- Type: conifers
- Flowering Period: August, September
- Height: 15-40m
- Color: green with a dark red tint
- Perennial
- Winters
- Shady
- Drought resistant
On the eve of the New Year holidays, each family thinks out where to get and how to decorate the main heroine of the celebration - the Christmas tree. But if ten years ago many owners switched to artificial beauties, then today all the present is back in fashion. Moreover, it is considered special chic to get your own home Christmas tree, which will please the eye all year round, and not a couple of days. That is why green spiky beauties in pots appear in many shopping centers in December. They are bought both as a gift for friends, and in the interior. But there is one problem: the plant needs competent care, otherwise the needles in the heat can turn yellow and crumble. Consider how to properly conduct home planting of conic spruce and care for it (this particular variety is the leader of New Year's sales!).
Can Conic Be Considered a Domestic Plant
The main suppliers of coniferous potted plants are Denmark, Holland, Poland. These are countries in which the flower business is put on stream and they can grow even the most complex crops in a pot.
Conifers are considered almost unsuitable for growing at home, as they need a long hibernation period and low temperatures at this time. And all the Christmas trees that are sold in pots are grown only for temporary use. Konika is not an exception, but just a dwarf hybrid with ordinary blue spruce, formed as a result of a mutation.
Two Christmas weeks, the Christmas trees will be kept warm - and then in 90% the plant will die. But there is still a 10% chance of holding the konik until spring, then to land it on the street, and in exceptional cases, to tame it to the home climate. If you were presented with a prickly dwarf beauty for the New Year, get ready to fight for her life. This is not an indoor plant, and its life cycle should be in tune with the temperatures and humidity in which spruce grows in natural conditions.
The miniature spruce glauca conica attracts buyers with a compact cone-shaped crown, which was formed as a result of a mutation, without human intervention
Features of caring for a potted plant
So, the conic tree appeared in your apartment, and you need to do everything so that it survives at home.
Choose a place in the house
To get started, find the coldest place in the house. It can be a window sill on the north side, a place inside the double window frames, a glazed loggia or a porch. The ideal temperature is 3-5 degrees. The higher the temperature, the less likely the tree to survive, since in winter conifers have dormant time. And it can only be provided with low temperatures.
You can decorate the conic with beads and tinsel, but bring it into a warm room only for the duration of the holiday, for a couple of hours. In a short time, the spruce does not have time to get into a stressful state from temperature extremes.
If you want to decorate a purchased plant, do not use floristic sprays, since the crown will not be able to breathe normally and die
If the loggia freezes during severe frosts - wrap the pot with woolen cloth (an old sweater, scarf, etc.) to prevent moisture from freezing on the roots. Crohn is not afraid of subzero temperatures.
We provide humidity
High humidity is the second factor in the normal development of a plant. Needles are very sensitive to dry air, so you need to put a humidifier near the pot, which will constantly blow on the crown. If it is absent, put water bowls on both sides of the plant and spray needles 5-6 times a day.
Watering, on the contrary, should not be plentiful, since the root system also sleeps. It is enough to keep the earth lump wet. To prevent drying out, cover the top with a sheet of paper or newspaper cut out in a circle. They will not hold air, but will not allow moisture to evaporate quickly. Watering and spraying is necessary with water, which stood for several hours and heated to room temperature.
The problem may be that under all the windowsills of the house there will be heating batteries, which from the bottom will give too much heat and dry up the earth ball. In this case, the pot is not placed on the windowsill itself, but raised on a raised platform, such as a makeshift stand, an inverted pan, etc. The main thing is to remove it higher from the heat source.
Adjust the lighting
Conifers are very sensitive to direct sunlight. They cause burns of needles. Therefore, the window sill should be chosen from the side where the sun happens only after dinner (not the south side). Diffused light is ideal. In this case, you need to turn the conic once a week so that each side of the tree receives light recharge. If you neglect this - the needles from the side of the room will begin to turn yellow, crumble, and the tree will become "one-sided".
Light unevenly falling on the crown of the tree leads to the fact that part of the needles turns yellow, and after that it crumbles, and the tree loses its beautiful appearance
In the absence of shaded window sills, they arrange a home-made cover, placing between the plant and the window frame a large sheet of white paper (above the height of the Christmas tree). This is especially important at the end of winter, when the February-March sun begins to bake strongly, and the plant has not yet emerged from hibernation and is therefore very sensitive to temperature extremes.
