I can tell you are looking forward to your camellias blooming! Me too.

What is gibbed? Removing some buds so others can be bigger?

I don't have any low nitrogen fertilizer. What is it that you have? I just have 5-5-3 (EB Stone). When should I feed with that? After blooming is over, or in the spring?

Here's a bloom I picked today. Just a few open on the bush, but lots of buds waiting to open. I don't know what it is. We've had the bush probably 20 years. Our bushes are mostly old, and we have no idea where they came from.

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Susan

I just read yesterday on a camellia nursery site that there is a gibberellic acid that you put on buds to speed up flower production is that right? I am in zone 8 and my C. japonica 'rubra plena' is loaded with buds. We are getting ready to have first freeze. I am wanting to cover it with burlap or a sheet but don't let it touch the buds?
Anyone know how to protect my many buds?

In Southern Ca. You are very close to Nuccio's Nurseries at Altadena, 626-794-3383. The local camellia societies are also nearby. They are very nice people to help you to acquire or to graft new camellia hybrids.

gibbing article linked below for those who asked.
texas cottage,
if the buds are still tight, you should not have to do anything to protect them. if they are showing color or have begun to open, they can be damaged by a hard freeze.
i just leave mine to the forces of nature. if some do suffer frost damage, there will be others coming along that i can enjoy.

Here is a link that might be useful: about camellias

I must say living and growing up in a very cold state, where even the most cold hardy of those new "cold hardy" varieties would most likely struggle during our typical winters, I'd never even seen a camellia "in person"?, and only in photos and certainly never any large specimens, til living in Manhattan Beach, CA, I was fortunate to have one very old japonica with a large double white "formal" flower growing way up above the eaves, though I must say, it did suffer from the bud "blight" or whatever that's called to some degree, and it never received any care . I must say I still long to be livng back there once again, where I could grow my camellias outdoors yearound. I'm much tempted to post a photo of perhaps the worlds "smallest" flowering camellia, as a cutting only a few inches tall, may soon have it's first flower. Despite, most advice for rooting any type of cutting saying, that all flowers and flower buds should be removed, I did take one cutting with a dormant flower bud, which has persisted through the rooting process, and which is now expanding , and hopefully will bloom in the near future. It's a Kramers Supreme, a very old variety.

socks12345, what you have there is a Debutante. It's a classic, been around since the early part of the century. It's a japonica. One of my grandmother's favorite varieties. Blooms for the holidays too which is nice.

Removing excess buds is called disbudding. It will make the remaining flowers larger, but, it's hard for me to pull off something that would be a flower. Gibbing is the use of gibberellic acid, it's a plant growth hormone. You pull off the growth bud next to a flower bud and put a drop of the gib in it. Then in 30-60 days you have (hopefully) a big flower. It both speeds the bloom of the flower and makes it larger, at least, it does when it works. We've just had about a week of pretty cold (for SoCal) weather and that slows the bud development right back down again. And this is my first time gibbing, so we'll see. It's probably not a good idea to gib small plants (ie, one gallon) because after all, you're pulling off growth buds.

Your 5-5-3 is not something I'd use right now, but it sounds fine for spring, just wait til the camellias finish blooming and the new growth starts. You do not have to feed camellias now, but I do because the P and the K in the fertilizer help with the bloom size and color. You wouldn't want much nitrogen now because if the plant starts growing it'll drop its buds. So even with the low nitrogen I don't give a great deal, and I use time release.

In fact, lots of people never feed their camellias - but I see the ones at the shows so I keep trying to improve mine.

If there's a camellia society near you, you could bring some of your blooms to them to identify. Your local nursery also might be able to help.

I was wondering what the name of the one pictured is and thanks for the answer. I'm still looking for more mailorder sources to add a few new ones to my indoor plant collection, and find only Camellia Forest with many types to order. Anyone ordered from them? Meanwhile I'm thinking since mine has actually gotten a bit bigger than I'd like, I perhaps will have to cut far back to get it more to the size I'd like. I just wonder if hard pruning is much of a problem for them? It would only be back to two year old wood however, so perhaps not as great a problem? I must say, though it's not looking bad, I would prefer much denser branching, which it seems not to wnat to do on it's own, but perhaps it's the normal growth habit for Japonicas to have a more "open" habit?

Thanks for all the info, Winterose. So that's Debutante! Good to know. I like it a lot.