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

Bougainvillea in the UK

Weather's been up and down since the last post, a couple of days ago the temp over-night dipped below 6 centigrade a couple of nights and I put the plants under plastic. But today 16/10/24, the over-night temp is going to be potentially 19 degrees, so they're back out in the open.

What I did notice though was that the promising looking growth that looked like it might end up being the final flush of bracts seems to have not developed further. I check it out in another week or two when I suspect I'll be bringing them all indoors. 

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24/9/24 Took some pictures of the plants yesterday with a tape measure in the shots to see if there has been any growth of the actual plants themselves. I think if look at the shots of them last September there has been some growth, but not to the extent I was hoping for. Interestingly some of the Tesco plants look as though they're about to flower again despite it being so late in the year, but I do recall them producing bracts 3 times a year previously - Feb, May/June and September, so it'll be interesting to see how much they flower? The Italian plant (Barbara Karst) has dropped 90% of its bracts, but unlike the Tesco plants doesn't at the moment look poised to produce growth/leaves.

No.1 This one is 3 years old and is the variety that you buy in places like Tesco and Lidl in May.

No.2 is another Tesco plant 2 years old, but has been trained to grow vertically at the moment. 

No.3 Another Tesco plant 3 years old

This is the imported one from Italy "Barbara Karst".

The ones in the Terracotta pots (1 and 3) are the most established and the other 2 were re-potted as I recall at the end of last winter. From what I can gather re-potting tends to set them back a bit and they take a while to settle again.

I'm writing this on October 6th and since these shots were taken as indicated there seems to be some decent growth - not so much in terms of size, but density of new green shoots and new bracts and it looks like there's going to be another flourish of colour prior to the plants coming indoors.

I'm currently looking into whether I should prune them hard, I get the sense if you live abroad in sunnier/warmer climates that's the way to go, but I'm not so sure whether the same approach works that well in the UK. Dependent on what you're trying to do with the plants, that might be the way to approach the pruning to get a more condensed bushier plant, whereas what I'm trying to achieve is linear (horizontal) growth across the width of a wall. 

I'm not sure of the variety of the Tesco plants, I don't think they're a dwarf variety? I can't see any difference between them and the Barbara Karst plant. 

Here's my first Video on this subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEeLtI1Q6Q

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12/9/24 Taken the plants off the walls and placed under plastic tonight, some areas around London dropping to a point where there may be frost. I don't think if I left them out the damage would be enormous, but I don't want to chance it. The Bracts are falling off the Italian plant now. There's new growth appearing (leaves). I'll just keep watching to see what happens. 

9/9/24 - No pictures at this juncture, but thought I'd post as the weather is taking a turn for the worse in the next few days. Since the 20th much of the bracts have fallen off all of the plants and all of them with the exception of the Italian look to be sprouting new leaves and growth. The Italian one also seems to be holding on to its bracts more so than the others. Normally I wouldn't expect to be looking at bringing any of the plants till mid October, so I'm just going to keep an eye on this cold front and see how it pans out. 

20/8/24

So, in the last 50 or so days, the bracts have developed and flourished and put on a decent display of colour. At this very moment, they're now in a phase where they are falling off and the leaves are looking as though they're wilting through lack of water or perhaps, just going through a dying back phase? 

The two images here were shot today 20th and you can see that the leaves are looking as though they're wilting. 

Earlier in the week, I fed all of then with the recommended 'Empathy after-plant' .

I'm happy with the show of bracts, but I'm looking for more overall growth of the plants.

Looking back at the previous years images or even some of the images from June 23rd this year, there's obviously some growth.

But just not enough for me to be happy. I've looked back at some shots done in Sept 2 years ago and it looks as though the next phase is that the bracts will fall and there'll be flush of leaves and potentially some growth. 

I'll have to wait and see...

I've shot some video, so if I get time I'll edit it and get it up on Youtube. 

This series were shot on Aug 6th ____________________________________

No.1 

No.2 and 4

No.3

The 4 images here below were shot around July 7th.______________________

30/6/2024

All four plants have now started to develop bracts, the Barbara Karst was the last and only just showing today. 

26 June 2024

Watering 2 & 3 tomorrow. They've both got Bracts developing. 

Just seen this on the Westdale website... "The plant is drought tolerant, is happiest in full sun, and can grow very quickly to 30 feet or more in height".

