Encore Azalea Care Guide: What to Do Each Season

In this video, we're going to talk about how to care for Encore Azaleas year-round. So we're going to break this down into spring, summer, fall, and winter to make sure you're getting the absolute most out of your Encore Azaleas. This one is one of our absolute favorites. This is Autumn Lilac, and you can see here it's coming into its spring flower right now. It has not fully opened up. It's probably actually only maybe a third open at this point, so it's going to be completely covered up. And what we want, and what I hope to help you with in this video, is that you can see this happen again later in the season as well. So first of all, let's talk about what's different between an Encore Azalea and a traditional Azalea. Traditional Azaleas bloom in the spring, just like this Autumn Fire Encore Azalea is, but this Encore Azalea has a trick up its sleeve. It can come back into flower in the summer. It kind of depends on the summer for us up here in Zone 8A Raleigh, North Carolina. Typically, we get spring and fall blooms. The further south you are, you may get as many as three rounds of flowers on these Encore Azaleas, and so that's what makes them different. They're still evergreen. They're still shaped the same. There are small growing ones, and medium growing ones, and large growing ones, and all the things you would find in other Azaleas, different colors and all those kinds of things, but they repeat bloom, hopefully. That's the main thing we're talking about in this video, is how to make sure you get the most out of your Encore Azaleas. So spring is an important time. This is the beginning of April when we're filming this, and you can see this Autumn Fire has come into, we're maybe 80 percent into full flower at this point. As these flowers start to fade, we're going to get a flush of new growth on this plant. It's at that time that we can decide whether or not it needs to be shaped or pruned in any way. Okay, so you can get in, I could get in here after it flowers. This one is super compact, so I don't have to prune. Pruning is not a hundred, pruning is not a requirement. If the plant is in good shape and it's in good form, it really doesn't need to be pruned, but after it flowers, if you're making the decision to maybe size control it a little bit, or you've got a little bit of scraggly growth a little bit on it here or there that you want to cut off, that would be the time to do it after it flowers. But again, pruning is not mandatory, but the pruning that you do on it will create additional branching. So if you, you know, prune points on this plant will split and divide, and then you end up with more flowers in the future. So keep that in mind. Pruning, although not required, can be beneficial to having additional flowers later in the season if your plant is thriving until that summer or fall bloom time. A lot of folks will say to fertilize azaleas after they flower. That's some traditional advice on azaleas. I use organic fertilizers, and I fertilize this garden before the azaleas ever start blooming, and that fertilizer is not really going to do anything to really push them in any kind of way that's going to hurt them. I think that old advice about fertilizing them was maybe you were going to, that nitrogen fertilizer was going to push a lot of green growth on them and maybe cost you a few flowers because of it. I don't, that's not going to happen if you're using organic fertilizer. So I use an organic fertilizer. You may need a soil acidifier. So this is an important component of azaleas is they like low pH. They like a pH, gosh, probably between four and a half and six and a half. Somewhere in that window, anywhere in that window, they're going to have what they need from the soil. They're going to have iron available. If your pH is over six and a half or seven, the fertilizer you would use is something like Holly Tone or an Azalea Camellia rhododendron fertilizer. It's got some sort of acidifier to pull that soil pH down a little bit and make that iron available that these plants really like. If your pH is lower than 6.5, just use whatever organic fertilizer or synthetic fertilizer you want to use to fertilize them. But I've just fertilized them once in the spring is all I fertilize them. The most important thing I think with azaleas and where people really, I think, end up struggling with them is that they don't keep them mulched well. And so azaleas have really fibrous root systems that are very close to the surface. They're very different rooting plants. If you've ever dug one out, I know that this plant that's been sitting in the ground here for four years now has a wide, shallow root pan basically underneath it. It doesn't have a traditional where you would dig it out of the ground, have a deep, you know, it doesn't have any kind of tap root that goes down. It's really shallow rooted. Well, because of that, those shallow roots, when it's 95 degrees outside during the summertime and the sun's just beating down on those roots, every time maybe you mow your grass in front of it or any time that the mulch is getting thin, that is going to have a negative impact on this plant because those roots are almost as exposed to the sun as the top of the plant is. This is Autumn Majesty Encore Azalea. This