Bougainvillea Care Tips for Explosive, Uniform Blooms

Bougainvillea has no regular blooming schedule. Some bloom early, some bloom late. Even within the same variety, different care environments lead to different bloom times. So how do you get the bougainvillea in your home to bloom at the same time, and to bloom uniformly? Below I will teach you a technique for getting bougainvillea to bloom abundantly and uniformly.

Bougainvillea generally blooms at the tips of branches. To get a bougainvillea to bloom abundantly, it must have plenty of branches, and the simplest, most direct way to get plenty of branches is pruning. The more times you prune, the more new branches will sprout. This one is a cutting that took root last spring, a Yijin grafted in mid-September last year. It has been less than a year, and after three prunings it already has many branches. Due to the shooting angle and the foliage covering them, many branches hidden inside cannot be seen. By mid-September this year, the branches from the third pruning will have basically filled in, and it will look really beautiful. In just one year, a presentable bougainvillea has been successfully grown, and it will bloom beautifully, a whole ball of flowers. It won't take long; after another year and a few more prunings it will be truly spectacular. If you grow it for four or five years, it will be a very large flower ball. For every year you grow it, the branches multiply several times over. Compared with the bougainvillea many flower lovers grow, even after several years the branches barely increase at all, they just grow longer and thicker. That is due to a lack of pruning. This is the reason bougainvillea blooms explosively.

This is a Yijin grafted and pruned less than a year ago

(This one is a Xiaoyue Zi rooted from a cutting last spring, grafted this spring with a second layer of California Gold. The Xiaoyue Zi below has been pruned repeatedly, and the shorter you cut it the better. This winter it will bloom densely below.)

Now let's talk about how to get the bougainvillea you grow at home to bloom at the same time. This method is very simple: prune at roughly the same time. Bougainvillea grown in different environments and placed in different positions blooms at different times. I have two Snow Princess plants at home. One was sent to the courtyard of my workplace in summer and placed in full sun, so its branches grew short and thick and its leaves are on the small side, but the internodes are very short. One originally grew in two layers, but since I felt that although the two plants have different shapes, both are white bougainvillea, in summer I cut off the second layer of branches on that double-layer one and grafted on a Zhangzhou Red Cherry. So the first layer is Snow Princess and the second layer is Zhangzhou Red Cherry. Meanwhile, the Snow Princess I keep at home is now starting to bloom. So bougainvillea, due to variety, care environment and many other factors, cannot possibly bloom at the same time.

Two Snow Princess plants blooming at the same time in early spring

A Snow Princess trained into two layers; this is a photo taken after spring pruning

The second layer was cut off and grafted with Zhangzhou Red Cherry, so the first layer is white and the second layer is deep pink

(This is the Zhangzhou Red Cherry that has just successfully taken after grafting)

How do you get bougainvillea to bloom at the same time? You prune at the same time. Of my bougainvillea, some have already started blooming now. For example, a pot planted with Gongfen and Green Leaf Cherry Blossom together has already bloomed.

(This Gongfen and Green Leaf Cherry Blossom bloomed in August. To graft, I cut many branches, so this time I pruned them together, cutting off all the flowers, until not a single flower was left after pruning.) Golden Heart Bicolor and Green Leaf Orange have also just started blooming. To make the flowers bloom at the same time, I reluctantly parted with them and pruned all the bougainvillea. The ones that had not bloomed got their last pruning of the year, and the ones that had bloomed had all their flowers cut off too. In this way, at the end of August I pruned all the bougainvillea once. Still, the pruning was a bit late; the best time to prune is from early to mid-August, and preferably no later than September, because any later and you miss the optimal pruning window and flowering is affected. The main reason I pruned a bit late is that I couldn't bear to prune some branches and kept them for grafting. This year I bought some bougainvillea stumps, and the branches grafted this summer numbered close to 100, requiring a constant supply of cut branches, so I couldn't bring myself to prune. By the end of August the grafting was nearly finished, and the stumps would still grow new branches that needed further grafting, but that would be sporadic grafting. Cutting branches for grafting again would affect this year's flowering, but from then on not many branches would be needed, so it would not affect the overall flowering effect. In this way, at the end of August all the bougainvillea received one pinching prune. After pruning you can apply a phosphorus-potassium fertilizer once. Also, after pruning it is best to spray a growth retardant once to control branch growth and make the branches grow short and sturdy. After pruning, wait until all the branches have grown new shoots, then you can regularly spray monopotassium phosphate for foliar feeding, while also controlling water appropriately, and the bougainvillea will set buds and bloom. Treated this way, the bougainvillea in your home will bloom at the same time, with many flowers, blooming uniformly, and it will be truly spectacular when in flower.

This is bougainvillea pruned at the same time and blooming, with uniform blooms and many flowers.