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I have two in my backyard and I don't know how to prune it to have continuous flowers. What is the best method to remove the shouts (beans) to have continuous flowers? Thanks in advance for you help.
Hi, mine keep blooming continuously after they begin to bloom. If yours do not produce a lot of blooms, perhaps yours are not 'Gold Star'. Esperanza need 8-10 hours of sunlight to bloom properly. Mine do not receive this amount ; however, they still bloom well. Do not fertilize them because this causes them to produce a lot of foliage rather than a lot of blooms.
Mine do produce seedpods, but I don't have to trim them off to keep the plant blooming. However if the seedpods are removed, more blooms are formed. I do pick them when I remember to do so in order to not have a lot of baby plants coming up. The babies coming up from seed may not be identical to the mother plant. They may be revert back to the original Texas native tecoma which is Tecoma stans angustata. You can just trim the seedpod cluster off at the base. They grow all over San Antonio and and bloom prolifically without the seedpods being trimmed off. Some people trim the plants back each time they bloom, but I nor anyone I know that grow them do this. The plants can be severely pruned back if planted in a space that is too small for them and they have overgrown their space. They grow back quickly.
Mine are just starting to bloom after being frozen to the ground this winter. They have been a bit slow to grow back due to the very cool spring and large amount of cloudy days. The 'Gold Star' esperanza was discovered by Gregg Grant in a yard in an impoverished neighborhood in San Antonio. He states that he looks for plants that ... "can survive with no water, no fertilizer, no weeding, no grooming, and no pesticides." This is one of them.
