Don't just wait around if your bougainvillea won't bloom - proper care is what makes flowering easy

If your bougainvillea only grows branches and never blooms, what's going on?

If you grow bougainvillea outdoors and don't manage it carefully, wanting it to bloom is almost impossible. For bougainvillea cared for outdoors, many of the conditions needed for flowering simply cannot be controlled, especially water. If you leave bougainvillea outdoors without any management and let it be exposed to wind and rain, there's no telling what else might happen, but as long as there's enough rain, the branches can grow to 2 m long - and that's no exaggeration.

If you want bougainvillea to bloom, you must control its growth. The main reason bougainvillea only grows branches is too much water, which causes excessive vegetative growth. When watering bougainvillea, don't water until the surface soil is dry; with uncontrolled watering, bougainvillea will grow leggy very quickly. If it has already become leggy, give the branches a hard pruning. Cut away the leggy branches and the relatively tender branches. Then, for a period afterward, it will still produce leggy growth; for the branches that grow leggy later, use pinching to control their growth. This prepares the plant fully for flowering later on.

Once the branches are under control, the next step is fertilizing. During the growing season, the fertilizer bougainvillea needs can be a mix of compound fertilizer and organic fertilizer. The compound fertilizer should be a balanced type; if there is too much nitrogen in the potting soil, it also easily causes leggy growth. A balanced fertilizer rate combined with pruning can make bougainvillea sturdier.

The next step is light. The necessary condition for bougainvillea to bloom is ample light. Don't shade it, don't block it - just give it full sun. Because only with light can you carry out the next step, water control, which is also the essential technique for growing bougainvillea well. Whether bougainvillea is grown well and whether it can bloom - everything else is an additional condition; only water control is the core technique. Place it in the light and let the potting soil dry out completely; then, because of the lack of water, the bougainvillea's leaves will droop and wilt. Water in the evening, giving half the amount of a usual thorough watering. Continue sunning it during the day; when the soil dries out completely, water again in the evening. Repeat for about a month, and it will force out flower buds. At that point you can resume normal watering.

If the soil quality is poor, before starting water control, add a little potassium dihydrogen phosphate fertilizer to help the bougainvillea bloom. If applying it as a root drench, once every ten days to half a month is fine; if spraying it on the leaves, once every 5-7 days is needed. Once flower buds have been forced out, there is no need to use potassium dihydrogen phosphate anymore. During the bougainvillea's flowering period, resume watering, but it must not be rained on. If it is rained on during the flowering period, the flowers will drop very quickly. Once there is wind or rain, it should immediately be moved indoors for care. After the sun comes out, move the bougainvillea back out and continue sunning it; only then will the flowering period become longer.

Because the flowering period is relatively long, after resuming watering you can also fertilize, but apply some liquid fertilizer, and don't make the concentration too high; once every half a month is enough. After the flowers fade, immediately supplement once with potassium fertilizer and a multi-element fertilizer to replenish the nutrients the bougainvillea consumed while flowering. If you don't fertilize after the bougainvillea's flowers fade, the next bloom will be relatively difficult. Every time it blooms, the bougainvillea plant first has to store up some nutrients before it can flower.

Xiaowei loves growing flowers and has grown quite a few himself. He hopes his ten years of flower-growing experience can help fellow flower lovers take fewer detours in the process of growing flowers. If you like it, fellow flower lovers, give it a share - thank you, fellow flower lovers!