Bougainvillea's autumn blooming peak season: why do the small buds keep dropping one after another?

As autumn arrives, bougainvillea enters another peak blooming season. After a series of care measures, most bougainvillea varieties may form buds and bloom in autumn. Free-flowering bougainvillea varieties are already quietly forming flower buds. But some growers, amid their delight, find that the small buds just about to open suddenly drop off. In my opinion, the reasons are roughly as follows.

1. Watering too frequently.We all know that to get bougainvillea to bloom, most varieties need water-control treatment. Water control means that for about a month and a half before bougainvillea forms buds, each time you wait until the soil is dry and the branches and leaves are soft, drooping and wilted before watering a small amount. During this period, spray with phosphorus and potassium fertilizer, repeat this for about a month, then resume normal watering for about 20 days, and in this way the bougainvillea will show flower buds. Some growers think that during the water-control period the bougainvillea is severely short of water, so during the bud stage they give it a large amount of water. When watering is too frequent and the potting soil stays wet for a long time, the roots cannot breathe freely and cannot properly transport nutrients to the buds, which causes the buds to drop.

2. Too little fertilizer.If you want bougainvillea to bloom profusely, sufficient fertilizer is essential. Among the three main nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, nitrogen fertilizer promotes leaves, phosphorus fertilizer promotes flowers, and potassium fertilizer promotes stems, so phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are the two indispensable fertilizers for flowering plants during the blooming period. Some growers only focus on water control and do not supply phosphorus and potassium fertilizer in time, or they fertilize unreasonably and apply too much nitrogen fertilizer, which causes insufficient fertilizer supply during the bud stage and makes the buds drop.

3. Moving it back and forth, improper light.Bougainvillea is a light-loving plant. Most of the time it needs to be grown outdoors, and only with strong light will it form buds and bloom. Some growers, when they see bougainvillea forming buds, in their delight move it indoors or to a spot with insufficient light to admire it. A sudden lack of light, or a sudden change in environment, will inevitably cause bud drop.

Therefore, for bougainvillea during the autumn bud stage, care requires even more attention: water so that the soil dries and then gets wet; keep providing sufficient light; keep supplying phosphorus and potassium fertilizer continuously. Only in this way can bougainvillea bloom for a long time and effectively avoid flower and bud drop.