Clematis
arthur bluestone
Posts: 31
in Plants
For the last three years I have tried to grow two clematis in large pots they look healthy enough but I get a poor show of flowers,I also have one clematis in the border plenty of folage but no flowers.On the opposite of my border I have a wonderful clematis it spans about eight feet across and has wonderful flowers I am a bit confused.
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Clematis are greedy plants and need plenty of food and a decent supply of water to do well. They can also take a year or two to get established before they perform with gay abandon. Are the non flowering varieties getting enough food?
It may also be that your are pruning them in the wrong way for their group. Can you tell us what varieties they are and when you are pruning them?
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
The names of the Clematis are Bee's Jublee and The President both are late summer flowering I am pruning at the end of Febuary I think I might be pruning them too hard I prune back a foot from the soil I noticed that the tag on the President is pruning group two and to keep much of the framework,but I am not too sure about keeping them in pots.The other question when is the right time to take Clematis cuttings and are they easy to take root
Actually, bothe of these are Group 2s which mean they start flowering end of May and June and then go quiet and then, if well fed and lightly pruned to remove all the old flower heads, will produce a second flush of flowers in late summer.
However, my garden is too cold in winter for group 2s to retain live growth above ground so I treat mine as group 3s and cut them back in March and then feed them generously with proprietary clematis food. If we get a poor spring, I also give them a liquid tonic of tomato food.
They all flower very well from late June and then I dead head where I can and they keep flowering through summer but you do need to dead head regularly for this to happen or they start to set seed and no longer make flower buds.
Clematis cuttings are tricky but you can try them from mid spring to mid summer taking double leaf cuttings with half the length of stem between them and teh next set of leaves and burying them up to the leaf nodes in a pot of suitable compost. layering is probably easier. Just take a stem and peg a leaf node to the ground or in a pot of moist compost and wait for it to root.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw