Bougainvillea UK Zone 9 - Spring and Summer Update

 As I write I'm just getting together a couple of videos, maybe more if it goes well... Allegedly AI can knock the videos up for you, at the moment it seems to be taking an age just to link for basic videos together, we'll see as I'm sceptical as to how good AI is.

Anyway that aside things have gone well, possibly due to the fact that it's been one of the hottest, dryest and sunniest springs ever and the early summer up to the first week in July was very good too. Since then, it's been more like a normal UK summer and July's statistically are quite rainy. 

The Big News___________________________________________________________________

It looks like I've figured a way of getting better results out of the plants. I watched a video featuring a bloke in Florida and he advocated the following...

The plants go through distinct growing phases that can be repeated throughout the year several times if the climate conditions allow for it. Anecdotally, I think mine flower between 3-4 times a year.

The phases are...

(1). Post Bract stage - when the bracts either fall off or you can brush them off, at this point they almost look dead. 

(2). The Green stage.

(3). The Bract stage - when they're in full bloom as such.

(1). Post Bract stage; The Bracts have stopped growing and developing and they start to drop. The plant seems to have larger fully grown leaves but not many of them and like the Bracts, they're spent and fall off easily. *Note I'm writing this on July 30th and my best plant is at this stage. This is how it looked this afternoon before I did any work to it...

Plant 2

Note the lack of green leaves.

Then looking at the plant I noticed initially that the Bracts if touched fell off readily and once they were all off, I then noted the fact that the mature fully grown leaves were in pretty much same state. So, everything was removed...

Plant 2

The same plant 5 minutes later.

What I'll do now is feed and water this plant to encourage new growth, you can see that among the Bracts, this was already starting to happen. I've also cut back the secondary stem, getting rid of any hard wood back to the green wood. I've fed it using "Empathy After Plant" Bio-active plant food for Ericaceous plants, along with some fish, blood and bone and

seaweed. Dependent on how warm it gets, I'll probably water this plant once a week unless it rains. The soil drains well and the majority of the water escapes from the pot in a matter of minutes, so I make sure it gets a good soaking. These plants survive in arid conditions where they go without water for long periods and then get soaked by torrential downpours. 

(2). The Green stage;

Hopefully and theoretically, (Ive seen this indoors over the winter) the plant will produce lots of green leaves and start to grow over the next 3-5 weeks taking us into early Sept. The plant at this stage will develop good vigorous growth and will start to potentially make it's way if trained across the wall, which is the longer term goal. (No more feeding, just water). But to promote a high volume of bracts, what you do is cut back your new growth 3-4 shoots along from the end and in doing so the plant then splits into 2 new stems instead of one. Once these new 'Doubled up stems' are established you implent the next phase...

(3). The Bract stage;

What you do now is stop watering the plant and put it under stress. You allow the earth to dry out to the point where the plant wilts and then water it the next day. The plant responds to being stressed like this, by producing the bracts, once the bracts are established, you then return to watering normally.

That's the theory.

Plant 3

Here's another of my other plants. No.3 here with potentially 2 plants in the same pot as the plants seem to be at different stages.

You can see one seems to be in Bract phase and the other in the growing phase. I'm cutting the longer growth back a couple of leaves/nodes in a few days.

I'll put a link in here to the videos I've shot today which show all of the plants as they are as of July 30th.

At the moment the AI video thing is still goin on in the background, but I'm not optimistic, so it may be a few days before I post the links. 

Bougainvillea UK Zone 9 - Febraury & March

 Re-cap

December

Plant 1 having been infested with Aphids, I removed all the leaves and Bracts and within a matter of weeks recovered fully and 'flowered' again.

December

Plant 2 Going OK at this point, probably more growth on it given the time of year and previous experiences of these plants.

December

Plant 3 As above, doing relatively well - better than expected for this time of year.

December

Plant 4 (Barbara Karst) Again doing very well given this was late December, the shortest days in terms of light.

February update__________________________________________________________

I did a video n January showing the progress and it was pretty good and on-track. All of the plants seem to be ticking along nicely. They've been watered around once a week using rain water using about 250ml each time. If they've looked to be wilting before that time I've watered them. It does seem that given my situation where these plants are generally in a room temp of about 18c they dry out and start to wilt after about a week. 

