The contents
Whether conicu a house plant
The main suppliers of softwood potted plant – Denmark, Holland, Poland. It is the country where the flower business, put on stream and they can grow in a pot in even the most demanding culture.
Conifers are considered almost unfit for cultivation at home, as they need a long dormancy period and low temperatures at this time. All Christmas trees are sold in pots, grown only for temporary use. Konika is not an exception, but only the normal dwarf hybrid white spruce, resulting from mutations.
Two weeks Christmas tree stand in the warmth – and then 90% comes the death of the plant. But there is still a 10% chance to keep conico until spring, then planted outside, and in exceptional cases – and tame to the home climate. If you are presented for the New year prickly dwarf beauty – ready to fight for her life. It’s not a houseplant, and its life cycle should be consistent with the temperature and humidity in which the tree grows under natural conditions.
Miniature tree glauca Konica attracts buyers compact cone-shaped crown, which was formed as a result of mutations, without human intervention
Features of the care of potted plants
So the tree Konika appeared in your apartment, and you need to make sure that she survived at home.
Choose a place in the house
First, find the coldest place in the house. This may be a sill on the North side, a place inside the window frames of double, glazed loggia or veranda. The ideal temperature is 3-5 degrees. The higher the temperature, the less the chances of trees to survive, as in the winter at pine rest time. But it can only provide low temperatures.
Conico can be decorated with beads and tinsel, but in a warm room make only on holiday time, for a couple of hours. For a short time, the spruce will not have time to get stress from the temperature difference.
If you want to decorate, bought the plant, do not use floral sprays, because the crown will not be able to breathe properly and die
If the loggia at strong frosts freeze – wrap the pot with a woolen cloth (an old sweater, scarf, etc.) to prevent freezing of moisture on the roots. Crown freezing temperatures is not afraid.
Provide humidity
Humidity is the second factor in the normal development of plants. Needles are very sensitive to dry air, so the pot you need to put a humidifier that will constantly blow on the crown. In the absence of the tick on either side of the plant bowl of water and spray needle 5-6 times a day.
Watering, on the contrary, should not be abundant, because the root system is also asleep. It is enough to keep the clod of earth moist. To prevent drying – cover the top the soil with a sheet of paper or newspaper cut in a circle. They won’t hold air, but will not quickly evaporate moisture. Water and spray need water that has stood for several hours and heated to room temperature.
The problem may be that, under all the window sills of the house will be radiators, which from the bottom will give too much heat and desiccate earthen room. In this case, the pot is not put on the window sill, and raised on a dais, kind of makeshift stands, overturned pots, etc. the Main thing – to remove higher from the heat source.
Adjustable lighting
Conifers are very sensitive to direct rays of the sun. They cause burns of the needles. Therefore, the sill must choose the side where the sun is only in the afternoon (not the South). Diffused light is ideal. Thus it is necessary once a week to roll Konica to each side of the tree receive light nourishment. If you ignore this – the needles from the side of the room begin to turn yellow, to decay, the tree will be «one-sided».
Unevenly falling on the crown of a Christmas tree light leads to the fact that some of the needles may turn yellow and then fall off, and the tree loses its beautiful view
In the absence of a shaded window sills satisfied with the makeshift cover, placing between the plant and the window frame a large sheet of white paper (above the height of the tree). This is especially important in late winter, when the February-March sun begins to burn, and the plant has not yet emerged from hibernation and therefore very sensitive to temperature.
Rules transplant
Typically, potted plants are transplanted into fresh soil immediately after the purchase, because they sell them in the substrate, which is called «shipping». The land across borders cannot be stored (it is a requirement of the international Convention), and therefore intended for sale abroad trees sit in a sterilized peat or coconut fiber. They do not provide ideal conditions for the development of culture in the home environment.
While the seedlings are growing in nurseries – watering, and fertilizing airborne method without affecting the soil. Home such conditions no one will provide. Therefore, purchased plants prefer to replant in the fertile soil.
The tree requires slightly acidic soil, which can get in the coniferous forest and sterilized in the microwave for 10 minutes
The purpose of glauca very picky about the transplants. Disturbed root system survives about 3 months, so to transplant a tree is possible only in the spring. In winter, the sapling is still dormant, and if it is to provide a cold, to transport the substrate it is quietly live to Mar.
Another thing – warm room. Peat in heat, dries instantly, and thus likely to survive in it, your tree will not. But if cold storage is not, the tree still need to pass in a larger pot, covered the bottom and sides of the tank normal soil. Earthen roots to disturb, it is not necessary, leave this operation until the spring.
If in winter you find at the supermarket, the Christmas tree, with many young shoots – refrain from buying it, as it is unlikely to survive in the house
The only case when transplant cannot be postponed, strongly growing tree. Ie in the store during the sale, she has released a lot of young needles and purchased a very decorative look (by the way, these trees a lot in the supermarket!). If the plant started to grow in the winter – so he did not provide the conditions of peace, woke up not on time, and fresh shoots – a sign «despair». Konika tries before death to give as much as possible «offspring» – young shoots, which can be recognised by its bright green color.
The root system will give their all on the vegetation and in the substrate will not supply. As a result, the death of the plant. Often such trees – decayed roots, because at the base of the neck to the substrate during the transport of strays in whom, and from there the moisture evaporates. Not supplied with oxygen, and thus, creates the conditions for decay. Therefore, these conic Christmas trees are transplanted in the prepared soil for conifers immediately after purchase. At the same time use not a method of handling and completely shake the substrate with the roots of trees and planted in fresh soil.
Be prepared that after the transplant, the tree will reset part of the needles, will stand long dim, and the young tips of the branches wither. This is a normal reaction haggard moving and improper storage conditions of the trees, and you just have to hope that it will stand the stress. You can only help him, keeping the temperature about 10 degrees and normal humidity.
Too wet soil causes rotting of the root system and the inevitable death of the seedling, and to restore the ashen crown is impossible
How and when «feed» plant?
During hibernation and immediately after transplanting conifers is not fed. At this time, the roots don’t need much power, otherwise the immature tree vegetation will start too early. In the spring the needles start to handle Appin or other biological preparations, especially those twigs that dropped needles. The growth stimulant will awaken dormant buds and will help the plant to restore its former decorative.
For irrigation use special fertilizer for conifers. They will support the desired level of soil acidity. «Feed» plant every 2 weeks from April until mid-summer. Next – stop feeding, the tree had to go before winter hibernation.
How to choose the right tree for the house?
If you like European tradition to decorate New year trees container and you are ready for the challenges of care at home, choose a spruce Konica in the store by the following features:
- Don’t buy Glauco, decorated for the holiday sequins and artificial snow. These decorations are applied with aerosols and clog the pores of the needles. The tree will still die.
- Gently stir the barrel. If it is wobbly in the pot, so the tree was recently transplanted here from other places. The roots of this certainly damaged, and chances of survival for the plants becoming a little.
- If the volume pot is too small compared to the crown – do not take this tree. To develop a good crown, the tree must be strong roots. And most likely when transplanting into the container portion of the root system was cut off by shears, and the life of the crown supported by stimulants.
- Carefully scratched from the ground. If the tree grew in this land from the beginning, that the roots of your hair all the space, forming a tight com. It is a good seedling.
- Stumps roots, not woven together, talking about what Konica grown especially for the holiday, and it will not survive.
- Many young shoots at the ends of the tree in winter – a signal that the tree woke up late. Soon it will start to hurt.
- A healthy tree has a dense, uniformly colored pine needles, neocolony bottom of the barrel and emerge from the drainage holes of the pot the roots.
Generally, the ideal container crop for Christmas interior is not considered to be a conic, and Araucaria. This is the only ephedra that is designed for growing at home, so quietly survive the winter and transplant, and warm a room mode.
If the pot you see many roots, downed in a tight lump, so the tree was in the ground one year
Soft needles Araucania look no less interesting in the Christmas tinsel, but you can be sure that the seedling will survive after the holidays
If you chose the seedling failed, and it begins to die – tear down the Christmas trees are all healthy branches 7-10 cm long and put in a glass of water mixed with root stimulant. Maybe by spring some of them will start up roots, and you will have your planting material.
Sprigs of Christmas tree it is necessary to disrupt arms to save at the end of the thickening, called «promenade». It accelerates the formation of roots
Features landing in open ground
Since glauca Konika is not intended for growing at home, you can save it, landed in open ground. Plant a tree close to the porch and decorate every year in the winter instead of in the torture room heat. It is true that increasing glauca not fast, for the year adds up to 10-12 cm, so that the meter will only instance after 10 years.
Container trees, as we wrote above, it is best to plant in the spring. But if you use the method of handling, it is possible to October (2 months before the onset of stable Morozov).
Space requirements
Konika likes moist, well-drained acidic soil. Perfect loam. Stagnant moisture for its roots – certain death. If the site is located in low-lying place, landing on the bottom of the pit poured a layer of broken bricks, expanded clay or coarse sand. This will prevent the root system from stagnant water.
The location for planting should be Sunny. It is desirable to find prichenennye station to needles not burned in summer under direct sunlight. Can be planted near the fence, house wall, in a group with a higher ephedra.
The first years seedlings conic grow up, so it is not particularly decorative, but at this time they should be planted in open ground
Boarding instructions
The procedure works like this:
- When planting the tree carefully removed from the container, trying not to destroy the earth com, and immersed for 1-2 hours in water.
- If planting in the spring/summer – the roots release from the substrate, straighten the roots in different directions, and planted in poured a mound of fertile soil. You can buy 10 kg ready to bring the ground of coniferous forests.
- When planting in summer, choose a rainy week, so the seedlings have time to get out of stressful situations before it will be hot. All summer the tree is necessary to make a shade, creating on her from a nonwoven material is kind of a canopy.
- In the autumn planting, the root system is not could pad and gently straighten only the tips of the tangled roots, leaving a lump in one piece. So the plant is less damaged and will have time before winter to get stronger.
And of course after planting the ground is filled with peat for moisture retention and fall – to insulation the roots.
Glauca Konika can be planted as a specimen or to be the centre of the small flower beds, but it grows very slowly and becomes spectacular after 10-15 years
That is afraid of glauca Konica?
The most dangerous time for Christmas trees — late winter. At this time the sun and reflecting the rays snow severely burn young foliage, causing it to become red, and then showered. Places burns recovered slightly. It is therefore important from the beginning of February to cover the seedlings with burlap or non-woven material, made of them a cone bag or tightly tied to a branch by a rope. Of course, the decorativeness of the plot affected, but the plants stay healthy pine needles.
And the ephedra like high humidity, and if the summer will be hot and dry, the Krona is likely to crumble from dehydration. So the summer should be installed near the conic water hose with spray 5-6 times a day to turn it on.
To grow conifers in the apartment – troublesome. Miniature artificial tree will decorate the Christmas table is not worse than real and will withstand any decor. Think about whether to torture a tree in the heat of the room, if the chances of survival a little. Will peredarit the Christmas tree to friends or relatives who have their own plot. It will be a joy, the Christmas tree is for the benefit of, and you don’t have to watch the slow death of coniferous beauties.
