Why Won’t My Forget-Me-Nots Bloom?
There’s nothing quite like the show put on by a big, healthy stand of forget-me-nots in the garden, but what happens when those forget-me-nots won’t bloom? Since the plants must reseed to continue their legacy, a lack of blooms is more than just a cosmetic inconvenience – it could spell the end of your stand! When a forget-me-not plant doesn’t bloom, it’s often an easy-to-fix problem. Let’s take a look at what may be going wrong. No flowers on forget-me-nots is a terrible thing, but it’s usually a fairly easy problem to manage. It’s important to remember where forget-me-nots come from, that is, a place that’s both boggy and shaded. The better you can emulate the home conditions of any plant, the better your success will be with it. Here are a few common reasons that you may have a forget-me-not with no flowers: Plant age. There are two types of forget-me-nots, one that’s an annual and another that’s a biennial. The annual type blooms yearly and reseeds with great enthusiasm, but the biennial type will skip a year. Instead, they only bloom in their second year, so it’s important to stagger these plantings so your newly emerging forget-me-nots aren’t all on their flower-skipping year. Once you get a stand established, no one will be able to tell that you’re growing biennials because the different generations will take turns producing flowers. Too dry. As previously mentioned, the forget-me-not is a bog-lover, so the wetter the better (to a point). This is doubly important if your plants are being grown in a pot or you live toward the bottom end of the forget-me-not’s USDA hardiness range (3 to 9). In hot weather, especially, keep them moist, even if that means having to plant a slower draining liner in the ground to hold on to the moisture you’re providing. Too much sun. Plenty of flowers love the sun, so it’s not uncommon to see people trying to establish forget-me-nots on the sunny side of their homes. The problem is that these aren’t good growing conditions for forget-me-nots, so you’ll see limited success with flowers and self-seeding. Instead of producing flowers, the plants may simply burn up as the sun and heat overwhelm them. Luckily, they’re tough little survivors, so you can dig them up and move them to a better location with little worry as long as they’re kept moist during the process. Improper fertilization. Providing any plant with too much nitrogen will convince it that it doesn’t need to flower and it will instead put on lots of vegetative growth. Forget-me-nots thrive in poor soil, so they don’t need fertilization but twice a year. Time your fertilization so that it occurs after bud set or you risk reduced or no flowers.
