Bougainvillea care?

Question

Any help in careing for(watering,fertilizing,prunning,positioning ect.) for the Bougainvillea vine?

I live in Sydney Australia so a warm,humid climate with unreliable rainfall.The soil is a nice soil.

Answer 1

I love bougainvillea's .There is a saying " The best bougainvillea's are those that are at a place which is most neglected" i.e. they flower profusely . they require less water. See I am from India and live close to Mumbai(Bombay), our area is known as a heavy rainfall area warm & humid . we have rainfall from june to sept. winter is oct. to feb. summer is mar to may. now let us start from June, as july month comes there is lot of vegetative growth( flowering stops)initiates there are lot of new branches. after the rains are over the growth stops and we prune the unwanted stems and shape the plants as we want we add Phoshatic and potashic ferili. with no nitrogen. we have oil cakes or bone meal , bone meal has lot of phoshates.& they help in flowering. the flowers are there till it starts raining. So at your place sydney when the rain starts add equal amount of Nitrogen+Phosphorus+potash (NPK) the ratio in horticulture language is 1:1:1 N:P:K .You can add this in chemicl form along with bone meal and oil cake. after rainy season ends the prune accordingly and add fertilizers the way i have written earlier in my case. In winter the days are short nights long & in the summer the opposite, this does not make any difference to flowering but in rains there are no flowers in our case atleast and only vegetative