I'm off for a week in February so it's likely that I'll do a video and upload it showing how they've done over the previous month and half since the end of Dec. I'm writing this on Feb 16th and they look to have grown quite a bit. They're very spindly for the most part, apart from plant #1. Plant #1 as you can see has a good shape, but by the end of the Jan 95% of the bracts had fallen off and the ends of the branches were looking a bit dead, so I've cut them back to see if that encourages more growth. I'm still pretty cautious about cutting them back because ultimately I want lots of plant and it seems counter-intuitive to cut them back to some extent.

I was looking at some of my old diary entries and blog posts and noted that I'd put the plants out during the day when it was sunny as early at Feb 18th last year. This may have been a big mistake even though I put them under plastic to try and reduce them being subjected to any cold winds/breezes. I noted a couple of days ago when the ambient temp in the shade was 3c and in the sun 27c and this is what I went by thinking they'd be ok in the sun. The outcome was the leaves ended up being burnt by the sun having gone without it since Oct/Nov. It seems they have to be eased into the sunlight gradually. I think in addition the ambient temp of 3c every time the sun had gone in combined with hot sunny light meant the plants went into shock potentially? 

This year I'm going to be easing them into the garden in a different way. In a way this makes having these plants hard work, because this transition means moving the plants around quite a bit and I live in a small house. We'll have to see how it goes. 

Previously I've said that the Tesco plants - Numbers 1,2 and 3 are a dwarf variety, but currently plant#2 is on a mission and is growing very vigorously albeit in a spindly fashion. Looking at it, I'm in two minds whether I should nip the ends off and try and encourage growth further back down the plant or for that branch to develop more 'Spurs' (branches)? 

March update_______________________________________________________________

March 1st and its been sunny. The side of the house where the plants are situated is increasingly brighter with a period in the afternoon where direct sun comes in. Oustide over-night its still around 0 degrees (Freezing) and I noted today doing some tidying in the garden one of our blue (clay) pots had cracked... Frost damage? In the corner of my yard its 28c in the sun and I've sat out there comfortable sunning my face with just a long sleeved T-shirt on. So with the vast difference in temps there's no way that the plants are going out at this stage. 

I've moved one of the plants No.3 from its usual place to a South facing window to sit in direct sunshine (Use picture on Phone) as it looks a bit feeble - light coloured leaves and wilting a bit. I've watered it and it looks a little better, but overall its the least healthy looking of all four plants, its spindly and growing outwards rather than upwards, so I'm not sure what to do about it. This one hasn't flowered since the summer. 

March 8th

Sunny outside - unseasonably warm at 19c ambient temp - in the direct sun it's 36c. So I've had all the plants in the garden and have shot some video. Plant No.3 still looking sick and spindly with varigated leaf patterns and wilting recently. Having shot the video today I then decided to hack it back as an experiment to see if that kicks it back into life. 

March 21st

Last few days the weather has been very mild, in the 18-21c degrees region, so the plants have been oustide and over-night tonight; its going to be around 8c, so I'm leaving 3 of the plants outside (1,2 and 3). I've butchered plant 3, cut it right back and stuck the hard wood cutting in dirt to see if they'll take. At the moment all of the plants including No.3 are showing signs of producing bracts, so there may be a simultaneous showing? 

Bougainvillea UK. Zone 9 - December

 Growing Bougainvillea in the UK - Zone 9 (Essex) December care/observations

The image above is from Dec 2022 and features three of the current plants. The plant in the round clay pot is another variety I bought that summer that didn't survive. This, as a general rule has been how the plants appear during  December, the leaves having pretty much all fallen off and the plant being dormant. In previous years, they've then perked up again in February - I always assumed in response to the fact that hours of daylight are lengthening. But this year... a very different story.

21st December, for me the best day in December as we're now heading back towards the summer and that can only be good. So, my logic would say, that with the days being increasingly longer, the plants would react in response to this. Thing is that might yet happen, but look below at what's happened this month as the days have got shorter during a particularly dull December in terms of light!

Plant #1 This is the plant that I removed all the leaves from and pruned at the ends and was unsure whether it would survive. I've always been concerned that if I was to prune any of the plants, our climate is possibly not conducive with a strong recovery and yet as you can see below, this seems to not the case and the plant has made an amazing recovery and looks set for a good show of bracts this summer if I get  the transition from house to garden right.

