Wysteria problems
 

Hi

Three years ago I bought 2 identical wysteria plants and planted them either side of my front door (south facing) - one has flourished and is now in heavy flower. The other (problem) one has just sent one shoot straight up the support wires (about 5 meters) and is not flowering. I believe in order to encourage flowers I need side shoots, can anyone offer advice on how to encourage them, please.

Thanks Caroline

Wysteria problems
 

"carolineh" wrote
Three years ago I bought 2 identical wysteria plants and planted them
either side of my front door (south facing) - one has flourished and is
now in heavy flower. The other (problem) one has just sent one shoot
straight up the support wires (about 5 meters) and is not flowering. I
believe in order to encourage flowers I need side shoots, can anyone
offer advice on how to encourage them, please.

Two wisteria at the front of your house, you must have a huge mansion. I
trust you are OK on ladders and are prepared for all the hard pruning and
tying in needed with these plants.
Yes, you do need to have side shoots to flower and the plant will make them
when it's ready and these should be cut back to a couple of buds in the
winter.
Our wisteria didn't grow much at all for about 4 seasons and then went 20ft
in the fifth, I think we got our first flowers the next season. It now has a
trunk like a tree.
To get one to flower in it's third year probably means that it is a grafted
plant, perhaps the other one isn't which is why it's acting normally.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17mls W. of London.UK

Wysteria problems
 

"carolineh" wrote in message
...

Hi

Three years ago I bought 2 identical wysteria plants and planted them
either side of my front door (south facing) - one has flourished and is
now in heavy flower. The other (problem) one has just sent one shoot
straight up the support wires (about 5 meters) and is not flowering. I
believe in order to encourage flowers I need side shoots, can anyone
offer advice on how to encourage them, please.

Thanks Caroline


--
carolineh
For 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' !!
--
Charlie, gardening in Cornwall.
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National Plant Collection of Clematis viticella (cvs)

Thanks Charlie and Bob, I do have a very large house (in Brittany, France) and know the growth habit of a healthy wisteria, as I had one on my previous house. I have bought floribunda, and I will try to prune and retrain the single stem to encourage flowering side shoots.

Caroline

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).