Bougainvillea blooming into a five-colored ball, moss rose grown into a big flowering tree, absolutely amazing

When I visited a friend's home over the weekend, I saw her moss rose "flower tree" blooming again, and her bougainvillea had produced a "five-colored ball", with green leaves and brilliant flowers that you just can't take your eyes off. It really is impressive, and let me quietly tell you, growing them like this isn't hard either - one trick and you're done!

The bougainvillea producing flowers of many colors is actually achieved through grafting, that is, grafting branches of bougainvillea that bloom in different colors onto the same plant, and once they survive you get this effect.

Spring and summer are the growing seasons for bougainvillea; grafting at this time gives a high survival rate.

Use a perennial, healthy, thick, well-grown bougainvillea as the rootstock

When collecting scions, choose a spot with plenty of light, and select healthy, thick, well-grown current-year softwood or semi-lignified branches with plump buds

The method is shown in the picture below

For grafting bougainvillea of different flower colors, the method most conducive to success is an old yet primary method - cleft grafting. Use scions of various flower colors, with thickness similar to the rootstock branch, about 3-4cm long; to reduce water evaporation from the scions, the leaves need to be cut off, or more than half cut off leaving only a small portion, to improve the survival rate.

After grafting you can put it directly in the sun, but avoid letting the scions be rained on for long periods; generally buds appear in about 10 days

Care is as follows

1. After the graft survives, depending on the condition of different scions, generally remove the wrapping film after one month. Do not use heavy water or heavy fertilizer; heavy water and fertilizer only cause excessive leaf and branch growth, resulting in few or even no flowers.

2. For routine watering, follow the principle of "don't water if not dry, and water thoroughly when you do". But to make the bougainvillea bloom uniformly and abundantly, you must control water before flowering.

3. It grows quickly, so during the growing period pay attention to shaping and pruning to promote side branch growth and more flowering branches. Pruning is generally done 1 to 3 times, not too many, otherwise it will affect the number of bloom cycles. After each bloom, promptly remove spent flowers to reduce nutrient consumption.

For the soil used in cuttings, any breathable soil will do, but base fertilizer must be well controlled; the surface layer for cuttings should not be too rich, that is, it is safest if the top five cm of the cutting layer contains no fertilizer, because too much fertilizer will infect the wound and cause rot; many cuttings that rot right after planting are caused by this, so remember this

If you want moss rose to bloom abundantly, branching is essential, and pinching off the tips is the best way to promote branching. When the seedlings grow to 3 or 4 cm tall, just pinch off the tip of the main stem. Of course, pinching is not mandatory, but sometimes we need to intervene artificially so the plant develops in the direction we want.