Impatients flowers

[Brown Thumbs]

We bought a hanging pot with red impatients. It had lots of blooms but after a week or two they all disappeared and no news ones appeared. The plant looks healthy though and is located in the shade where I've put them in years past. We watered once or twice a week and I sprinkled some slow release fertilizer. It's in the shade of several big oaks and there's a little roof over the container. Like I said, they did well in that spot before so I don't know why they stopped flowering after we bought them. Any ideas?

[Susan W]

I won't say for sure, but they could have the bad cooties. I did see a (reputable) reference that impatiens are being ate up by Downy Mildew. This is one reason not so prevalent in the garden centers.

[Brown Thumbs]

Would they get mildew that quick? They were flowering well when we got them and that was about 3 weeks ago or so. No powdery, white looking stuff on leaves and the plant looks nice...just no flowers.

[rainbowgardener]

Your slow release fertilizer should have been OK. But over fertilizing with something Nitrogen heavy can lead to lots of leafy growth at the expense of flowering. You want NPK ratio something like 5-10-5 or even 5-10-10, but definitely lower on the N end. If the fertilizer you used wasn't like that, and in a couple weeks if they still aren't blooming, you could add some low-N liquid fertilizer, diluted from the suggested application rate.

Over watering can also stop it from blooming. In the shade like that, it should not dry out very fast, so make sure the top of the soil is drying out before you water again.

Sometimes it just needs patience. (funny for something called IMpatiens! ) When you buy it from the nursery it has just been through a regimen of blooming being forced, to make it covered with blooms and tempting. After that, it may need to rest and recover a bit.

[Lindsaylew82]

Anytime I get blooming baskets, I like to pinch off all the spent flowers. It's always increased blooms for me, both in the ground, and in baskets.