Unruly jasmine

[OuiOuiMonAmi]

I meant to put up support wires for my jasmine last year but I didn't and it's now a real tangled mess. What can I do to get it back to a state where I can it on some support? Should I just cut it all down and start training the new vines? Or try to untangle each vine and then thread them onto wires?

Also, some vines have lots of flowers on but others have none at all and look quite different to the flowering ones. I thought these were sucker roots and started lopping them off but I Googled and now think they may be next year's flowering vines - oops! Is there a way to tell what's a sucker root and what's next year's flowering vine?

Untangle. Takes patience but it’s doable.

Sucker roots would be underground. What you’re seeing is the new shoots, which I think would root if they met soil, but not sure of that. They look greener and straighter, right? They will branch and flower.

Thread title reminds me of someone I went to school with!

Perhaps a compromise is possible. Untangle and train as many as you have patience for and cut back the rest.

Thanks both of you (and LOL at the school memory comment!)

MereDint, yes, those bits are greener and straighter! I was thinking of suckers like roses have and they aren't underground - does Jasmine not get those then?

Roses get suckers if they are grafted, ie the rose you buy is spliced on top of a completely different species of rose (the “rootstock”) to give extra vigour, and because it’s the easiest way, and much faster than taking cuttings, to propagate a highly bred rose that wouldn’t come true from seed. The suckers come from the rootstock, and are therefore a different species from the top, which is why we reove them.

Jasmine aren’t grafted, so they haven’t got a rootstock to sucker. Any shoots are from their own roots.

Brilliant explanation - thank you! Can I ask one more question?! Several of the jasmine vines are very long (5 or 6 feet) and have no flowers on the length at all - just a few flowers on the very tip of the vine. Is that normal?