STOPPING AND TIMING By ...... Claudy Dixon

Article courtesy of Scarborough & District FS.

STOPPING: is the term used for the removal of the small growing tips from each branch. It is also referred to as pinching out. The purpose is to encourage further lateral growth, the development of side shoots, to control the shape and subsequent flowering of the plant. Most growers do this using their thumb and index fingernails. Nail-biters can use small sharp scissors or a knife! Great care should be taken not to damage the tender young growth coming from the leaf axil - these are the shoots you are trying the encourage to grow into new branches. These can, in due course, in turn be stopped again and again. To obtain plants of good shape with the maximum growth and flowers for exhibition fuchsias must be stopped several times. The first stop is made when a plant has developed 3 or 4 pairs of leaves. The centre growing tip is then removed. This encourages the side shoots that grow in the leaf axils left on the plant to grow outwards. When they have in turn made one to four pairs of leaves, the second stop is made by pinching out those growing tips. The process of stopping can be repeated several times and will make the plant increase tremendously in size. At the first stop at three leaves you will get 6 new branches which, with two new sets at each axil, will produce 24 branches at the next stop which then could produce 96 branches, and so on…… With several flowers developing on each branch you can see how the final result will be a plant covered in blooms. A couple of stops will be quite sufficient for a respectable show of flowers for your patio display, but should you wish to exhibit more stops are required. For the initial framework of a balanced show plant the first stop is made at four pairs of leaves, which will give evenly spaced branches from the onset. Sets one and three growing out in north-south direction, sets two and four in east-west direction. Whether you then stop at one, two, three or even four pairs of leaves,depends very much on whether the cultivar is short-jointed e.g. Nellie Nuttall, when you can easily allow 2 or even 3, or rather long-jointed as so many of the large doubles are,
when stopping at one joint only is advisable to ensure the branches will be able to support the weight of the blooms. This applies to pot plants. For baskets one tends to leave longer growth to get the plants to trail over the edges of the basket quicker! For the ornamental foliage classes, flowers are not usually taken into consideration and as the brightest foliage is usually found on the young growth, stopping can carry on until around three weeks before the show.

THERE ARE SEVERAL IMPORTANT STEPS TO REMEMBER:

. As a general guide you have to allow about a month after each stop for the subsequent shoots to have developed sufficiently, growing two or three pairs of leaf joints, to be stopped again.

· Every time a plant is stopped it will delay flowering by about 9 weeks for single cultivars, 10 weeks for semi-doubles and 11-12 weeks for doubles, in my experience.

· All stops must be made in one go, at the same time, to ensure evenly balanced growth.

· Be flexible, don't rigorously stop at every one, two or three pairs, whatever you have decided on, but keep an eye on the shape and always stop for shape.

· Try and stop your plants as soon as the growing tips are large enough to handle (on a turgid plant you just bend them back and they snap off nicely), there is not much point in wasting the plants energy by letting it grow several pairs of leaves that you are only going to remove.

· When buds show at one shoot, all other shoots will also show buds within the next 7 to 10 days. If you are stopping a plant when buds are already clearly visible stopping times can be reduced by around ten days.

· Make sure you time your penultimate stop (the one before the last one) correctly. If this is not done at the right time, the growing tips will not have made sufficient growth for you to make your final stop on the intended date.

· Work your way backwards from the Show Date when calculating your stopping times and play safe and allow a little extra time between the penultimate and the last stop, say making it 5 weeks, in case excessively hot weather slow downs growth. All straight forward so far. But now the difficult part - timing.

CORRECT TIMING!: There are some important factors which we do not have in hand that can ruin our best laid plans. The main one is the weather, so unpredictable! A warm spell can speed up growth, or just the opposite a prolonged dull or cold period, can delay it rather badly, making our careful calculations all wrong! Varieties also vary considerably in their habits, some are remarkably early flowering, others definitely very late. And, the growing conditions provided vary widely from person to person. It can be as widely apart as a shady north facing patio outdoors and a baking hot south facing greenhouse. To have a fuchsia in full flower on a specific date, like your local show, you need to work backwards from that date to get to the final stopping date. The stopping times indicated above are the ones I personally work to, but what is recommended does however vary a little from publication to publication: George Bartlett the former B.F.S. President and columnist, goes for 8 weeks for singles, 9 weeks for semi-doubles and 9-11 weeks for doubles; Ken Pilkington says 10 weeks for singles, and semi-doubles and at least 12 weeks for doubles, with the proviso that this can be reduced by about two weeks if flowerbuds are showing already; the late Leo Boulemier followed a 60, 70 and 80 days regime, others advocate 60-70 days for singles, 80-90 days for doubles! So, take your pick! They all do however agree that Triphyllas and species need more time. Most in fact resent frequent stopping and 12 to 14 weeks is the norm for triphyllas. If you are lucky enough to have sufficient room to grow several plants of a particular cultivar, stop some at the beginning of the time range, some at the end and just for luck perhaps one in between. This should ensure you will have at least one plant in perfect full bloom on the day of the show! The only sure and the safest way to establish the correct stopping time for you, taking into consideration your own growing conditions, is to keep records of your own stopping times for future reference!! As it happens I used to grow quite a lot of plants, which I just stopped at the said times and I always managed to have enough just right for my local show. However, as you might have guessed I never did keep records as I should have done, so after all these years I still don't know when to stop Border Queen, which I really like. I do know it is late, but just how late, I still haven't got a clue. I have been asked about it, numerous times so I thought it would be a great help to especially the novice growers, if we could have a go at recording at least some of our stopping times and exchange this information at a later date. That was my request to the members of my local fuchsia society in the Spring of 1996. In the following autumn edition I reported: "I thought you'd might like to know that the great majority of my plants were in flower in time for the show, with as notable exception Brookwood Belle, a small double, which judging by this years performance could be stopped with singles as it was in full bloom a full three weeks earlier! And I repeated my request for info: "It would be a great help to us all, if we could share our info on stopping times, after all nothing is more frustrating than tending to a fuchsia for many months only to find that it doesn't make it to the show after all, due to the lack of flowers, already fallen off blooms, being too early or still tight in bud, having been too late with our all important final pinching." Well, time went by and in the Spring edition of 1997 I followed it up with: "I am amazed...but looking on at the bright side. Not a single reaction has been received after my articles on timing and the request for an exchange on information about it! Can I therefore conclude that I am the only one that has a problem with this and that all of you will have all your plants with loads and loads of flowers on the bench at our grand show in August!!! Wonderful."