That'd be nice!

23 June 2024__________________________________________________________________

Eventually some signs of Bracts developing on the Bougainvillea's. There's been nothing since Feb/March when they were indoors. The weather through April, May and June has been cooler and the observations on the general growth rates of all my plants especially the tomatoes is that they were thwarted by the coolness and the lack of light. It's only the last 3 or 4 weeks that they've got a spurt on. 

With the Bougainvillea's, I've adopted the dry out and flood approach over the last couple of weeks and I'm going to carry on with that approach with 2 of them and try more water with the other 2. I'll monitor what happens and see if there is any difference to the different approaches.

Reflection;

What happened - 

At the start of the year, I re-potted most of the plants adding better compost and some Empathy after plant. I tried to get the plants out early at the start of the year in April as soon as we had some hot sun. 

How do I feel it's going - Not that good, I'd have expected far more showing of the bracts and a lot more general growth especially with the Barbara Karst plant which allegedly grows really fast.

What's been good or bad - As above no show of the bracts, no real vigorous growth. I suppose I'm thankful that none of them have died especially the BK and I'm glad I didn't discard the tall skinny Tesco plant (No.2).

Analysis - Reading and watching articles and videos, the general consensus around these plants is they need to have a relatively harsh environment to live in. They originate from areas of South America where the conditions are arid and so have adapted to going for long periods of time where there's no rain and then a massive deluge. So for the last couple of weeks I've been trying to do this, waiting for the leaves to start curling slightly which I take as being an indicator of struggling for water. 

Apparently, looking after them by re-potting in Spring and feeding at that point might have been a mistake, slightly earlier might have been better? Also, some people say they seem to grow better when pot bound and that by re-potting them you disturb the roots. Feeding them might also have detrimental affect to some extent as it promotes growth of leaves rather than bracts, but this is something I need to look into more. Mine have had no feed at all since the use of the after plant stuff, instead I'm waiting for the bracts to appear and establish and then feed potentially? 

There's also arguments for vigorous pruning once the bracts have fallen and that promotes vigorous growth and more bracts, but I'm kind of sceptical because when you see people doing this, they're often in sub-tropical conditions and I'm not sure if we have the conditions for that. Although I'm intrigued by the story of this plant on the South coast...

Click on Image to go to Gardeners World source

What the hell was he doing to get it growing like this - but no bracts? This died in the winter after prolonged easterly winds and cold sub zero temperatures. 

Action Plan_______________________________________________________________

I'm going to treat 2 plants one way and the other two the other way.

No.1 This is my oldest Tesco Bougainvillea, now either the 4th or 5th summer. This had a massive growth spurt back in Feb/Mar this year, but since then, seems to have slowed down. No bracts since March fed with the 'After plant' early April. 

There are lots of new small leaves and it looks poised to get a spurt of growth on and there's signs that the bracts might be about to come through - see image below..

Indication that the bracts are about to come through. This plant was watered earlier in the week and had a litre of water today, most of which drains out immediately. 

I think this one I'm going to water once a week - just a litre. If the bracts come through strong I'll feed with Tomorite - maintaining the litre a week approach potentially - but keeping an eye on the fact that this coming week is going to be hot.

No2. 

This one I nearly gave up on this one in the autumn and is into it's 3rd summer I think. It looks weedy, but this one has the best initial showing of bracts.

Which you can see in the middle of the image.

This one was watered today and I'll water again mid-week and feed once the bracts have formed. Again this drained readily when watered. 

No3.

This one is another older Tesco Bougainvillea, one into it's 4th or 5th summer. Lots of the reddie - brown leaves and looks as though it's about to go on a massive growth spurt. I've no idea what the red/brown leaves indicate, but they might be early show of a growth spurt? 

This one again drains readily and I'll water this one twice a week if conditions allow it and once the bracts form I'll feed with Tomorite.

No4.

This one is the Prize Barbara Karst that I got last Oct imported in from Italy. It stands about a metre in height and the plan is that it grows in an arc across this wall to the left here. 

Allegedly it's a fast grower, as the image from Gardeners World (above) shows and if I can get anywhere near that kind of growth over the next 2 years I'd be very happy, although a plant that size will a problem once it needs to come indoors.

This one has been watered today - again most of the water drained out quickly, they don't like sitting in wet earth/compost and it's detrimental to their overall health.

