Clematis: Clematis chat: Success without effort, 1 by pirl

pirl wrote:
Success does begin with the soil. Speak to any rose grower and see how they play nursemaid, lovingly, to every request the rose has and they reap the benefits. Plant the same roses in "dirt" with no amendments and the roses will not be as healthy nor will they give the blooms that the right treatment would.

I'm almost 71, John, and some days feel a lot longer than they did even a few years ago but I'd rather tend the plants I have than go out buying dozens more and neglecting what I have.

Your clematis is lovely and I'm so glad it's thriving now. Some can be brought back from almost nothing while others aren't so fortunate.

I just dug up Franziska Maria and have little hope it will respond to all my attention but I'm babying it as though it were my one and only. We'll see what a few months can do for it. The area where it was became overrun with digitalis and it was totally hidden. I've never had a bloom from it.