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.
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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?
This series were shot on Aug 6th ____________________________________
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.
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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.
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?
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?
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...
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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...
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
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 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.
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 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).
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?
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/
