The lush, mostly blue abundance of flowers is certainly the main reason for planting a wisteria in the garden. If you take good care of it, you can certainly be happy about it. However, sometimes the flowers don't bloom and then you need to take action.
Why isn't my wisteria blooming?
Factors that can prevent a wisteria from blooming are: the plant is too young, over- or under-fertilization, lack of nutrients, location that is too shady, lack of water in spring, extreme dryness during the flowering period and incorrect or missing pruning.
Why doesn't wisteria bloom?
Before you worry about why your wisteria isn't blooming, first ask yourself whether it's old enough. A refined wisteria blooms for the first time when it is around two to three years old. But it needs to be pruned regularly. Even plants grown from seeds often need significantly more time until their first flowering.
Other reasons for failure to bloom include incorrect or missing pruning, lack of water and/or nutrients (especially in spring or shortly before flowering) and an unfavorable location. Because even if wisteria thrives quite well in the shade, it only blooms sparsely there. In the shade the flowers usually don't bloom at all.
Possible causes of failure to bloom:
- The wisteria is still too young (especially applies to home-grown plants)
- Overfertilization, especially with nitrogen
- Inadequate supply of nutrients
- too shady location
- Water shortage in spring
- extreme drought during flowering (causes flowers and/or buds to fall off)
- incorrect or inadequate pruning
What can I do to ensure lush blooms?
Before you can do anything concrete, you first have to find the cause of the lack of flowering. If the wisteria is too young, only patience and waiting will help. If your wisteria was not watered enough in spring or at the beginning of the flowering period, then you will probably have to wait until next year. In the future, water the plant regularly, but without causing waterlogging.
Even an incorrect pruning cannot be undone. But you don't have to worry too much, the wisteria will even recover from a radical cut. Cut in winter according to good instructions and give it superphosphate (€32.00 on Amazon) in spring. Then it will soon be in full bloom again. If the location is wrong, only transplanting will help.
The right pruning for lush flowers
The wisteria only blooms on older short shoots. You should definitely prune long whip shoots. Shorten this to 30 to 50 centimeters in August and to three to five eyes in winter. In between, young shoots can form again, which you can simply break out.
Tip
So that your wisteria blooms profusely in the coming season, you can support it with a dose of superphosphate in April.