So the plan is No.1 and 4 - watering once a week. No 2 and 3 I'll be watering twice a week and see how that works out. With the fact that all of the plants have so many new shoots and some of them bracts, I'm assuming that there's a massive growth spurt about to kick off with this better weather and the fact that the days are so long at the moment. We'll have to see how it pans out?

June 11th 2024___________________________________________________________

Nothing doing, I reckon I'm just looking at them too frequently! I've photographed them yesterday - close-ups of the reddy/brown leaves at the tips to do a follow up picture in a week or two to see what's happening. Normally by this time they're covered in the Pink bracts and at the moment there is nothing - I'm hoping the red/brown leaves might be the initial growth of the bracts, but I'm not optimistic. Alongside that, there's not a lot of general growth either, but all of this might be down to the fact that it seems to have been  relatively cold this month and not a lot of sunshine? Reading the article on the website below I'm also wondering whether there's enough drainage and whether the amount of rain we've had has been detrimental too? 

This is the Barbara Karst. I can see that comparing it to images earlier in the spring there's been growth - but more in terms of density of leaves rather than growth along the wall. 

This is one of the Tesco dwarf versions and this one grew vigorously from Feb-March, but since has the same growth as the one above - denser greener leaves.

No.1

These are the reddy/brown leaves that have developed over the last week or so, which I'm hoping my become bracts? I'm not convinced though. 

More examples of the reddy/brown leaves. This is the Barbara Karst. 

June 4th 2024____________________________________________________________

Lots of varying success and learning curves. Some stuff hasn't worked, other stuff has. It was cold and dark through April and wet. I've grown a variety of tomatoes and they've been painful to get going and only now are the looking anything like decent. The bigger ones are those I took a risk with and got out of the cardboard pots early and got into bigger pots. They're in kitchen/garden compost mixed with shop bought tomato compost. The good ones are around 8-10"". But most are much smaller and the ones that I want to go well "Tumbling Toms" which only went in very late in April range in size from tiny to about 5", the 5" one coming out of the compost cardboard pots and into bigger pots ASAP, once the 2nd set of leaves started to appear. 

Bougainvillea: They're all growing OK. The 3 Tesco ones are doing OK, given that I did consider giving up on them. They've been fed using John Innes Ericaceous No.4 compost? But that's it. The Barbara Karst from Italy was re-potted, fed the special compost and has been watered regularly and seemingly in order to get the Bracts going that was the wrong thing to do. There's lots of contradictory info out there, but there does seem to be consensus on leaving them to almost die as they apparently thrive in difficult conditions. They grow in a climate where it rains infrequently and they virtually die and then recovering in a deluge. Others say they exist like weeds - growing in inhospitable places with little by way of nutritional growing conditions and they'll do well when they're pot bound. It's in these conditions the bracts flourish. So, it looks like I've done the wrong thing.

Now I've changed tack and I've stopped watering them, so at the moment that's been 15 days, but in the meantime it has rained quite a bit and the earth feels damp if you dig your finger into it. I've tied the two biggest ones to the wall trying to train them and they are growing in terms of producing leaves, which for some reason are quite reddish in colour, there's lots of new shoots and little leaves, but no sign of the kind of growth I saw in March when one of the Tesco ones grew about 12" in what seemed like a month. I need to photograph them more to get a sense of whether they are growing. 

March 17th 2024_______________________________________________________

More seeds in. 

1. Grass seeds at the back to the riht near the gate "Flea jack" grass as we called it as kids.

2. Beans in pots

3. Nasturtiums in 2 lots of pots

4. Mor nasturtiums near the bird water and some along the sunny fence where the Tay-Berries are growing.

Weather though towards the end of the weeks is going to get cold again with frosty nights, so need to watch what happend. The seeds in theory wont show for a couple of weeks, so that'll take us into April. 

March 16th 2024__________________________________________________________

Diversifying a bit here - general gardening as well as Bougainvillea stuff.

Mild today, wind still a bit chilly in the shade, but in the sun it's 30 degrees. The temperature generally today though is around 14 degrees. So today I've made a bit of an effort to get the tomatoes in and growing and I've put some temporary shelves up on the sunny wall that faces SSE.

