HELP me with my wisteria please....

We first moved to our house a year ago and not long after moving in this ugly bare bush in our front yard (that I had first said was getting cut down at the first chance I got) bloomed beautifully! I came to figure out it was wisteria, which grows very easy in my area and even grows wild.

The one in my yard was small seems someone has pruned the heck out of it. But thats how I want it to stay. We pruned it last year and we must have done it at the wrong time because it didnt bloom much at all this year. But boy is it growing like crazy! I would like to prune it back small because it is next to a bradford pear tree that I like and every day we have to cut it away from the tree because in 1 day it reaches up and starts wrapping itself around the tree branches.

My question is, what kind of wisteria is this? when is the best time for me to cut it back? How do I make more of these? I see the huge seed pods on the wisteria but am not sure when to collect them, what do I do with the seeds once collected. Or is it easier to take some of the runners taking over my yard and start something from that? My mom wants a piece of this and I guess I would give her the whole thing if I could :)


Any help would be great!!!! I am sending a picture of our first year here when it bloomed so nice. And a picture of it now. Thanks again!

Here is a picture of how it is looking now!

one more side view see all the runners on the ground?

runners are far better then seeds as it takes 7-20 years to see it bloom from seed. runners are better.


might shock it and will die back but the runner i took this past spring now has leaves and growing like a weed. get plenty of roots with the runner.

never tried rooting a runner, someone will show up to let you know how easy (or hard) that is.

I know you can determine which variety you have by which way it climbs (clockwise or counterclockwise) Chinese and Japanese. You can discover which one you have by the direction the vines twine. Japanese Wisteria twines clockwise, while Chinese Wisteria twines counter-clockwise, and have heard some variety bloom BEFORE the leaves leaf out while others have the leaves first. I just can't remember which is which. My guess and this is only a guess, is that it was pruned at the improper time so now it will skip blooming this year, since it doesn't sound like anything else has been changed except for your pruning it. I don't prune mine, it goes wild up into the trees LOL so I am not much help other than this helpful info I found - Pruning of Wisteria should be done immediately after flowering and can be repeated two to three times each season through fall. In winter, prune especially hard. This will encourage flowering at the expense of new leaf growth. Flowering on all the Asiatic varieties takes place in Spring on the previous year's growth, so be sure in pruning you leave sufficient old wood to produce new blooms.

I hope some of this helps you out.

I have however started from seed and within 3 years had blooms.

I read an article that said that if you DON"T prune, you will not get blooms. I prune my once a week to keep it in shape. It is 2 years old, and has bloomed last year and this year.
I also have one that is growing out of hand that I had never touched, and it has never bloomed. I have had it for 7 years. After reading the article...I pruned it for 3 days...boy what a job....so I guess I will see what happens next spring. Maybe I will finally get it to bloom.
Mine that bloomed is a Chinese...and it looks ALOT like yours..but I don't know much about them, except I love it, and it is alot of work.
Yours is beautiful!!!!

Thanks! I did just prune the heck out of mine yesterday! I was getting sick of it climbing up the bradford pear, so I went after it! It took a while but it looks sooo much better! I am hoping it will bloom this next spring too!!!!

As far as rooting runners, if you pull up the part of the runner under ground just a bit you will find roots already there. Clip below the roots and plant!! Ready to roll!! You should prune the plant back quite severely at least once every few years in the Spring right after they flowers have finished. That way you shoudl still get flowers the following year--it will grow new leaves, etc. Bonnie

blckwolf: If it doesn't bloom next year, dig down as deep as your shovel will go in a circle about 4' from the trunk of your trumpet vine. That cuts a lot of the roots and basically "threatens" it into blooming. In essence, it things the world is coming to an end and it is evidently time to multiply or die! :o)

Worked like a CHARM for mine.

LOL....Thanks I will give that a try!! I love to SCARE my plants into blooming!! LOL
Wonder if I try it with my boys...I can scare them too!! LOl
But seriously...thanks I am gonna try it!!!

Wisteria is only truly beautiful one week out of the year and the rest of the time it tries to take over the world. ;^) But when it's beautiful it's really beautiful!! And the fragrance when it's blooming is WONderful. I have it all around the periphery of my yard and fight it all the time to keep it from killing dogwood trees, magnolia trees, anything and everything. I would give anything to have it in one place like yours is, but it was here before I came and will be here long after I'm gone! All you can do is stay on top of the runners and don't let them get ahead of you, and they are sneaky little buggers. They'll come up where you least expect them. My runners cross concrete looking for new ground, and that's not a joke. Any piece with roots on it should start a new plant for someone. I asked someone one time before I knew better how to start a wisteria, and he said, "I think you just throw it on the ground and stomp on it." That about is all it takes. Trim it hard and feed it well and I'll bet you will be amazed in the spring.

Looks like you might need to rent a backhoe 1gardengram!! LOL
You are right though. When I mow each week..I keep the clippers handy and prune away!! Thankfully I like to prune.

I've got one here in PA that I put in this spring & it's growing exactly like you gardeners described above. I will prune it hard. Btw, how far back do you prune it? I'll remember that about the runners for next spring and also about root-pruning. It's not on a trellis and my DH keeps promising to make me a trellis, but that just doesn't happen.

I cut mine WAY back and leave just a cluster of leaves at the end of the branches. I have decided to keep to turn it into a tree. I have to clip EVERY week...it seems to love to cut on.
Make sure you keep an eye at ground level....runners appear about every 2 weeks, and I have to cut them off. In the winter it looses its leaves and looks like all the other trees in the yard.
Hope this helps!!
Sue

A trellis is a nice idea and I hope it works. You really will have to be dedicated to keep your wisteria there, though. The trellis will have to be very sturdy and maybe as wide as it is tall to hold the eventual weight. I'm not a carpenter (Gee, can you tell?), but keeping a wisteria in one place seems like the plant would be really heavier than most vines. The trunks get big and thick.

The leaves of W. floribunda (Japanese wisteria) have 11 to 19 ovate to lance-shaped leaflets on each leaf, and W.sinensis (Chinese wisteria) has 7 to 13 elliptic to ovate leaflets, (both with racemes of blooms to12" in length.)
So, there are more leaflets to the Japanese and they tend to being longer and narrower, "pointier", than the Chinese wisteria's leaflets, which tend to be fewer in number and more or less oval in shape.
Then there's the cross between the two (W. x formosa I think) with 9 to 15 broadly ovate to elliptic leaflets, (which will generally have shorter (10") racemes.)
Then you can have hybrid strains where the raceme length is much longer than then 12", approaching and even exceeding 18" (!). Though I have never seen one, there are cultivars described as haveing 3-4 foot racemes. OMG! I'm thinking most of those are the Japanese.
From your pictures, you seem to have a Japanese wisteria (pointy leaves) but I can't really say with any certainty.

As far as pruning goes, I would prune it back to a central framework in winter, removing any weak growth or any that mar the desired form.

During the growing season, you could cut back the long shoots far enough to keep them from grabbing your tree and doing it again if the resultant shoots threaten to grab again.

In late summer, cut all shoots that you don't want as an extension of the framework, to within 6 inches of the main branches. leaving 4 to 6 leaves on each shoot. In late winter, prune those same shoots back to 2 to 3 buds (3 to 4 inches). On mature branches, don't cut away any already short bloom "spurs" (whence came the previous season's blooms), as these will give rise to the next batch.

raydio.



This message was edited Sep 17, 2005 2:36 PM