Plant #1 December 2024. One month later! I have never seen any of them grow so vigorously. This is the same plant on the left hand side in the image at the top of the post. Usually, I'd expect this plant to look similar to the Nov image where I'd removed all the leaves, at best virtually leafless with some signs of new buds coming through. So this is a real surprise given that I thought what with the Aphids and the fact that I'd pulled all the leaves off and pruned it, there was a chance that it may have died. 

Plant #2 At the end of November was looking OK, pretty much in-line with what you might expect to see at this time of year, possibly a few more leaves than usual, with the expectation that the leaves you see here will probably die off and fall. 

Plant #2 December 2024. 

Not quite as impressive as plant #1, but still - quite a lot of growth given previous years. 12"-18" of growth over the same month, giving me the option of training the plant vertically or horizontally. I'm not sure what I'll do yet, but I'll have to make a decision as the softwood growth hardens off quite quickly.

Plant #3 As with Plant #2 - pretty much in-line with expectations for this time of the year. You can see in the top image from 2022, by December the plants can look pretty much dead (Dormant) by December with virtually no leaves. 

Plant #3 December 2024

Again, lots of good growth with the plant 100% greener than I'd have imagined based on previous years experiences. So, again really happy with how this one is going. Two of these plants I'd contemplated getting rid of, so very glad now that I persevered with them.

Plant #4 This is the newest and the only one identified as a particular species (Barbara Karst). All the others are the Tesco/LIDL/Aldi "Supermarket" varieties. This plant was doing really well at the end of November. Lots of leaves and some fresh growth. 

Plant #4 December 2024 Of all the plants the one that seems to have grown the least. But I'm aware that it has been growing and that generally it's thicker and bushier. This one I'm definitely trying to grow horizontally, so several of the branches are cable tied together to keep it all going in the same direction. 

So what have I done during December?

Not a lot, in terms of watering, I've been watering them about once a week at the weekends roughly around 250ml - 300mls of rain-water. I have a bucket in the garden and I fill up a couple of bottles with the rain water and keep them indoors so that they get up to room temp. Plant #4 (Barbara Karst variety) see below started to look a little pale and the leaves looked a bit veiny. This can be due to a range of problems, but I've put it down to over-watering, so I've held back with the watering a bit, but have noticed today 27/12/24 that it also looked as though it was wilting a bit, so I'll have to keep an eye on it over the coming month.

Overall December was pretty poor in terms of light. I'm a photography lecturer and have to teach students about light, so notice this more so than most and December has been awful - very dull with very few periods of sunlight. 

My plants either sit on this balcony in my house underneath a big north facing skylight. Plant #1 sits on the balcony and the other are on the floor on the other side of the balcony - mostly in the shade but with plenty of light. The temperature in my house fluctuates between around 16c to 20c. 

Conclusions....

I can only suggest the reason they're all doing well is because all of the plants were fed with this stuff here back in February as I recall along with a mix of seaweed, bonemeal, manure and general compost and dirt from the garden. Then fed with general plant food over the summer and more of the 'After plant'. On balance I felt like I may have been over-doing it a little because I didn't feel that the plants grew any better? I can only conclude that now they've settled, they're growing better?

That does kind of leave me thinking what will my strategy be over this coming summer? Some websites point out that these grow in South America in arid, stony, nutrient poor places and do really well and yet others say that they're quite delicate plants prone to failing...

See the associated video on Youtube here https://youtu.be/LWLsvN_SOyM

December diary

December observations and actions.

4th December; I shot some video less than a week ago and I made the point that rather than going dormant, all of the plants are actively growing! I've looked again today and it looks as though they are all growing faster now than have all summer. If I think back to last winter I did notice this in February, but I thought that it was triggered by the increase in daylight as Spring neared. But that's not the case as far as I recall, because the start of the year through spring and into early summer it was one of the dullest light depleted springs ever. So the light wasn't the trigger? 

So it kind of seems that the plants I have, based on the observations so far this year and last year appear to put on a growth spurt over the winter months as opposed to going dormant. What does happen though, is the existing leaves all fall off for the most part and are replaced with new growth. Another observation is that the new leaves appear to be very delicate in comparison with the existing thick and waxy leaves from the summer and I'd say that they're very susceptible to aphids. So far I've not seen any since the November Aphid attack, but I'm keeping a close eye on the situation. 

8th December: Been away just for a couple of days and the growth is significant. There is lots of growth especially in terms of plant #1 which was the one that brutally cut back. This plant going exceptionally well along with plant #4. The other two although growing are not anywhere near as vigorous and I'm tempted given the success of the pruning with plant #1 to maybe look at pruning both of these quite aggressively?  