I've put them in far later this year in comparison to last year (Mid feb) and hopefully they'll do better than last year, last year was awful. Whether I bring them in or not is undecided, but I think I'm erring towards bringing them indoor over-night as they need to be in warm earth to get started. 

So far I've got in 30 seeds 2 to a pot using the little cardboard pots.

30 x Red Cherry Tomato's (Mr Fothergills)

30 x Roma - Italian style tomato's (Mr Fothergills)

30 (Approx) Money maker tomato's (Mr Fothergills)

I've put a bunch of Nastursiums and Beans into water to soak for a day or so and I'll plant those tomorrow or Monday. No idea where I'll put the beans - maybe on the south facing fence that borders Mark next doors garden?

The Nastursiums, I think these need to go in the ground, they didn't do at all well in the pots last year.

I've filled up the Ox-eye daisy pot with some more earth and there are shoots on that - it looks a mess, but hopefully it'll come good? 

I've scattered some Poached Egg plants along Marks fence and covered them over with a mix of well rotted bark/wood, horse manure and tomato compost. That was done in a really haphazard way, I'm hoping that they're quite easily sown, I watched a bloke on Youtube and he done it in a similar haphazard way as well.

Planted a load of sun-flowers as well - again haphazardly in plastic containers and drinks containers - way too many in each pot, but I'll thin them out later. They may not grow as they may be F1's? 

In the end what with the overall temperature being still cold I've brought the tomato trays indoors, all of them suggest starting the seeds off at between 15-20 degrees. What I'll do is take them outside into the light on mild days and keep indoors over-night unless of course the weather changes. Can't see it though. 

Feb 2024________________________________________________________________

What a strange couple of months. First though an update on where I am with this.

I have 3 "Tesco" Bougainvillea, which I've been unable to figure out what variety they are, but I've got as far as establishing that they are a very slow growing dwarf variety that are allegedly susceptible to being killed by frost and potentially weather that is consistently under 6 degrees c. Watching Youtube vids and reading about these plants on-line, whatever variety you have in the UK it has to come in during the winter. Some people in the South of the country can get away with growing them for a number of years outside when we have a mild winter, but as soon as there's one of those Easterly winds, kiss your Bougainvillea good bye. Yet if you watch people who grow these in Texas where in recent years they've had some nasty winters, they seem to have survived, but that may be down to having good roots systems that go deep. They lose a lot of the top of the plant, but if the roots survive the plant comes back. I'd like to hear about anyone that lives somewhere like Penzance or St Ives and see if they have more success with these plants outside. 

I've now got a Barbara Karst which is a very different story. This plant I've only had since Oct and it seems to have been grown in Italy and shipped over to me that month 2023

10/2/24

The Bougainvillea's are all doing incredibly well. No idea why for sure, they're pretty much in the same place they over-wintered last year and the only thing I can think of that I've done differently is watering as mentioned below. They're in a relatively bright area and above a radiator on the ground floor below, so over a week with the heat rising, they dry out quite a bit and then at the weekend I've been watering them fairly well - about 1/5 of a pint for each plant. 

10/12/23

All of the plants, the Barbara Karst and the Tesco Bougainvilleas are doing very well. The B. Karst is actively growing and shows no sign of going dormant. Whereas, the Tesco dwarf versions shed their bracts in November and looked as though they'd gone into dormancy mode, but in the last couple of weeks have sprung into life with new leaves growing which I've not seen before. The only thing I can think of is that I've been watering them potentially slightly more than I have done in previous years? 

The images above were all shot in November - the bracts on the Tesco plants were falling at this point. 

Update 23/10/23

All my dwarf (Tesco/Aldi) Bougainvillea's have suddenly burst into flower in the last week since the weather's turned much cooler. All summer it's been reasonably warm and sunny and they've hardly flowered and here we are on the cusp of it turning frosty at night and they've flowered. Even the Italian Barbara Karst looks like it might be on the verge of its bracts forming and having a show before winter starts to set in properly. 

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Tesco Bougainvillea,

So, my sister in-law bought one of these a few summers back and I saw it and thought yep I'll have one or two of those and last summer during Covid I scored a couple. Tesco's seem to have them in store around about May and it's a case of if you see them grab them as they don't re-stock once they're sold and you have to wait another year.

You can find places on-line that sell them, but to be honest I'd wait for the following summer and grab one or two from Tesco's. You get a healthy plant that is well established about 12 - 15" tall and already in flower.

