Hibiscus Not Blooming: Learn What You Can Do About It

Hibiscus not blooming might upset you, but you should not worry much as you can easily fix it.

Some common reasons why your hibiscus may not bloom are insufficient light, insufficient nutrients, and pruning healthy leaves and flowers.

Read this article to learn how to fix this problem.

Why Is Your Hibiscus Not Blooming?

💥 Your hibiscus is not blooming for several reasons such as insufficient light, deficiency of nutrients, the stress of drought, wrong time of pruning, being overfed by nutrients. Furthermore, it may result from pests or diseases, and even exhaustion from the pot.  

 

– Insufficient Light

Plants use light to generate energy. In turn, they use this energy to transform nutrients into leaves, flowers, and other parts. For plants to successfully produce flowers, they need a lot of energy. This is why most plants produce flowers in months with a lot of sunlight. If they do not have sufficient light, they will not produce flowers.

Your hibiscus plants need up to eight hours of sunlight daily before they will produce flowers. While insufficient light is usually not the only cause of the plants not producing flowers, it should be the first thing that you should think of when investigating the problem.

– Deficiency of Nutrients

As you already know, plants utilize energy to convert nutrients into many important parts and tissues. This means that while your hibiscus plants need light, they equally need enough nutrients. You should know that plants consume a lot of nitrogen in their vegetative stage when they produce leaves and no flowers.

When plants become mature enough to produce flowers, they consume less nitrogen and more phosphorus, potassium, and some micronutrients. This means that if you continue to use the same nitrogen-rich fertilizer for your mature hibiscuses, it can be wasteful. You need to use fertilizer brands that can promote flower development.

– Stress to Drought

Do not forget to water your plants because not watering them will not only prevent them from blooming but, may also kill them. Water helps plants to stay hydrated so that they can carry out every one of their life’s functions. You want to make sure that you regularly water your hibiscuses in their active growing season.

Note that it is very easy to know if you are not giving your hibiscuses enough water. If they have drought stress, you should notice drooping leaves as well as chlorosis. Do not allow this to happen if you still want to see the beautiful hibiscus plants bloom.

– Pruning Your Plants at the Wrong Time

While pruning plants is a very good practice as it helps them retain their beauty and overgrow, you can prevent them from blooming if you prune them incorrectly. You should not prune your hibiscus plants in the spring and summer months because they grow actively in those months and need as many leaves as possible. You can prune them in the fall.

The primary reason your hibiscuses need a lot of leaves to produce flowers is that leaves help them with photosynthesis. This means that without leaves, your hibiscuses cannot get energy from sunlight. Therefore, if you want your plants to bloom, you must keep their leaves.

– Overwatering Your Hibiscuses

One reason your plants may not be producing flowers is that you might give them more water than they need. If hibiscuses collect more water than nutrients, they will not have flowers, look sick, and die. You want to make sure that you are not overwatering them.

One great way to tell that you are overwatering your plants is by noticing brown wet patches or spots on their leaves. These patches indicate that the cells in your hibiscus plants are bursting due to overwatering. If this is the case, you need to reduce your watering rate so that the plants can bloom.

– Feeding the Hibiscuses with Too Many Nutrients

What happens when you feed your plants with more nutrients than they need? This overload of nutrients will not only prevent the blooming of the plant; it can also kill the plant. When your hibiscuses get more nutrients than they need, they will start burning in their leaves and might continue to wilt until they die.

The excessive nutrients in the soil prevent your hibiscus plants from absorbing water from the ground. Instead, the water in the plant will move back into the soil because of the principle of osmosis. This means that while you want to feed your hibiscus plants with nutrients, you should ensure you are not overdoing it.

– Pest and Disease Attack

You may notice that you are watering and feeding your hibiscus plants accordingly. Also, maybe the light exposure of the plants is just fine. Why then are your plants not producing flowers? It could be because of pests and diseases. Some diseases can prevent your plants from blooming as the plant will stay in their vegetative stage while they try to fight the pathogen.

Some pets, such as spider mites, grasshoppers, and others that feed on your hibiscus leaves, will prevent the plants from blooming as the plants may not have enough energy to produce flowers. You want to check for and remove these pests, if any.

– Exhausted Pot and Substrate

What else can be wrong with your hibiscus plants? Try checking their pot or substrate. If you are growing your hibiscus in containers, you want to check their roots to ensure they are not root-bound. If your hibiscus plants are root-bound, they may not get enough nutrients from the substrate, so they will not produce flowers. Remember to repot them often.

What about the substrate? Remember that most potting mixes are well-drained. The drainage ability of substrate in pots affects both water and nutrients. This means that nutrients get depleted in pots faster than in the bare garden soil. Perhaps, you need to mix in a more nutritious soil amendment with the potting mix if you want your hibiscus plants to bloom.

– Sunburn

Yes, hibiscus plants need sunlight to produce flowers. However, they do not need too much of it as they can get burnt if their exposure to light is too much. Sunlight, when too much, can burn the leaves of your plants, and they will start dying instead of blooming. You want to make sure that you protect your plants from intense heat.

Aside from the hibiscus plants not producing flowers, there are other ways to tell that their exposure to sunlight is too much. For example, you should see burning or brown leaf tips and drooping leaves. You may also notice that they consume more water than they usually do. 