14th December: All of the plants continue to grow far more than they have done all summer, some of them have started to produce bracts, so there's going to be some colour soon. I'm going to have to have a re-assessment what the plants do over the year. I do recall last year, at a point I thought was after Christmas, there was some good growth...February?  

So, now I'm thinking what went wrong over the summer? Thinking back there may be a few things I got wrong...

(1). I re-potted the plants around February/March and added nutrients high in Nitrogen. The re-potting being the major issue because plants suffer from "Transplant shock". With some websites saying that "Bougainvillea really resents being transplanted" There's a fair bit of discussion on Reddit that reinforces this notion too. The re-potting was definitely not like for like and another factor may have been I did it outside in fairly cold conditions. 

Transplant shock https://birdysplants.com/blogs/news/transplant-shock

There's a picture in the Dec folder. 

(2). Every year I'm gagging to get the plants outside into the sunlight and as Spring arrives we have gloriously sunny days and I'm always tempted to get the plants into the sun and start 'hardening' them off, which is basically acclimatising the new leaves to direct sunlight. Again, this is problematic as they can have too much sun and this year the new delicate leaves on the plants were burnt and developed black edges and the wilted as well. So I probably didn't ease them into being outside slowly enough.

(3). When I go through the process of getting them outside I often have them under plastic to try and protect them from the cold winds that accompany the strong sunlight. The temp variation from being in the sun compared to that of being in the shade can be massive, so all these things combined, I'm kind of looking back and realising that might be why none of the plants thrived this summer? 

Now, they've been in the pots for 10 months, maybe they've settled and this months growth is an indication of a good period of growth and colour?

Another thing I'm doing that I may have mentioned previously, is I'm not watering them with tap water. Instead I have bucket outside that catches the rain water and each week I fill up a couple of bottles that I then bring indoors and allow them to get to room temp. Currently I'm watering the plants with about 500ml of water per week, which is slightly more than I did last year, but what with them producing so much foliage I feel that maybe necessary? 

16th Dec; Noticed today that the Barbara Karst plant (No.4) looks as though it's got an issue. The leaves look slightly veiny which may be an indication of the onset of Chlorosis? Looking at the options as to what the cause might be, I reckon its likely to be over-watering as I've increased how much I water them this year. The other issue might be Aphids, but for the moment they're not visible, I'll have a look over the coming days and keep an eye on the plant.

Bougainvillea in the UK Zone 9 (Essex) November

November care and maintenance of Bougainvillea in Zone 9 in the UK (Essex).

Click on the image below to access the video. 

Since the last post here https://gardenproject2021.blogspot.com/2022/04/bougainvillea-tesco-type-uk-problems.html  which was shot towards the end of September the weather has been ultra mild. In fact tonight they've said on the news tonight that this is going to be the warmest year on record. I'm writing this section of the post on Nov 8th and the temp tonight is going to be 8 or 9 degrees centigrade and the plants are still outside un-covered and when I last looked, they appeared to be growing still with bracts.

I've hardly watered them and just allowed the rain and the fact that it's not hot and sunny to maintain the moisture. Tomorrow's Friday and on Saturday I'll have a proper look at them and consider getting them covered and it looks like they're going to be OK in the garden at least till Mid-November. 

Cancel that, November 8th - the weather changed...

Over-night the prediction was that it was going to get down to 2 centigrade, so they had to come in. Having brought them in I then got a sense of how much bigger they were in comparison to this time last year. There seems to be lots of fresh leaves that are a 'Browny-red' colour. 

15th November and the plants have been inside now for a week and checking them this morning I noted that plant #1 which is the one that sits in the sunny corner was covered in white speckles all over the Bracts and the leaves. On closer inspection and just touching the the leaves and bracts - suddenly both started to fall off. I suspected the white dots might be some kind of infestation, so I got a magnifier and sure enough it was hundreds - possibly thousands of white aphids.

First thing I did was move the plant to another room and then hoover as many of them up and lots of the leaves came off as I did this. The next day I had another look and noticed as before, they seem to have targeted the new buds. The other three plants seem to be OK at the minute as a consequence they look in good condition and seem to growing vigorously, whereas the Aphid plant already looks knackered. 

I've looked at a couple of websites and found this https://www.thespruce.com/control-aphids-on-houseplants-1902889 so I'm either going to use Neem oil or make up my own mixture with the Garlic recipe. 

