Camellias bloom depending on the variety. Sasanquas start the flower show in Fall and Japonicas start late in the year or early next year. It seems awful early to get blooms. Any flower buds that you have will stay and mature/open at the right time. Until they do, you can review the plant label that came with the shrub. It should give you a guesstimate of when the plant will bloom (say from August-October for example). Weather issues can delay the opening of flower buds by several months from one year to the next so be aware of that. For now. mulch the plant well (3-4" of any type of acidic mulch) and try to maintain the soil moist at all times (not, wet, not dry, moist). To help you determine this, you can insert a finger into the soil to a depth of 4". If it feels almost dry or dry then water; otherwise, skip watering.
During the first year, fertilizing is not necessary as most camellias have fertilizer pellets provided gratis by the nursery. I would stop fertilzing now (August-September) in preparation for winter.
During winter, you can water less but always water when the winter is dry (if your soil does not freeze, which it shouldn't in Z9). If it does not rain for two weeks straight, I manually water about 1g.
Note: some camellia stems may now have leaf buds that you could be confusing with flower buds. Flower buds are larger. If you click on the link below, you will see a large picture of a camellia stem with two flower buds and one leaf bud. Move the cursor on top of the picture to display two squares to help you differentiate between the two. The smaller square encompasses the leaf bud. The larger square encompasses the two flower buds.
Luis |
Here is a link that might be useful: Leaf bud or flower bud?