is one of the newer ones and it's got a double purple flower on it. So we started with Autumn Lilac back there, which has that single purple. This one has a double purple flower and it just covers up and this thing just blooms and blooms. This is one that in our garden space has just really done amazingly well, but it's done better since we gave it a little more sun. I had this, I had something else here that was getting quite tall and it wasn't getting enough light. So this one was stretching a bit more. The first two you've seen back there, which are getting a little more sun are much more compact. This one is stretched just a bit more on me. These Encore Azaleas definitely need more sun than traditional Azaleas. And so you need somewhere between four and six hours of direct light. And since we got this one about two more hours of extra light here, I guess it was last spring when we did that, this thing really took off and it's performing amazingly well now. Before that, it was a little thin and just was a little more sparse with flowers, I would call it. So here's the thing about summertime with these Encore Azaleas. I've already talked about making sure they're mulched. We also need to maintain consistent moisture. This plant is going to flower right now in the spring. And when it finishes flowering in the spring, it's going to then put on new growth. That growth, that terminal ends of that growth are where the next flower buds are going to be set. It basically has to grow in order to reflower. That's the most important thing you need to know about these is it has to grow. So it can't just bloom in the spring, come out from that, and then just languish through the summer without any additional care. If it's abnormally dry outside, you need to give these some additional water during the summer months to make sure you're keeping those roots cool. Again, there's root stress issues with Azaleas in our ornamental landscapes. So making sure they're mulched, kind of weed free around them, that they're in enough sun, and then that there's adequate moisture through the summer to make sure they put on that growth that will set those flower buds that will put on that summer or fall show. One additional note on the summer, any pruning you're going to do on these, it's best to be done right after they flowered back in the spring list or very, very early summer. If you go too far into the summer, you're going to be cutting off those potential blooms. It's just not going to have enough time to regenerate all that new growth and set those flower buds if you prune it too late. I will frequently get the question on this channel though, what do I do with some crazy limb off the side of something? Cut that off whenever. I mean, if you have just one limb that's sticking out over here, really no reason not to take that off whenever you want to take that off. But any general pruning, you would definitely want to have that wrapped up certainly by the beginning of June, mid-June at the absolute latest to have enough time. So in the fall, you get the big payoff if we've kept it moist, kept the soil moist and mulched and we fertilized them earlier in the season and everything is happening, we get the big payoff again. This thing will come back around and flower again in the fall. One thing I'll tell you about the fall is the fall can be drier. It can be a drier season, especially here in the Southeast United States. And because of that, this thing can be trying to flower at a time when it just doesn't have adequate moisture. So continue to monitor even beyond peak summer temperatures of your watering, especially down toward the Gulf Coast. When we travel into the Gulf Coast, sometimes these fall blooming azaleas don't bloom until almost November down there. So that is a pretty big stretch there in the early fall where if the soil is dry, the plant's just not going to be able to just put on this big giant shot. So keep an eye on the watering, enjoy the flowering. Some people will recommend a light fertilizing in the fall. I don't. As long as I'm taking care of the garden in a reasonable way, I don't think you should need any additional fertilizer on these encore azaleas. But if it's something you do and it seems helpful to you, then why not? This is the newest encore azalea here. This is Autumn Kiss. It's just getting started flowering. So I only have a few flowers to show you on this one. It's just a hair behind the other ones that we have here in the garden. And I'm not showing you Autumn Bonfire, which actually looks great over there as well. This one is a low growing one. One of the nice things about the encores, again, like Autumn Fire is a dwarf one, this one also stays small. So this is a perfect one that we've put behind this bench. All the other encores I'm showing you have been in the ground here for four years, three to four years, something like that. And I just don't have to pay as much attention to those at this point. These went in the ground last year. And so I'm going to give these a little bit more attention overall throughout the year. So if it's abnormally cold, if we're talking about winter maintenance here, your newly planted encore azaleas, if you're going to get down below your normal low winter temperatures, it might be smart to put a cover on them that first