What is wrong with my pansy?

[honeybeee]

Hi! I planted pansy seeds in winter (June/July). It is from a packet of "Swiss Giants Mixed" and sowing in winter is fine in my area.

The leaves are about 17cm long and there are no signs of it beginning to flower. I have used the same packet of seeds before and the leaves were much smaller (maybe 5cm at the most) and were flowering within about a month from memory.

Is there any reason why it is just so big and not flowering?

Thanks!

[imafan26]

Please put your location in your profile.
That looks like some brassica, not a pansy.

[honeybeee]

Sorry, I just put it in. I'm in Australia


I'm quite sure that it is a pansy, because when it was smaller it looked exactly like what the others looked like. It just kept growing and now it looks like that

I should also add that the leaves changed shape as it grew bigger, from the normal pansy shape to what it is now. If it is another type of plant then I have no idea how it got in there!

[HoneyBerry]

They might need nitrogen. Slow release nitrogen, like compost.

[rainbowgardener]

If you weren't assuring us that it looked like a pansy earlier, I would certainly say that what happened is that your pansy seed didn't sprout and some weed seed did. We hear that all the time, people carefully nurturing something that sprouted where their seeds were planted, that turns out to be a weed.

Pansies have roundish to oval leaves:


https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3161/2753 ... caf7_b.jpg

But I will take your word for it that this plant started out like that.

I'm sorry bird lover, but much as I love compost and frequently recommend it for other uses, I do not recommend compost for putting in flowerpots, especially small ones. It is too dense and moisture holding and tends to compact, excluding air circulation. And nitrogen is exactly the wrong thing. The trouble with this plant may well be too much Nitrogen. Whatever potting mix it is in may have added fertilizer that is too high in N. High N ferts lead to big leafy plants with no blooms. The pot is small for the size plant you now have.

My suggestion would be repot it into a larger pot. Use a potting mix with no added fertilizer and then add a bit of a high phosphorus fertilizer (that is the P in NPK). Flower booster fertilizers are something like 5-30-5.

Also note Aug is the wrong time for pansies to flower anyway--in the northern hemisphere. Pansies like cold weather. They are the first thing to bloom in late winter early spring. Mine usually die in the summer unless they are in a very moist shady spot. If you can get it to survive the summer, it will bloom more in the fall when the weather cools. You are in Australia, does that mean you are going in to spring now? Then definitely proceed as above.

Best Wishes and let us know if you get flowers that way.

[HoneyBerry]

Thank you Rainbow. I just read somewhere that N helps pansies flower. And I guess compost normally wouldn't be the best thing for a potted plant. I use a high-end compost product (Hendrikus) that is sterilized and rich and I only add a little bit of it to the pot.
I'm glad that you helped this person. I was in a hurry so my post wasn't thought out. I had pansies once and do recall that they were very sensitive to heat.

I nurtured a weed once, thinking it was a pea plant. I even tied it to a trellis. That was a long time ago and I felt like an idiot afterward. I know better now.

When I use potting soil for potted flowers it keeps me out of trouble. It typically has the right balance of nutrients. I don't trust the really cheap stuff, so I'm careful buy to buy a quality product.

The pansies in that picture looks healthy so it seems like the plant would flower, if it is indeed a pansy.

[imafan26]

O.k. That is the biggest pansy I have ever seen. It must be on stearoids. Mine are no more than 6 inches tall and I can only grow them when it is very cool, like under 70 degrees.

Sometimes you have to be careful, especially with plants you have not grown before. Sometimes the seed packets have the wrong seeds in them.