you use? multi-purpose over the last few years has slowly been getting lower and lower quality, this is due to the EU saying that we have to reduce peat by 30% or something.
Buzzies love a very peaty compost and have not been doing well at all in the new 'eco' friendly stuff.
So try to seek out any brands of compost that are still mainly peat based like Levington or Petersfield.
Avoid Arthur Bower's at all costs, that stuff is dreadful atm!
Also increase the light levels a bit and put some of the cuttings outside for the summer in dappled shade or sun for a short while.
Buzzies LOVE water and so long as they are not overpotted, it will be very difficult to overwater them and they'll repay you with lots of nice flowery growth!
Hope this helps?