Kitchen Garden Forum

I bought a large azalea the year before last that was covered in flowers. I dug a huge hole and filled it with azalea compost as instructed and it's grown well, but last year had only 3 flowers and this year just the one! It's situated in a semi shaded area partly beneath a pine tree. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

We have one and it died.
I did everything it said-I blamed DH for looking at it strangely

Dear Chantal, you could try giving it a good feed with an ericaceous feed, also it might be getting to dry, so give it a can of water now and again with rain water if possible. One more thing it would really benefit from a mulch of leaf mould annually.
Hope this helps.

Kind regards Old Herbaceous.

Theres no fool like an old fool.

Thanks OH. I'll try the feed, I do have some; I don't think too dry is a problem at the moment at least I've been making some leaf mould this year so I'll save it for my azalea.

How dry is it? Did you water it in the summer?
I have a little woodland area that I am now growing what I call my posh shrubs underneath (Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Camellias, Magnolias)and each year I have mulched them with used grobags and fed them with blood, fish and bone. In the summer if it was dry in their early years I gave them a couple of gallons of tomato feed each from time to time. They took a few years to settle in, the Azaleas flowered alternate years at first and I have my first Camellia flowers this year (current avatar) after I think 6 years (I bought them fairly small). So persevere with tlc, mulching and limited feeding and it should come right. I may make a new avatar of one of the rhodos if today's deluge hasn't knocked all the flowers off.

It's not a particularly dry area and has orchids, bluebells, ferns and fuschias around it. However, I'll follow all the advice and report back next year.

Thanks guys

Not sure if anything can be gleaned from this but I have an azalea in a pot that is smothered in flowers every year. It's on the patio in a pretty sunny area. It's probably fed four/five times a year with ericaceous feed and is kept well watered. But apart from that I ignore it.
The usual causes of poor flowering - as I'm sure you know - are drought shade and over feeding.

I too keep a Rhodie and camellia in pots on my patio. Both flower profusly every year. They occassionally get an 'acid' feed and water when everything else is being watered, but they are both in very small pots for the size of plant and I always think that this is the reason why they flower so well!