How To Get More Flowers ...?

[0soyoung]

Basic botany/horticulture posits that both flowers and leaves are just apical meristems. Hence, flowers always occur at branch/shoot tips. But not all shoot tips produce a flower. Some years more shoot tips produce flowers than others.

What can one do that will induce more or fewer flowers?

I grow some trees for their flowers and would like to maximize the number of flowers (i.e., azaleas, crabapples, etc.). On the other hand, 'flowering' conifers are generally not a pretty site and I would like to suppress their 'flowering'.

 

[Poink88]

Low N fertilizer around fall?

 

[Lazylightningny]

Have you read this article by Harry Harrington? Great treatise on pruning azaleas for better blossoms.
http://www.bonsai4me.com/AdvTech/AT Azalea Bonsai Pruning.html