Wisteria

Fingers Mcginty

Lads what do you think. Am I doing this right?

Lumen

Some of those cable ties look quite tight.

my3cents

No, you are using cable ties but I guess you don't know any better.

Fingers Mcginty

my3cents wrote: »

No, you are using cable ties but I guess you don't know any better.

What's wrong with cable ties? They might look it in the pic buy they're not tight.

my3cents

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

What's wrong with cable ties? They might look it in the pic buy they're not tight.

They get forgotten and then they strangle the branch you have put them around.

standardg60

my3cents wrote: »

They get forgotten and then they strangle the branch you have put them around.

Jeez tough crowd to please round here:)

Op looks perfect to me..and i'm sure as you've gone to all the trouble in the first place you'll remember to cut off the cable ties when the stems thicken up.

Effects

Here's a video showing a looping method that allows the wine to grow:

Lumen

How about "bindingtube" or similar?

http://www.roffelsen.com/markten/tuin/bindbuis/?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJtZozSxppI

my3cents

Effects wrote: »

Here's a video showing a looping method that allows the wine to grow:

Don't like that method at all even though its similar to a tradition method of using hiatts (lead headed wall nails).

The problem is that sooner or later the wisteria in that video will get too big and the branches too heavy (same issue with hiatts) and without some really good support will drop off the wall/fence and break.

With a wisteria you are best creating a framework as the OP has done once you have that then you can let it go mad like in the video because you are going to cut most of that new growth off each year.

looksee

Agree about the cable ties - its amazing how quickly the wood starts to grow into them - but otherwise it looks great.

magicbastarder

we've a wisteria which never flowers. it's planted beside and grows up through an escallonia, it's about 12 foot at its highest. anything that can be done to prompt it to flower?
it was there when we bought the house 5 years ago, i'd say the chances of lifting it are slim to none.

my3cents

magicbastarder wrote: »

we've a wisteria which never flowers. it's planted beside and grows up through an escallonia, it's about 12 foot at its highest. anything that can be done to prompt it to flower?
it was there when we bought the house 5 years ago, i'd say the chances of lifting it are slim to none.

How do you prune it. Ideally you prune all that long growth back to 2-3 buds once or preferably twice a year. The first pruning a few weeks after flowering or just when the new growth has got really out of hand after flowering. Second cut in late summer to tidy up for the winter. On the other hand I have seen a Wisteria flower perfectly well that was cut every year with a hedge trimmer.

Now you may have one that just won't flower. Wisteria is either grafted or seed grown the grafted ones are from plants that are known to flower well but sometimes you get seed raised ones that don't flower until they are donkeys years old.

standardg60

The usual advice, which may not be easy in your case, is to shorten the side shoots back to two or three buds from a main stem in july.

Alternatively it should be fine to transplant once the leaves have fallen, though you may have to cut it back hard to remove it.

standardg60

my3cents wrote: »

How do you prune it. Ideally you prune all that long growth back to 2-3 buds once or preferably twice a year. The first pruning a few weeks after flowering or just when the new growth has got really out of hand after flowering. Second cut in late summer to tidy up for the winter. On the other hand I have seen a Wisteria flower perfectly well that was cut every year with a hedge trimmer.

Now you may have one that just won't flower. Wisteria is either grafted or seed grown the grafted ones are from plants that are known to flower well but sometimes you get seed raised ones that don't flower until they are donkeys years old.

Ah my3cents you beat me to it:).

On a side note, no pun intended, I've noticed that Italian imported plants, wisterias included, just never fully acclimatise here. Hopefully yours is not one of them.

magicbastarder

cheers - we've never pruned it; it was a bit swamped by other stuff - to the point we didn't realise it was there until a few months after it came into leaf in our first spring/summer here. a lot of that overgrowth was cut back, and we thought it might simply have been starved of light so left it was was for the last few years, but we've never seen a single flower on it. will try pruning it next month.