Wisteria - only a few flowers a year.

[Ja8edfyre]

I have a very large wisteria vine, it's grown up the pole of a bird house and is spreading into a neighboring tree. However, every year it seems to be flowering less and less. Any advice on getting it to flower more?

This year there are only about 3 flowers on it.

 

[patandchickens]

The two classic problems with wisteria are:

1) the thickest part of the trunk (vine, whatever you wanna call it) starting to split and rot -- the cure is to prune out those parts of the vine and encourage alternative lower leaders instead, and try to protect the 'trunk' from mechanical stress and from physical damage.

2) vine gets too 'happy' -- too much nutrients, grows like gangbusters but declines to flower much. The cure is to quit fertilizing it, quit fertilizing anything NEAR it, and potentially even to root-prune it.

Oh, if I recall correctly (and you should doublecheck me on this, because I haven't dealt with wisteria since I moved out of my parents' house a LONG time ago and may be misremembering) I *think* wisteria is one of the things that has to be pruned a certain way to avoid pruning out where the flowers will come from. IF you prune your wisteria this might be something to check on. If you don't prune it, it is probably not a problem. Alhtough there may be a way *to* prune wisteria to encourage flowering, I'm not sure anymore.

Good luck,

Pat, who LOVES wisteria and is really bummed that it ain't even close to hardy here (not in an exposed location like we are in), sigh

 

[Ja8edfyre]

Hmm... Chickens roost in the Wisteria and in general hang out underneath it for a large part of the day.

Chickens = lots of poop = loads of fertilizer = way too happy vine = little flowering?

I do need to look up pruning it, because I really don't want it growing into the trees like it has started to.

Thanks Pat!

 

[patandchickens]

Well there ya go, I betcha your wisteria is just getting too much nitrogen courtesy of its chicken friends No guarantees but seems quite likely.

Pat