Three springs ago, we bought & had planted along our fence, a beautiful wisteria tree. The nursery said it was about 10 years old and it bloomed abundantly & grew profusely the first 2 years. This spring, we had an unusual hard freeze. Our very mature weeping cherry produced only a dozen blooms, our boxwood hedge suffered some bad freezing burns, and our wisteria had none/nada/zip blooms. the buds it had set last year appear to be dead. At this point, when all of the wisteria trees in our town are at the end of their bloom cycle and have close to mature leaves, ours has only about 20-30 leaf buds that are starting to leaf out. I've been reading all of your troubleshooting messages re wisteria trees, trying to figure out if our tree can be saved. When the nursery planted it, they purposely planted it higher than the normal ground level, bcuz the area was slightly lower and we didn't want the roots setting in water. One mistake I see that we might have made was not to prune it back enough in the fall. I also see that they don't require much fertilizer. I did fertilize it last summer a couple of times. I've tried breaking off 6-8 inches of each end, which are dead; but further in, the branches are still very green. Upon reading your notes here, it's not surprising that the younger shoots are dead -- they should have been pruned. We're quite sad about the possibility of losing this gorgeous tree -- any suggestions on what we can do at this point to help save the tree? appreciate any input. tks
Hi Newburgh, All you can do is prune off any dead wood back to live wood, mulch the roots and do not fertilize. Give it time to recover. I'm not sure which posts you have read so I'm including some links that might be helpful. http://www.rippingale.com/~meacham/wisfaq.html http://www.plantamnesty.org/pruning_topics/pt_wisteria.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/pruning_pruneclimbers.shtml#mature_wisteria Good luck, Newt
I know it has been a while since posted. But stop fertalizing! Wisteria do not like it, or need it! It will cuase the plant not to bloom.
The original poster's message clearly indicated that the lack of blooms was due to damage by cold weather and had little if any to do with the use of too much fertilizer. Wisteria can use some nutrients every spring especially when they are young and need to get established. Just don't over apply.
