Hi Nature Gardener, I sent you an email!

Smeep, Wisteria is getting ready to bloom in about 4 weeks in the south. Depending on which wisteria it is, some blooms come out before the leaves, some after. How do you know it is wisteria if it doesn't have leaves? Did you see blooms and leaves last summer? To answer your question, yes, you can severly prune it now. You might even get more blooms on it believe it or not. That vine probably hasn't had a good pruning in a long time. It'll do it good. If it doesn't bloom this year, but looks better, will you be disappointed? If not, hack it down. It stimulates growth, and flowers. Don't fertilize it whatever you do, just mulch.

i just looked up black-eyed susan vine and I have two concerns. One is that they say the length of the vine is 3' to 8', and it rarely reaches 8' when grown as an annual. My wisteria is about 7' tall and I would like some of the flowers to be on the top and spreading out on the branches. Would the black-eyed susan vine be too short? The other concern is that it seems to really prefer moist soil and hates drought. Summer here usually gets pretty dry and, while I do water, I don't want to get tied to a vine that will wilt if I miss a watering. The only problem I have with morning glories is that they close up before lunch. I'd like an all day flower. Would a climbing nasturtium work? I guess I would have to help it climb, but the wisteria is on an obelisk and I could tie the vine on. Claire

I doubt this product is available in Italy, but I'll check Internet, just in case I could get it shipped from England...For now, I'll just leave things as they are, with the two young rose plants (both of which are doing very well).The fact is, up until recently I've mostly just grown roses,and for them it is actually good to have the graft in contact with the soil, since it encourages the scion to grow it's own roots. But I see that this is NOT the case with wisteria!!!. You really wouldn't need any particular disease to cause the rotting in this case,I think. As I said before, I was a total noob when I started out with this plant. It was probably already weakened somewhat by being forced to live in terrible soil for the first few years, bounced back a bit once moved ,but could not hold on any longer once that graft union remained in contact with damp soil for a couple years. I suspect that this wouldn't have happened if I'd trained the plant in an upright position,or at least protected the union from contact with the soil in some way.