I enjoy fleeting moments in the garden, but sometimes I think there isn’t much else that seems as fleeting as the blooming and fading camellia flowers. After months and months of watching the buds grow and waiting all fall and winter, my camellias seem to bloom and wilt in an instant.
However, planting camellias is still worth it in my book because of how early they bloom.
The camellia blooms in quick succession, usually starting on the sunny side of the bush. In my part of the country, the only flowers that match those of camellias are snowdrops, hellebore and crocuses. So when everything else is still in a deep sleep, the camellias are all present and accounted for.
Camellias are not low-maintenance shrubs (quite the contrary). But as busy gardeners, we might succumb to the tendency to forget its existence in the banality of the start of the gardening season. It’s a typical case of out of sight, out of mind, once the flowers are gone.
Even faded golden camellia flowers have their charm. Here’s what to do with your camellias after they’ve finished blooming so you can prepare for even bigger and better blooms next year.
(And if your goal is to get bigger and better blooms from your camellia, then you’ll want to read my guide: 8 Secrets to Make Your Camellia Bloom Like Crazy)
Contents
1. Keep your camellia on a regular watering schedule
With their glossy evergreens and sturdy stems, camellias look like sturdy plants. And they are quite hardy shrubs. But if you expect a new crop of flowers next winter, keep watering your camellias during dry seasons. The camellias will form buds this summer. This is why it is very important to ensure that the plant is sufficiently hydrated to form as many buds as possible.
A fluctuation in soil moisture can disrupt flowering the following year.Another thing to keep in mind is that camellias, like rhododendrons, don’t root very deeply. They are based on a complex root structure, but most of it stays fairly close to the surface. So make sure that the fibrous root system that the shrub depends on for water and nutrient uptake has good access to water.
Camellia has shallow roots that extend to the drip line, so water around the plant. If you have fairly wet pits most of the time, that should be fine. But the wells where I cultivate are drying up. In fact, this year we had one of the driest Februarys on record.
Just keep an eye on the weather and fill your camellia with plenty of water if it doesn’t rain enough. Remember to water your camellias at least once a week during the dry weeks of spring.
2. Cover your camellia (yes, again!)
But I already covered myself in the fall. Should I do it again in the spring?
Yes, you better!
The mulch you applied in the spring may still be visible. But depending on what you used, it could have been brought to the ground by hungry worms (leaf fungus is a delight), blown by the wind (wood chips usually meet this fate), or simply compacted by rain. and melted snow.
Light soil may be pleasing to the eye, but nature does not make it that way. In either case, the fall mulch has done its job of preventing soil compaction or runoff and maintaining an even temperature around the root ball.
I like to call mulch a gardener’s secret weapon. Covering your camellia bush in the spring will primarily help retain water in the soil. It’s not just the drought that holds back the shoots. But switching between too dry and too wet can also wreak havoc on future blooms. This is where mulch saves the day by acting as a moisture regulator.
I mulch with pine needles to increase the acidity of the soil around my camellias. The way I use it, mulch has a secondary function in the spring. I chose to mulch with acid materials (this year it was pine needles) to increase the acidity of the soil. In their natural habitat, camellias grow in rich, acidic soil, often on slopes under pine trees. So if we reproduce this in our gardens, we guarantee healthy and lush shrubs.
3. You can prune your camellia, but only to give it shape.
I’ll start this tip with a disclaimer: camellias are slow-growing shrubs that don’t really need pruning. At least not in the sense of other shrubs. As long as you transplanted your camellia to an open spot when you brought it home, you shouldn’t have to prune it for years.
Camellia ‘Masayoshi’ is one of the varieties that can form on a tree.However, if you want to exert more influence on the shape of the shrub than Mother Nature, you can prune lightly in the spring. This means that if you want to convert your camellia from a shrub to a tree form, you can prune one of the lower branches to encourage upright growth.
On the other hand, if you want your camellia to be rounder and fuller (which is my preference), you can cut off the stray growth at the top. Cut only the branch that sticks out more than the others, just above a node.
I prune three high branches to keep my camellia compact. In either case, you should avoid drastic pruning (even for contouring). Plan to spread your pruning over several years to give the plant time to recover.
Keep in mind that the pruning window for camellias is not open for long. Depending on the cultivar you are growing, the camellia may start producing buds in midsummer the following winter. So don’t wait too long before pruning. You can do this as soon as this year’s flowers are gone. However, if your camellia is a very early flowering variety, wait until the last expected frost date has passed.
What to do with fallen camellia flowers
Camellias bloom so early in the season that they are often damaged by frost, high winds, or heavy rains that knock the flowers to the ground. But what to do with this tapestry of faded flowers?
It is best to compost them, but only if they show no signs of disease. Camellia flowers can sometimes suffer from a fungal disease called camellia petal blight. Undesirable flowers showing signs and compost healthy looking flowers.
What you do with your camellia after flowering will set it up for success the next flowering season.