Summer 2021

My two plants flowered 3 or 4 times right through to late Oct with very little attention placed in a sunny area of the garden - south facing. Once the temperature dropped to less than 10 degrees over-night I covered them over with sheets of plastic and then well before the temp had got anywhere near 5 degrees I'd brought them indoors. I placed mine in front of a large window and pretty much stopped watering them. 

Winter 2021 - 2022

I watered them sparingly once every two weeks keeping an eye on the leaves, looking for evidence of wilting. They didn't flower (Bracts) again till early March and they're still in flower a month later and I see the next bunch of bracts developing now as the 'March' ones are starting to fall off the plant. I did consider storing them in the dark in a garage outside which apparently is another approach where they go dormant and for all intents and purposes look as though they're dead, but opted to keep them inside.

For Year one this has been fine, both plants didn't grow a great deal and it wasn't till January this year 2022 that they started to grow and in just 8-10 weeks they look as though they've grown about 12". I re-potted them in March in slightly bigger pots with some seaweed and chicken dung feed and compost.

I'm expecting both the plants to grow a fair bit over the summer and then potentially become an issue when they come back indoors. I'm hoping to train them to grow across a wall over a distance of 9'. If they get to be 3' long I'll be happy and I reckon I can accommodate that size easily enough indoors. But, you can prune them back quite hard if it does end up growing like a Triffid.

There's a forum on Gardners World where there's some interesting discussion regarding growing Bougainvillea's in the UK. This bloke here in Bounemouth had a really good example...

Click on Image to go to Gardeners World source

 

This bloke 'Barney' lost his the following winter when hit by a week of hard frosts. He says he'd wrapped the branches, but neglected the pots and that the pots were quite wet and therefore susceptible to potentially freezing the roots. I'll bring mine in each winter. We'll just have to see how it goes over the coming year, but I'm optimistic. 

7/4/22

So at the moment I'm trying to transition my plant from indoors to out in the garden and so far that's gone okay till today. We've had a 2 week warm phase (Late March 2022) where both plants have been outside during the day and back in over-night. Last night the forecast was for 7 degrees over-night and 13-14 during the day. This morning I've got up and both plants looked poorly - wilting - both the leaves and the flowers (Pinks leaves). I wondered whether the temp had dropped lower than 7? 

Anyway I've brough them indoors and after about 2-3 hours they've perked up and have returned to normal having been placed in front of a big window in the sun. Reading about the wilting here I wasn't sure whether it was the cold or perhaps over-watering, or maybe a combination? Currently, the earth in the pots is moist and reading through that website it does sound as though I may have been watering too much, so I'm going to leave them now for a week and see how they go. 

22/4/22

I've just watched some of the videos below and noted that the lady in Manchester says she doesn't get her Bougainvillea's out over-night till May. You can see below that the wind direction and temperature today at 15.15hrs are sketchy...

Essex is showing as 11 degree (Above)

Potentially more concerning is the direction e.g. from the east straight out of the Baltics so over-night the temp will drop considerably, so mine will be coming indoors again and will be for the foreseeable future.  

So at the moment I put the plants out every day and move them around the garden if I'm at home chasing the sun... Initially on the east facing side of the garden but as the sun moves towards setting it the west I move them to the west facing side. Currently they're getting around 8 - 12 hours of good light a day and that's direct sunlight if the sun's out. If it's windy at the moment I'm cautious with regards wind chill and I leave them in a less exposed area. I'm lucky in that my garden faces south and is surrounded by walls and fences. Although my sister-in-law who lives in Derbyshire has a far more open garden and she's never had any problems.

8/5/22

This is how mine were looking at the end of April. I've now got them fixed in place on the wall to try and get them growing across the wall. But tonight 8/5/22 it's going to get down to 4 degrees c over-night so I've covered them with thick plastic. They seem to have slowed down in terms of the speed they're growing and I'm not sure if that's down to the fact that they're now outside and it hasn't been that warm? 

18/05/22

Over the earlier part of May some of the night time temperatures got down to 4 - 6 degrees on a number of occasions and I continued to cover the plants with sheets of heavy plastic. About a week or so ago I got the plants into their position in the garden where they'll now stay till October see

The idea is that the plants will grow across the gap eventually meeting in the middle framing the wall.

