Bougainvillea in the Fall: A Look at October

nell Foster Gardening expert bougainvillea tips and tricks

It’s been a little while since I’ve filmed some videos in my own garden so I decided that a beautiful sunny day in mid-October was a good time to change that. I’ve shown you my 2 Bougainvilleas before but I wanted you to see how they look in mid-Fall.

No foliage changing color here – just those brightly colored bracts falling to the ground. I threw in a few more care tips too in case you’re interested in the world of bougainvillea gardening.

I’m switching over to a vlog formula because doing a video along with doing a longer blog post plus trying to run a business and write books was getting to be, shall we say, a bit “much”. Most of the info, unless I forget to mention something important, will be in the video at the end. I’ll still have pictures here though, but maybe not as many. On to those vigorous water shoots!

This is what the water shoots look like coming off the trunk or stem. All you need to know is: remove them.

Here’s how a water shoot looks as it soars sky-high.

Two of the shoots as I trimmed them off the trunk

2 of the green beasts after I pruned them off the trunk – you can see how tall they get. They have big thorns & very few flowers if any.

My Bougainvillea glabra grows up and over my garage and is a full riot of color. It gets full sun and enjoys all that reflected heat off the garage. My Bougainvillea Barbara Karst gets less sun and flowers towards the ends of the branches where the rays hit. You can see how I prune them very differently in the pics below – my trusty Felcos always get a good workout when this mission is my goal.

Bougainvillea Barbara Karst just before its most recent pruning.

Bougainvillea glabra.

A couple more things to show you:

In the video, I talked about the bougainvillea worm which chews holes in the foliage. 1 fell out as I was shaking the plant & sweeping up – you can see how small they are. This 1 is green but they can be brown too. The proper term for what this tiny creature is: a Bougainvillea Looper Caterpillar.

I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth a repeat. The beautiful magenta that you see is actually the leaves that have turned color. The tiny white centers are actually the flowers – the hummingbirds & butterflies adore them!

I do love my bougainvilleas and now that the days have shortened and the evenings have cooled, their growth will showdown. Thank my lucky stars … they should need no pruning now until January!

Thanks for stopping by,