winter. What we don't want to do is take damage during the winter that's going to set us back to have a negative spring flowering and then put us in a position where we're going to have to do a lot of pruning on it. And then it's just going to put us in a negative spin there for a minute. So that first couple of winters they're in the ground, I might, again, if it's going to be below our normal average temperatures, throw a cover on them for a couple of those nights. And then you don't have to really think about it. I have a large cover that I've covered this section with this past winter on a couple of nights, and they've come out of it really full. Once they're in the ground for two or three years, I'm in zone eight. This is a zone six encore azalea, believe it or not. I'm not going to really have to think about any kind of winter protection going forward from that, but I do in that first couple of years. If you happen to have a really dry winter, which we typically don't in the Southeast, but I have had a dry winter, we will give these some additional water. These have actually been watered a couple of times coming out of winter into early spring. For the first time I've ever done that in this Raleigh garden, but because of that, it's absolutely loaded up with flower buds and absolutely loaded up with what I can see new growth coming on it. That new growth, of course, is going to be important for that fall bloom later on. These are in a position where they're getting probably about six hours of direct sun every day, and you can see how full and compact they look so far here in the Raleigh garden. So my summary from winter maintenance is protect if needed, make sure the ground is mulched, and don't prune. I didn't mention that. No winter pruning at all. If you do any kind of winter pruning, you're definitely taking off this spring flower. So the question we're going to get is why aren't my Encore azaleas blooming? Why don't they look like this when they come into flower? So let's go through a few reasons. Number one, too much shade. There is a limit. Traditional azaleas required us to put them into some shaded spaces and performed well. It's just in the breeding of these, they require a bit more sunlight. So if you analyze that, how many hours of sun that you're actually getting, you can actually get a sun meter off of Amazon if you ever wanted to measure areas in your garden and see how much sun you're actually getting. I used to get that. I used to ask that question of couples that came and shopped with me at the farmer's market when I had my farmer's market space. I said, how much sun does it get? And they are immediately in an argument about how much sun it gets because you're not home. Maybe, maybe, maybe you just don't know exactly how much sun that area is getting. Secondly would be just summer, just stress. You know, they're, they're being underwatered in some way. They're again, they're shallow rooted. So they're, they're under mulched or they're in a lawn, you know, space and they're just overall under stress. Your pH can be problematic. So if your pH is over seven, it may not be the best area to grow azaleas or you need to be using some sort of a soil acidifier to make sure that they're, that they have what they need in the soil. And then the other thing is pruning. You know, you can, that's another, that's another argument that I, you know, another thing that happened at the farmer's market occasionally, you know, somebody would say my azaleas aren't blooming or my hydrangea isn't blooming or something. And I would say, did you prune it in the winter? And the husband is behind the wife and he's going, cause he pruned it in the winter. You know what I mean? Cause you know, things, things will look, you know, you have time or whatever and you go out and start doing pruning on some things that carry their flower buds through the winter that can be problematic. So there's a few reasons. It's really comes back to my philosophy on this channel, which is soil first gardening. If you're taking care of, if you're planting them in acid soil, if you're, and I've got planting videos for Encore azaleas and other, other videos around watering them and pruning them and all kinds of other things. If you want to get into a little more detail on each of these things, but at the end of the day, it's about protecting these shallow roots. These azaleas have keeping them adequately watered, not overwatered, but adequately watered and pruning at the right time. Then they kind of take care of themselves. Hopefully some of the details in this video will help you get yours looking like this every spring and fall. So you can go over to the Encore azalea website and they have all the Encore azaleas listed by size, by flower color. And you can pick the one that best suits your area. I don't remember how many there are now, like 35 or 36, but they're all incredibly unique. There's small growing reds, medium growing reds, tall growing reds. Same thing with the purples, double flowers, variegated flowers, like we saw in Autumn Kiss. Just really, really incredible selection in the breeding for these Encore azaleas. And hopefully some of the things we've talked about in this video will help yours continue to look like this and be this rewarding in your garden. Thanks for watching.