The image here - shows what I'm doing if the weather takes a turn for the worse. Tonight I've been watching a video by a woman in the USA and she advocates watering the plants sparingly. I've been watering mine about 2 or 3 times a week, so I'm going to ease up on that approach and do one big watering a week and see if that indicates better growth as at the moment they seemed to have stalled. Tonight it's going to pour with rain and the soil is already wet, so I've covered them tonight to prevent them getting any wetter. 

20/7/22

I'm a bit disappointed with the growing rate of my plants and looking around it might be the case that these Tesco versions are Dwarf plants as described here  looking at the description and the photo's this pretty much matches what I've got which means I might have to go looking for the Barbara Karst variety for next year which grows really fast from what I've read.

This is how they've looked at their best...

This image below is the one above a couple of weeks later. All the flowers/Bracts have dropped, but there's loads of new shoots and the plant is growing, albeit much slower than I'd wished.

Found this site... https://www.westdalenurseries.co.uk/shop/bougainvillea-barbara-karst/ 

£30 for a plant in a 1 litre pot. I might go for it. 

22/7/22

Mulling this over, I thought whether there'd be any point in having a look around one of the bigger garden centres in my area and this morning I drove over and had a butchers. I've now found another variety called - "Alex".

I've messaged a UK expert on Youtube to see if she knows anything about this plant and I'm waiting for her reply. Whilst in the shop I took the plant from the shelf it was on and in doing so found that it was very inter-twined with the adjacent plants and this suggested that potentially since having been placed there the plants had grown considerably. I sought out the lady who looked after the plants and she confirmed that they'd only been placed there 2 weeks previously and she agreed that in the 2 weeks they'd grown potentially 6" - 8". This what I'm after! The only minor down-side is the colour is far more Lilac than the vivid pink.

I then did some further research and found a variety called 'Alexandra' which looks like this plant...

The website here suggests that this variety potentially grows to 7 metres https://www.gardentags.com/plant-encyclopedia/bougainvillea-spectabilis-alexandra/116 which is what I'm after. Another observation is the 'Trunk' of the plants in the shop were far more tree-like in comparison with the Tesco variety. So I reckon I'll buy one tomorrow. 

22/10/22

All the Bougainvillea are still in the garden, all with flowers. Hardly watering them at all, but they're covered with plastic as above if it's raining and gets anywhere near 7 or 8 degrees as a precaution. No doubt at some point the wind is going to swing round to the north. I keep an eye on the regular weather reports but also watch this which is live, but you can see where the weather patterns are heading and make additional judgements...

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-3.37,65.59,418

The main issue is with 4 of these plants is now where the hell are they going to go in the house. The fast growing one has grown fast and it's pretty big. I don't think my wife is going to be over-impressed when they come in as our gaff is pretty small. 

4/11/22 October was mild with the last weekend having temperatures in the sun of almost 40 degrees! I've brought all the plants in today as it's going to drop to 2 degrees tonight. So that's it the plants are indoors. I'll do some pictures...

November 2022.

The mild weather continued into November and around the start of November having kept an eye on the weather I eventually brought the plants in because there was a consistent series of nights that were around 6 degrees.

The issue then was where to put them and what mode of dormancy to use. There are some in the UK that move their plants into a garage which is obviously almost completely dark and allow them to be completely dormant... (Click paragraph below).

"To initiate dormancy, place the plant in a cool basement, a heated garage or any other cold but frost-free spot. No light is needed: the plant will be dormant, after all. Water only enough so that the root ball doesn’t dry out completely, perhaps once or twice a month".

This will week apparently, but I have a little bit of room in my house and have put the plants indoors and by early December the bracts had pretty much all fallen off making a mess and then continued to do so up till mid December today when I've just pulled off the final few leaves leaving pretty much what looks like 4 ugly dead looking plants. My wife isn't overly impressed with having them in the house!

Dec 2022

I'm currently watering them about once every 2 weeks and today 17th Dec I've cut all the ends off all the branches and cut the bigger one (Alex) down quite a bit to encourage side-ways growth rather than vertical growth, as I've got a feeling this'll be the one that grow fast once it gets going in the spring. 

Once concern I have is there did seem to be some growth at the ends of some of the buds - but they felt mushy and wet, so these have been cut, it did seem to be new growth - but possibly attacked by some kind of fungus or disease. I'll have to see how that pans out - that was apparent on all of the Tesco variety. 

