Patiently waiting for those enticing and waxy flowers, after carefully nurturing your plant and then you realise that your jasmine is not blooming. You may wonder what is going on, as the plant looks healthy, its foliage is vibrant green, but those flower buds are simply not coming through.
Not to panic, as there can be multiple reasons why our jasmine flowers are not pushing through, and understanding those factors will help us fixing it and improve our Jasmine plant care.
Obviously, there are different jasmine types and each one will require specific caring tips to optimise their growth and flowering, they also blossom at different times of the year and require different environmental conditions, however, they do share the general rules to maximise their vibrant appearance.
There are numerous factors to consider, as to why our jasmine plant is not flowering or developing flower buds, such as, water stress, lack of sun, drought stress, nutrient-poor soil, the right choice and mix of fertiliser, as well as, optimal feeding, compost and pruning techniques.
How to make a Jasmine Plant grow maximum level of flowers
Your Jasmine plant looks healthy and it is growing fine, with a beautiful vibrant green foliage but the flowers are not coming out and the stems are empty of flower buds or perhaps you were lucky enough to have some of those beautiful flowers in the first year but never again. Whatever your situation maybe, I am going to explain the two very specific things to be considered, in order to increase the blooming in our Jasmine plant.
Pruning and cutting off
After our Jasmine plant flowers in the early spring, you will need to prune back the plant by cutting off the dead, dry and old blossoms. You then will need keep the plant in cool enough conditions, in order for you to be lucky enough to see a loads of blossoms. Once the blooming process finishes, take your Jasmine plant outside, of course make sure that there is not risk of a frost coming up and make sure the temperature is warming up.Then take the Jasmine pot outside for the entirety of the summer and autumn time. Give the plant a regular watering protocol and feed it once a month with a half strength fertiliser.
Our jasmine plant, is a climbing vine, which will be also crawling in to other plants and perhaps not holding very stiff, so it will be crucial to prune it. Each cut will divide into two new shots and you will need to keep pruning it thorough the summer. Your plant will become more dense over time and those offshoots will produce new flower buds later in the year. As the stems keep growing, trying to climb up, keep pruning your Jasmine plant regularly and that will aid to get lots of flowers.
Cooling Period
Jasmine plants do needs a cooling period.This means, it needs a resting period in a cool weather after those warm months. As we were mentioning before, take the pot outside, through the autumn, where the temperatures will start going down to about 10-15 Celsius degrees. Our jasmine plant needs that cooler temperature in order for the plant to boost the flower bud production. Some people do miss this step when trying to make their jasmine flower. Next, bring the Jasmine plant back in the house, right before the first freezing period starts in the winter time. After the winter season, you will start seeing those small flower buds coming through and once they kick in, you can move the plant back in your living space to enjoy those scented waxy flowers in your favourite part of the house. Bear in mind that those flowers will last longer in a cooler environment, so if you have a room or a rear porch, where the sunlight is not overheating it, that would be a pretty good option to keep your jasmine pot and that way, the flowers would last longer (as suppose to be kept in a warmer room, where they would last for about three to four weeks) If you follow those advices, you will be able to grow a nice and mature jasmine plant, with solid roots in the pot and you will have many flowers each season. It is of maximum importance, to check on your jasmine plant regularly and notice that, if there is too much root bound at the bottom of the plant, your plant might feel a bit loose and shaky, so you might have to do a bit of maintenance by pruning that root system, make some new compost and insert a what is called a teepee trellis (wooden/plastic structure to help your jasmine climb up and grow still) and make it ready to go for the next year.
Compost
To make a new compost mix and a new soil to optimise the flowering potential of your Jasmine, mix in the pot, 15% garden soil, 15% sand, 15% cocopeat, 5% rice husk and 50% organic manure. Then, mix it real well, add it to the pot and repot your jasmine plant. After you have done that, water the plant all the way up the top of the pot and leave the plant outside the entire day (for full sunlight hit). After about 26 days, you will be able to see a full green foliage. At this stage, (this is a little trick I have learnt over the years), top up the soil with a bit more of manure to boost the growth of the plant, setting up a robust plant to further develop those wanted blossoms, as we move forward in the year. At this point, proceed by adding a tea spoon of urea into one litre of water in a spray bottle, dilute it, and spray it all over the plant. By day 36, you will see many small to medium flower buds coming out of those stems. Again, mix a tea spoon of urea and a tea spoon of magnesium in a litre of water, to then spray it around the plant. By day 42, you will see those flowers blooming! At this point, it would be much easier if you use a big bucket to dissolve 3g of complete plant food NKP 20-20-20 and a tea spoon of Thrichoderma fungicide powder in a litre of water. Then, top up our pot soil with the mixture and by day 44, you will see an incredible flower pop in you Jasmine plant! To ensure our plant keeps growing healthy, it is important keep our pot in a well draining medium soft soil and your Jasmine gets 5-6 hours of direct sunlight and you water your plant only 2 inches deep, when the soil is semidry, as our jasmine plant only likes, moderate moist to well drained soil.
Fertiliser
It is crucial to use a balanced fertiliser. You can’t use any kind of fertiliser, if you want to obtain loads of flowers (we have cover this topic before in other blog posts), you will need a 30 -35 % Nitrogen, 45-50 % Phosphorus, 20 % of potassium rich fertiliser. In order for me to better explain the importance of the right fertiliser mix I will describe a personal experiment, I performed with my own Jasmine plants. Last year, I had two Arabian Jasmine plants, one of them, I lost and the other one I succeeded in obtaining many flowers and bloomed beautifully. In the plant I lost, I only used cow manure and leaf compost and what happened is that, the plant grew so many leaves and stems but the flower production was pretty minor to none, compared to my other jasmine plant, where I treated my plant with phosphorus and potassium rich fertilisers (such as bone meal and triple rich superphosphate).
After doing that once every two months, what happened is that, there were tons and tons of flowers and no empty stems. Thus, confirming that those three chemical elements (described above) combined and in the right amount are crucial for proper and sustained flower development. The proportions are important, 30% Nitrogen to limit the foliage growth (and thus stealing from flower bud production), 50% Phosphorus to increase the signalling in the flower bud formation hormones and Potassium to hold the root system strong and keeping the stem still to grow the flowers. You can follow my homemade fertiliser recipe to develop full potential on your jasmine flowers. Mix two tablespoons of banana peel mix with potassium and phosphorus, one tea spoon of potash red powder, one tea spoon of urea and one tea spoon of triple super phosphate. Add those items to a bucket, mix them well and add a tea spoon of mustard powder mix (which contains lots of micronutrients) and lastly, 1/2 tea spoon of fungicide powder. Mix all the powders together (this mix is for a15 inches pot!) and top up the pot soil once every two to three months, water the plant regularly, expose it to enough hours of sun and you will get so many beautiful flowers!