Thursday, April 16, 2009

Bougainvillaea - Forever Blooming








Bougainvillaea is a sun-loving plant and it is such an easy plant to grow. As I do not have much shade in my garden, I let my bougainvillaea grow tall and I tried to shape it into a big umbrella so that I could place some of my orchids and plants under the shade of the bougainvillaea plant. Lately, my bougainvillaea has grown out of control and look quite messy. My neighbour suggests that it is time to trim and re-shape it.

The only dismay that I have with my bougainvillaea is it doesn't bloom as much as when I first bought it from the nursery. The whole tree had more blooms than leaves. I have 3 pots of bougainvillaeas ~ 2 pots of fuschia colour flowers and 1 orange flower. The orange flower hardly blooms. In the 2nd photo above, you can see a few tiny orange bloom at the back.

I have used the NPK compound fertilizers to stimulate the flowering of my bougainvillaeas. But I believe this is not good enough because it doesn't flower as much. If anyone has more tips on what to do to encourage more blooms on my bougainvillaea, please do share with me. I will try to trim my bougainvillaea in these two days to make them neater and tidier.




4 comments:

Unknown said...

Morning, I think bouganvilla is so beautiful and your pictures are lovely. I can grow it as an annual and did one summer but it didn't do well or get very big for me. I guess my nephew grew one that was huge in our summer months. His thumb must be greener than mine.

islandgal246 said...

Bougainvillea needs very little water, the drier it is the more blooms you will get. I never fertilize mine and they just keep blooming. They are better off when left neglected just an occasional watering if they are in pots. I love the orange as well and mine are in full bloom.

J.C. said...

Hi islandgal246, I water my bougainvillae every evening. After reading your comment, I think that must have been a mistake. I will try to neglect them and see what's the outcome. Thanks for your tip.

Unknown said...

Hi J.C.

The lack of flowers is probably due to the excessive intake of nitrogen of the compound fertilizer you are using. Generally plants require phosphate for inducing new buds and flowering. Phosphate comes in many forms such as insoluble (rock phosphate), citric acid soluble (FMP) and water soluble (DAP, TSP). Rock phosphate is used in many compound fertilizer because it is the cheapest. However less than 10% of it is available to the plant. In other words, though your compound fertilizer may contain 10% phoshpate, only 1% is utilized. The inbalanced intake of nitrogen will result in excessive leafy growth with little flowers.

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