Jan 2023

On closer inspection with regards the mushy wet buds, it looks as though it's greenfly or aphids or similar. Messaged the lady on Youtube and she suggested using a soft paint brush to brush them off with. I tried this and it worked, I had to be careful of the really new buds as I found that if I wasn't careful they could be easily knocked off the branch. So I cleared as many of the bugs off as I could and then waited for the buds to form into leaves before having another go.

Feb 2023

Feb 14th and the plants are starting to show leaves and now bracts in the last few days as the days get longer and the light brighter. The 14th is supposed to be warm - 16 degrees and really sunny. If the wind isn't too bad, I may get the plants out into a sunny corner and give them a boost.

Feb 2023

March 25th - Getting the plants out in the garden during the day if the temp is predicted to be over 13 degrees and then bringing them indoors. The newer plant "Alex" shows no sign of life at all, but the Tesco versions have flowered minimally and have shoots and buds. It's predicted to get cold tonight with a frost so a load of plants in the garden will have to come in including the Bougainvillea's. 

October 2023

Poor year for the plants. Not sure why. Virtually no growth on the two dwarf versions - the Tesco types and really poor flowering. Only now does it look as though there's going to be a flourish of bracts on the dwarf versions. The expensive one Alex seemed to have virtually died off completely and none of the hard wood produced buds, but having given up on it, I put it in a really sunny position in the garden and new shoot emerged and grew quickly to around 12", but then the slugs took a liking to it and it never get a hold. I've kept it and I reckon the root system might produce shoots next year, but given how hard it is to look after I reckon I might give up on it in the next month of so as it gets colder.

In July I decided to get a Barbara Karst and I ordered one from https://www.gardenplantsonline.co.uk/product/bougainvillea-barbara-karst-miss-manila/ 

I bought the smaller one and on my budget I still felt it difficult to justify the cost of £50 with delivery, but I've wanted one and went for it. But having ordered in mid July it didn't arrive till the last weeks in September. It seems they're not in the UK when you order them and they might wait until they have sufficient orders to justify the cost of bringing them over from Italy? So if orders for exotic plants are low it takes weeks if not months before they can justify the costs of having them imported. I was initially told they'd be a few weeks as they have to come in from Italy but each time I followed up the failure to deliver, they extended it by 2 or 3 weeks each time with the plant arriving as mentioned in late September. Conversely, you can't order them in the winter because of the cold weather. I think it says on the website you can have them delivered from May onwards, so an order in March or April might be the best way with the order arriving in May? 

Anyway it's here...

Looks a bit straggly and has flowered recently, so I've got it out in the garden and at the moment October is nice and warm 22-24 c today in the UK and it's following one of the warmer Septembers we've ever had. I'm hoping that we get a mild October and I can leave it in the garden through till early November, when the night temps will be consistently down to sub 10 degrees with the chance of frosts. I'll have to keep an eye on the plant and get it in if necessary. 

Being a Barbara Karst this plant once it gets settled allegedly grows like a triffid. Once the cold comes this specimen along with the other 3 will come in doors which is a pain. This plant as it is, wont be too difficult to accommodate this year, unless of course it grows between now and late April when it'll go back out into the garden. But the question is - how do I train it and how much will it actually grow? I'm hoping for at least twice the size/length/height it is at the moment by this time next year? 

From Westdale nurseries...

The beautiful, bounteous Barbara Karst, like all vine bougainvilleas, will need a trellis or some sort of support, but if preferred you can prune and train the vine into a shrub or tree form. The plant is drought tolerant, is happiest in full sun, and can grow very quickly to 30 feet or more in height.
This splendid bougainvillea is at its best when cascading down a slope or across an arbour. It certainly also makes a summer splash spilling across the wall of a building.

Other sources say around 2ft a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqSGckdovnw - Loads of good info on this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBg-6YUeViE This discusses how to recover a distressed Bougainvillea says they should be in the same pot for over 3 years. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W2ySKEO2xQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHeUwHW4f_E&t=110s this has some good info after the initial waffling.

Plans for next year...

Buy a Barbra Karst Bougainvillea £40

Buy both plum and cherry tomatoes and grow them along the length of the Gabions along the top - potentially either in Tomato grow bags or long planters? https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/top-tomato-varieties-to-grow/