– Poor Growing Conditions

You need to consider the soil pH, atmospheric temperature, humidity, and other factors to know why your hibiscus plants are not blooming just like other plants. Most elements, incredibly soil qualities, are overlooked because most gardeners think every plant can grow in every type of soil.

Well, you must consider the preference of your hibiscus plants if you want them to produce flowers. However, you should not worry much because you can fix your hibiscus plants.

Continue reading to find out how to fix your plants so that they can start blooming.

Possible Solutions

Use the tips below to grow hardy hibiscus and fix your hibiscus plants so they can start blooming again.

– Fertilize Your Hibiscuses Frequently

Remember that hibiscus plants need more phosphorus and other nutrients to produce flowers. While you can fertilize them with nitrogenous fertilizer in their vegetative stage, you want to ensure that you give them a phosphorus-rich brand when it is time to bloom. Note that fertilizing hibiscus should be occasional and not regular.

Instead of making fertilizer for your plants, you should go to a gardening store to buy any hibiscus-specific fertilizer. Please feed your plants monthly or every three weeks and ensure they do not run out of nutrients. Furthermore, it will also help if you use a foliar fertilizer as plants receive nutrients from it quickly.

– Use Proper Soil Amendment

Instead of regularly fertilizing your hibiscus plants, you can amend their substrate with soil amendment so that they can get enough nutrients from their substrate. This can also prevent you from overfeeding them as well. However, you need to know the best soil amendment products and when to use them.

Products like bone meal are very rich in phosphorus, so you can mix the substrate of your hibiscus with them so that your plants can get enough phosphorus. If you want to use compost, make sure that you use compost with a lot of fruit peels, especially those of bananas, as they are rich in phosphorus.

– Change the Substrate for Potted Plants

If you are growing potted hibiscus, you must repot the plants and change or amend their substrate regularly if you want them to continue blooming. In late winter or early spring, you can repot them into a larger pot so that their roots can grow and spread to more comprehensive parts of the pot.

As for their substrate, you want to ensure it is still nutritious. You want to make a new substrate or amend the previous one if it is nutrient-depleted. If you can, you should bake the prior substrate before you use it again so that you can kill any harmful microbe in it. Please try to examine your hibiscus roots while repotting them.

– Prevent Your Kids and Pets From Pulling Your Hibiscus Flowers and Leaves

You know that you should not prune your hibiscus plants to have enough leaves to produce energy when they are actively growing. You must remember that hibiscus blooms are gorgeous and usually attract children and animals. This can mean that your plants produce flowers, but you may not see them because they have been plucked.

You need to explain to children who have access to your hibiscus plants about the importance of your hibiscus flowers. Tell your children that they should not pluck the flower buds so that the plant can stay healthy and beautiful. Also, do not let your pet goats and other animals destroy your plants.

– Prevent Pests and Diseases From Reaching Your Hibiscuses

To avoid any bacterial or fungal disease that can prevent your hibiscus plants from producing flowers, you need to prevent pests from reaching the plants. Try to apply neem oil on the leaves as well as use plant-safe pesticides. You want to make sure that very few to no insects have access to your plants.

If one hibiscus plant in a pot is confirmed sick or diseased, you should isolate it if it is a potted plant so that the disease does not spread to other plants. Regarding the pesticide products to use, you can use insecticides for insects, fungicides for molds, and molluscicides for snails.

– Examine and Treat Your Hibiscuses

It is time for some visual assessments. Carefully observe the leaves, stems, branches, and possible roots of your hibiscus plants. You should do this, especially when you still do not know what is wrong with your hibiscus plants yet. Examining the plants can tell you what’s wrong if you see anything strange on the plant.

If you see something strange on your hibiscus plants, you want to identify it and treat it immediately. Perhaps, you may be treating your hibiscus and they should produce flowers after you treat them correctly. You can ask local and online experts to help you identify what you saw.

– Grow Your Hibiscus in the Right Growing Conditions

The ultimate and general method to promote flowering in hibiscus plants is to grow them in their preferred conditions. Grow them in just the right temperature, humidity, light, and water conditions, and you will see them thriving and producing beautiful flowers.

While growing your hibiscuses in the right conditions, you do not want to hurt or stress them. Just give them what they need. Continue reading to learn everything that your hibiscus plants need to thrive.

FAQ

Can you force bloom a Hibiscus?

Hibiscus can be forced to bloom by providing optimal sunlight, temperature, and nutrients, along with pruning and regular watering.

Why is my Hibiscus not growing blooming buds?

Insufficient sunlight, improper pruning, nutrient deficiencies, or water stress can hinder the hibiscus from forming blooming buds.

Will Epsom salt help my Hibiscus bloom?

Epsom salt can be beneficial for hibiscus as it provides magnesium, promoting healthy growth and potentially enhancing blooming.

Conclusion

Now you know so many reasons why your hibiscus plants are not blooming.

To fix them, take note of the following:

• The significant causes of hibiscus plants not blooming are the lack of light, nutrients, and water.
• You want to check the pot and substrate to make sure that your plants are not root-bound.
• Carefully examine your hibiscus plants and look for anything strange on their stem, leaves, or branches.
• While you should regularly fertilize your hibiscus plants, you want to make sure that you properly amend their substrate with nutrient-rich soil amendment.
• Always check the growth requirements of your hibiscus plants and only grow them in their preferred conditions.

What else are you waiting for? Get to action so that you can see your hibiscus blooming.