My Hibiscus Plant Buds Are Falling Off, What to Do?

I have this email from Maria who says, ‘my hibiscus plant gets buds and then they fall off. How can I fix this problem?’

I’m assuming it’s a tropical hibiscus and I’m assuming it may be still in the house. So there are variables there. A lot of times that is a watering issue. If it’s one of the newer ones that just came out, a lot of times they’re very pot bound. And they do take a lot of water.

You want to make sure you are watering it very thoroughly, make sure it’s coming through the bottom of the pot. Or also too, it can be the opposite and be getting too much water, you usually don’t see them falling off. You usually see it kind of drooping a little bit. And you’ll see the leaves, I’ll tell you, they kind of get a yellowy color too when it’s too much water. And it’s very rare that they’re going to get too much, unless it’s in like a standing water or something. But that’s usually the case when the buds are falling off there.

I’ve seen that happen on the hardy ones as well, the trees and shrubs outside, if the watering’s not right on it. We have overhead irrigation because we have to, because we can’t water six acres every day by hand. And if I overwater them, I’ve seen the buds not do as well.

One of the things you can do to kind of offset that is, again, a good fertilizer. So when you water, a lot of times you’re flushing the nutrients out of the pot as well. So making sure there’s something that’s putting nutrients back in the soil. That’ll help that plant do what it’s supposed to do. And that is something, when it’s not getting enough water, that’s the first thing to go is the flowers.

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