SU2
Omono
I've got a bunch of bougainvilleas that are in the early stages of flowering (bracts are all formed, just haven't enlarged much yet) and I intend to stop the flowering in many/most of them (to get some more growth, I know it's fall but it's 78deg right now!) and the flowers tend towards the tips of shoots, I was just removing the flowers themselves but I'm now thinking it's smarter to remove the tip of the shoot (however many nodes have flowers and no further, to allow the shoot to just send out new shoots w/o much of a hiccup in growth)
Hoping to hear what others do when de-flowering bougies like this! I've had flowers re-grow on areas I've pulled them, and I've also noticed that if you just pinch tips (like 1-4 nodes, but that's little distance at the top of a shoot where the nodes are tight) that they're incredibly fast to shoot out ~2-5 new shoots from their top nodes in almost no time, so all things considered I'm thinking to start pinching flowering shoots instead of removing flowers, any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
(I've kinda got the idea that, by only removing the flowers, there's not enough changes (hormonal?) in a bougie to force it back to vegetative growth, and that by simply pinching the flowering tips there's enough of a change that it reverts to vegetative - I'd love if anyone in-the-know on bougies' growth-phases could chime-in on this, I know the plant wants to do distinct, alternate phases of vegetative/flowering and I wonder whether it's not smarter to pinch *all* the tips on a flowering specimen to thwart a flowering-phase, to really give it the push back to a vegetative 'phase')
Hoping to hear what others do when de-flowering bougies like this! I've had flowers re-grow on areas I've pulled them, and I've also noticed that if you just pinch tips (like 1-4 nodes, but that's little distance at the top of a shoot where the nodes are tight) that they're incredibly fast to shoot out ~2-5 new shoots from their top nodes in almost no time, so all things considered I'm thinking to start pinching flowering shoots instead of removing flowers, any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
(I've kinda got the idea that, by only removing the flowers, there's not enough changes (hormonal?) in a bougie to force it back to vegetative growth, and that by simply pinching the flowering tips there's enough of a change that it reverts to vegetative - I'd love if anyone in-the-know on bougies' growth-phases could chime-in on this, I know the plant wants to do distinct, alternate phases of vegetative/flowering and I wonder whether it's not smarter to pinch *all* the tips on a flowering specimen to thwart a flowering-phase, to really give it the push back to a vegetative 'phase')