Transplant Rules
Typically, potted plants are transplanted into fresh land immediately after purchase, because they are sold in a substrate, which is called "transport". Land cannot be transported across borders (this is a requirement of an international convention); therefore, trees intended for sale abroad sit in sterilized peat or coconut fiber. They do not provide ideal conditions for the development of culture in the home environment.
While seedlings grow in nurseries - watering and top dressing are carried out by airborne droplets without affecting the soil. At home, no one will provide such conditions. Therefore, they try to transplant purchased plants immediately into fertile soil.
Herringbone requires slightly acidified soil, which can be obtained in the coniferous forest and sterilized in the microwave for 10 minutes
Spruce glauka is very picky about transplants. The broken root system takes root for about 3 months, so the tree can be transplanted exclusively in the spring. In winter, the seedling is still in a dormant state, and if it is provided with cold, then in the transport substrate it will quietly survive until March.
Another thing is a warm room. Peat in the heat dries instantly, which means that your Christmas tree will not have a chance to survive in it. But if there is no cold room, the Christmas tree still needs to be transferred to a larger pot, filling the bottom and sides of the tank with normal soil. An earthball with roots is not necessary to disturb, leave this operation until spring.
If in the winter you find a Christmas tree in a supermarket with many young shoots, refuse to buy it, as it is unlikely to survive in the house
The only case when you can’t postpone the transplant is a highly vegetative Christmas tree. Those. in the store during the sale, she managed to release a lot of young needles and acquired a very decorative look (by the way, there are a lot of such trees in supermarkets!). If the plant started growing in winter, it means that it was not provided with dormant conditions, it was awakened at the wrong time, and fresh shoots are a sign of “despair”. Konika tries to give as much "offspring" as possible before her death - young shoots that can be recognized by their bright green color.
The root system will give all the energy to the vegetation, and there will be no nutrition in the substrate. As a result, the death of the plant. Often, such fir trees have rotten roots, since at the base of the neck the substrate stray into a lump during transportation and moisture does not evaporate from there. Oxygen is not supplied, which means that all conditions for decay are created. Therefore, such conic fir trees are transplanted into the finished soil for coniferous plants immediately after purchase. In this case, they do not use the transshipment method, but completely shake the substrate from the roots of the tree and plant it in fresh soil.
Be prepared that after the transplant, the tree will throw off part of the needles, will be dull for a long time, and the young tips of the twigs will dry out. This is a normal reaction of a tree exhausted by moving and improper storage conditions, and you can only hope that it will withstand stress. You can only help him by maintaining a temperature of about 10 degrees and normal humidity.
Too wet soil causes rotting of the root system and inevitable death of the seedling, and it is no longer possible to restore the gray crown
How and when to "feed" a plant?
During hibernation and immediately after transplantation, conifers do not feed. At this time, the roots do not need much nutrition, otherwise the vegetation on the fragile tree will begin too early. In the spring, they begin to process needles with epin or other biological products, especially those branches that dropped needles. Growth stimulator will awaken dormant buds and help the plant restore its former decorative effect.
For irrigation use special fertilizers for conifers. They will maintain the desired level of soil acidity. The plant is "fed" once every 2 weeks from April to mid-summer. Next - stop feeding so that the Christmas tree has time to go to sleep before winter.
How to choose the right tree for the house?
If you like the European tradition of decorating container trees for the New Year, and you are ready for the difficulties of home care, then choose a spruce conic in the store according to the following criteria:
- Do not buy glauca, decorated for the holiday with sparkles and artificial snow. These decorations are applied with aerosols and clog the pores of the needles. The tree will die anyway.
- Gently move the barrel. If he is staggering in a pot, it means that the tree was recently transplanted here from another place. In this case, the roots are necessarily damaged, and the plant has fewer chances of survival.
- If the volume of the pot is too small in relation to the crown - do not take this tree. In order to develop a good crown, the tree must have powerful roots. And most likely, when transplanted into a container, part of the root system was chopped off by a secateurs, and the life of the crown was supported by stimulants.
- Carefully pick the ground from the side. If the tree grew in this land from the very beginning, then the roots will braid the entire space, forming a dense lump. This is a good seedling.