16th Nov - Plant one looks knackered because of the Aphids, so I've made a video today and I've gone radical. Some of the bigger leaves had adult Aphids and reading about them, they reproduce like crazy and  the white spots were the skins from where they moult. (See further down).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVTitHBwpN0

Also watched this which kind of makes sense with the reason for the Aphids in the first instance - too much Nitrogen. 

Just looked on Reddit for more and ended up posting this...

In conclusion if you want to have this one of the plants you want to have in your garden in the summer it's increasingly looking like quite some aggro. 

Late November (24th) and the only plant that doesn't seem to have gone dormant at all is the Italian 'Barbara Karst'  which seems to be having a spurt of growing activity and looks like it's quite vigorous, more so than at any point since I've bought it? It's been warm again today after a cold period and the lights been pretty good - cold days often coincide with clear blue skies which is the case - so indoors the light has been good. Today outside it's been 18c - 20c as opposed to last weeks 2 or 3c days with frost over-night so potentially sub-zero. 

The other two plants with leaves on still also seem to be growing and thankfully no sign of the Aphids. The Aphid plant which was also pruned, looks dead in terms of having no leaves, but there are buds and the insides of the branches where the plant was cut are still green, so it is very much alive. 

End of November 29th Had my weekly look at the plants, checking for Aphids and see how they're doing generally and I've been surprised to see that all of them are actually growing - some of them really well. The Barbara Karst plant seems to be doing really well despite the massive reduction in light - it's indoors and the days are short and generally the weather's been really poor and the light levels the same.

I'm not watering them much, I use around a litre of water across all of the plants once a week. I've got buckets in the garden with rain water in which apparently is preferable to sink water, so I've filled up my water bottle from there and it's indoors now for 24hrs letting it reach the indoor ambient temperature. I'll water the plants tomorrow.

I've done some video footage of how I dealt with the Aphids and the follow-up pruning - which was pretty minimal, but for me radical, but as you'll see below it seems to have worked and the plant (No.1) is now covered in new "Aphid-less" shoots and looks really promising in terms of growth going forwards. I'm now looking at the other three relatively scrawny looking plants 2 and 3 and thinking maybe I should cut them back and see if the react in the same way? I might shoot some more video tomorrow if I do that, edit it and upload it to Youtube and put the link on here. 

Plant 1. The new growth coming through having had all the leaves removed and some light pruning. 

Some more of the shoots coming through on Plant 1, every node appears to be very much alive and producing new growth. 

Plant #2 with new growth at the top of the plant

This is plant #4 The Barbara Karst. which is the newest as previously mentioned. I've had it just over a year now, having had it imported from Italy. It's been really lethargic in terms of growth until now. I'd have expected with the reduction in light it would have been fairly dormant, but that's not the case. Since coming indoors it's grown really well. Why this is I'm not sure, but it could be that having received it last year I re-potted it and maybe it's taken this long to bed in and settle? It had plenty of feed over the summer and maybe that's now been absorbed into the earth and is working as it should be? 

I'm inclined now to leave it and see how it goes over the coming months...

Plant #4 new growth.

Looking at the plants and checking them today I noted a single blackfly (Aphid) of the flying variety and tried to kill it, but it alluded me by dropping off the leave as I moved in for the kill. I'll keep an eye on them all over the coming days as I don't want that one laying eggs and triggering another infestation. I might get the hoover out and give the plants a going over.

Here's what I first noticed of the Aphid infestation. 

Bougainvillea UK (Zone 9 Essex) October

 October Observations - care suggestions Bougainvillea UK

Click on the image below to access the video

Taken a few weeks before the video was shot. A few less bracts, so from the end of September  to the end of October there was some growth. 

This one looks a bit spindly, but there's potential to start training it to grow more horizontal. My intention is to train the plants to grow the width of my SW facing wall.

No 3 which I almost gave up on at the end of last summer 

The Barbara Karst plant . This is the one I have high hopes for in terms of growing across the wall space - allegedly a fast growing variety. I've had it a year now and so far been fairly disappointed at this point. 

Video #2 Growing Bougainvillea in the UK - Essex - Zone 9 (September)

Growing Bougainvillea in Zone 9 in the UK 

September observations and suggestions for care and what you might expect to see. 

Growing Bougainvillea in the UK Zone 9 South East England (August)

Bougainvillea August Observations/ suggestions re care - what to expect