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.