- The stumps of the roots, not woven together, indicate that the conic was grown specifically for the holiday, and in the future it will not survive.
- A lot of young shoots at the ends of the tree in the winter are a signal that the tree was awakened in time. Soon it will start to hurt.
- A healthy Christmas tree has a dense, evenly colored needles, a trunk bare from below and roots emerging from the drainage holes of the pot.
In general, the perfect pot culture for the New Year’s interior is not conic, but araucaria. This is the only conifer intended for growing a house, so it will calmly survive the winter transplant and the warm indoor environment.
If you see a lot of roots in a pot, knocked down in a tight lump, then the Christmas tree has been sitting in this soil for more than one year
The soft needles of araucaria look no less interesting in New Year's tinsel, but you will be sure that the seedling will survive after the holidays
If you nevertheless chose the seedling unsuccessfully, and it begins to die, pick all healthy branches 7-10 cm long from the tree and put it in a glass with water diluted with a root growth stimulator. Perhaps in the spring some of them will start the roots, and you will have your own planting material.
The branches of the Christmas tree must be torn off with your hands in order to maintain at the end a thickening, called the "heel". It accelerates root formation
Features of landing in the open ground
Since glauka conic is not intended for growing a house, it can be preserved by planting it in open ground. Plant a tree near the porch and decorate each year in winter instead of tormenting in room heat. True, glauca does not grow quickly, it adds 10-12 cm per year, so a meter-long specimen will be obtained only after 10 years.
Container Christmas trees, as we wrote above, are best planted in the spring. But if you use the transshipment method, then it is possible until October (2 months before the onset of stable frosts).
Place requirements
Konika loves moist, well-drained, acidic soils. Ideal option is loam. Stagnant moisture for its roots is certain death. If the site is located in a low-lying place, when landing on the bottom of the pit, a layer of broken brick, expanded clay or coarse sand is covered. This will save the root system from stagnation of water.
The landing place should not be sunny. It is advisable to find a shaded area so that the needles do not fry in the summer in direct sunlight. It can be planted near fences, against the wall of the house, in an ensemble with higher conifers.
The first years, the conic seedlings grow up, so they do not differ in special decorativeness, but it is at this time that they should be planted in open ground
Landing instruction
The order of work is as follows:
- When planting, the Christmas tree is carefully removed from the container, trying not to destroy the earthen lump, and immersed for 1-2 hours in water.
- If the planting is in spring / summer, the roots are freed from the substrate, straighten the roots in different directions and planted on a fertile soil poured on a hill. You can buy 10 kg ready-made or bring land from the coniferous forest.
- When planting in the summer, a rainy week is chosen so that the seedling has time to get out of stress before the heat begins. For the whole summer, the Christmas tree must be pritenit, creating a kind of canopy over it from non-woven material.
- During autumn planting, the root system does not slow down, but only carefully straighten the tips of the tangled roots, leaving the lump intact. So the plant is less injured and has time to get stronger before winter.
And of course, after planting, the earth is covered with peat to preserve moisture, and in autumn - to warm the roots.
Glauka konika can land as a tapeworm or be the center of a small flower bed, but it grows very slowly and becomes effective after 10-15 years
What is conic glauca afraid of?
The most dangerous time for the Christmas tree is the end of winter. At this time, the sun and snow reflecting the rays strongly burn the young needles, which makes it red, and then crumbles. Places of burns are poorly restored. Therefore, it is important from the beginning of February to cover the seedlings with burlap or non-woven material, stitching a conical bag from them or tightly tied to the crown with a rope. Of course, the decorativeness of the site will suffer, but the plants will retain healthy needles.
And these conifers love high humidity, and if the summer succeeds hot and dry, the crown can crumble from dehydration. Therefore, in the summer, it is necessary to install a water hose with a sprayer near the conic and turn it on 5-6 times a day.
Growing conifers in an apartment is troublesome. A miniature artificial Christmas tree will decorate the New Year's table no worse than the present and will withstand any decor. Think about whether it is worth tormenting a tree in the heat of rooms if there is little chance of survival. Present the Christmas tree to friends or relatives who have their own plot. It will be a joy for them, a Christmas tree is for the benefit, and you will not have to watch the slow death of the coniferous beauty.
