Coral porterweed not blooming

I bought 2 coral porterweeds after falling in love with a red one that afriend gave me that blooms all the time. They bloomed at first and have grown huge! look very healthy but are not blooming and I'm disappointed. I've gone back to the nursery and theirs aren't blooming either. I'm getting ready to pull them out, I really don't want to since they look healthy but they look so out of control and it was the flowers that made me want to plant them for my butterflies, not much good if they aren't going to have any. Does anyone know why this may be happening?

Thanks!

There are a couple possibilities, one is that with perennials sometimes it takes them a couple years to settle in and really bloom well and reliably. Some plants will establish themselves faster than that, but some can take longer. Just because they were blooming when you got them or shortly after that doesn't count, they need to re-establish when you put them in your garden. The other possibility since it sounds like they're growing a lot is that you gave them too much fertilizer, that can stimulate lots and lots of growth, but no flowers. I don't grow this particular plant, but I've often found that things that have "weed" as part of the common name will actually do better in poorer soil where they don't get as much fertilizer.

Thanks so much. I do think they are spending alot of their time growing but I don't know how much more they can grow, they are almost 5 feet tall now and I haven't fertilized my yard for a year and a half. LOL It's like they are on growth hormones, although the ones still at the nursery from the same batch are half the size and aren't flowering either. I wonder if I can transplant them somewhere else.

Too much water (but not enough to create a situation where they're overwatered) could also cause a similar effect. Again, I don't grow this plant so I don't know how much water it needs, but if it can get by on less and you (or Mother Nature) have been giving it a lot, that could have a similar effect as over-fertilizing.

That is possible with all the rain we've been having. I was thinking the same thing but thought the plant would turn yellow or have some other sign of being overwatered now that you explained it that way it does make sense.

Thanks!

If it's been raining a lot, that could also hurt the blooming, some plants like it hotter and sunnier before they'll bloom, so if you've been having lots of rain for a long time, then they may not be 100% happy with their conditions and so haven't bloomed yet. But if things dry out and the sun comes back out, they may decide to bloom later.


All plants have some range of water amounts that they can be happy with. If you're on the lower end of the range that they like, they'll grow slower, and if you're on the higher end, they'll grow faster. Of course if you go outside of the range on either end, then the plant won't be happy, but within the range they'll do fine. Some plants have wider ranges of tolerance than others. And many plants can tolerate something outside of their range for short periods, but if it goes on for a really long time then they'll die (so total huge downpours for a week may not kill them, but if it keeps raining for a month then they'll rot)

As an example of how water amount can affect growth, I have 3 Salvia clevelandii plants that I planted last fall, they were all the same size when I started. Two of them are located so that they get some runoff from my neighbor's lawn sprinklers, and one of them doesn't, all it gets is my stingy watering every 7-10 days. The two that get the extra water are literally 2 or 3 times the size of the drier one, they're all perfectly healthy, only difference is the size. Here's a picture, it doesn't show the smaller one really well, but if you look in the bottom of the picture towards the left you'll see part of it, compare that to the two giants in the middle of the picture.

That sure is a huge difference. I guess I may have to wait until after rainy season to find out.

Your salvia are very pretty!

i have a blue and a red and they both quit blooming about a month ago. can't be water, we haven't had any until this week. they just get normal watering like the rest of the garden. the leaves are all good and green. i had two red ones last year (got huge too) and they bloomed non-stop until frost, at which time they died back and i pulled them out. it's possible they would be root-hardy in this area, but i needed the space at the time so i didn't wait to find out. when i lived in the keys, they bloomed year round. i don't know what to say as far as the stopping of blooms now. i've been wondering about mine too. i liked the red because they didn't re-seed the way the blue do. i doubt i will keep either one and probably won't buy them again.

That's my problem too. I don't have the space and they really are only useful and attractive to me if they are blooming. If they're not going to bloom I could use the room, I hate to pull them out just yet though because I love them when they are blooming. Thanks!