Azalea: home care, transplant after purchase
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Snow lies outside the windows, and on the windowsill is a flower, lavishly decorated with a hat of pink-like inflorescences. This is a very beautiful but finicky azalea (Azalia or Azalea) from the Heather family, the genus of rhododendrons. Azalea care for a novice grower can sometimes be difficult. Many, after the joy of a gift in the form of a beautiful flowerpot with a blooming rose tree, are disappointed when they see this beauty dying before our eyes.
Azalea - home care after purchase
Home care for an azalea after purchase will be successful if you understand the needs of the plant and provide it with suitable conditions for development. During the flowering period, azaleas need moist and cool air (no higher than + 15 ° С) and timely watering. An overdried earthen lump in a pot is fatal to the flower.
Azalea bonsai
The flowering of plants of the Azalia species begins in October, lasts all winter, and ends in March-April. If the purchased flower, brought to the house, does not have dried stems and leaves, there are no signs of rot and disease, then it can be placed on the windowsill away from other plants. The flower should not be exposed to direct sunlight, they can scorch the leaves, but it should have a lot of light.
In winter, when the dryness of the air is usually increased due to operating heating systems, a device must be placed near the flower that humidifies the air, or the pot must be placed in a pallet in which expanded clay is laid and water is poured. If it is impossible to build such a device, then the azalea will need to be regularly sprayed from a misty micro-spray.
Water the plant with soft water.
Increase moisture around the azalea with a claydite pallet.
If it is not possible to melt snow or collect rainwater, then use filtered or cooled boiled water. Transplanting an azalea from a shipping pot to a flowerpot can be done after it has faded, but not earlier than 5-7 days after purchase. The plant must adapt to the conditions, atmosphere and light level of the new place for it.
Home care basics for azaleas
For normal development, indoor azalea should:
- be cool in the light in a pot of the appropriate size;
- grow in a ready-made loose substrate for Azalea or in a nutrient soil with an acidity level of pH 4.5-5;
- regularly watered with water without impurities and with a low salt content.
The best time for transplanting is spring, at a time when, after the next pruning, new shoots begin to grow on the branches.
Azalea in a clay pot
Pot selection
Experienced growers suggest growing azaleas not in plastic, but in a thick-walled, tall, unglazed clay pot with drainage holes, at the bottom of which you can place 3 cm of drainage material. The walls of such a pot will well protect the roots of the flower from overheating.The diameter of the new pot should be 2-3 cm larger than the previous one.
Soil composition
You can independently prepare soil for planting a flower from the soil collected under old pines or spruces, a small amount of leafy soil, finely chopped sphagnum moss, vermiculite. The earth is heated in an oven or microwave and only then is it mixed with moss and vermiculite.
Of course, as a result of heating in the soil, not only harmful, but also beneficial microorganisms will die, therefore, after cooling, the mixture is spilled with Fitosporin. A solution of the drug is made according to the instructions on the package. Then the earth is dried to a crumbly state.
How to transplant a blooming azalea
Prepare a container with soft water, add a few drops of Kornevin. The flower is turned over, the bottom of the transport pot is tapped, and taken out together with the earthen lump. Roots should be examined, damaged roots should be cut off. Then the earthen lump is placed in a container with a rooting agent for a few minutes.
A lump of earth with Azalia roots
A layer of expanded clay or other drainage material is placed at the bottom of the pot, the soil is filled up, and a depression is formed with an empty shipping pot. The flower is placed in the recess.
[Important! The empty space is covered with a self-prepared earthen mixture or a ready-made substrate, poured with the remaining water with Kornevin. / Alert]
Do the same if the time comes to plant an overgrown 2-3 year old azalea. This is done in the spring, 20-30 days after the end of flowering and subsequent pruning of the bush. The intertwined roots of the flower are effortlessly separated into individual pieces. Delenki are transplanted into small containers.
How to prune an azalea
For home azaleas, annual pruning is required. This technique prevents the deterioration of the decorative effect of the flower and maintains a balance between the crown and the underground part of the plant. Without pruning, the plant will take on a disheveled appearance.
Azalea after pruning
Pruning will force the plant to redirect its energies towards the rapid growth of new shoots and the establishment of new buds. First, the longest shoots are cut, then thickening the bush. Pluck out all faded, dried buds.
How to care for an azalea
The transplanted plants are placed in a cool place with high humidity in partial shade. Watering should be regular, complete drying out of the earthen coma is unacceptable, but overflows will also lead to decay of the roots. The middle ground is selected based on soil moisture at a depth of 1 cm.
The plant itself will tell you how to care for an azalea flower. After the transplant, it is important to establish close observation of him and respond to all negative manifestations so that later he does not have to be reanimated.
The first feeding with complex mineral fertilizers for rhododendras with a properly selected planting soil is carried out not earlier than after 2-3 months.
Important! For feeding, use a composition corresponding to the stage of flower growth.
If the leaves of a plant begin to fall off, this does not mean that it urgently needs to be fed. The reason for the fall can be not only depleted soil, but also overflow, and dry roots, and the appearance of pests.
Diseases and pests
Some growers, with the onset of warmth during the dormant period of indoor rhododendra, take pots with azaleas into the garden in the shade of trees and add them with the pot to the soil. Plants in such growing conditions feel good if they do not forget to water them and prophylactically treat them with biological products from pests.
Spider mites, thrips, aphids, rhododendral bugs, azalea moths can settle on azaleas. You need to deal with them with systemic or combined insecticides. Solutions of such drugs as Engio, Aktara penetrate through the plant pores into the tissue of the flower and act through the cuticles of insects on their nervous system.
In summer, after contact with garden soil, azaleas can become infected with root rot. Therefore, before taking out the flower pot under the open sky, the plant is spilled with water with biofungicides.
Reproduction Azalea
Only shoots cut from azaleas in late spring or early summer can be rooted. Young shoots that have grown after cutting the flower are cut into cuttings. There should be 5 leaves on the handle. Half of the sheet plate is cut off from the bottom three. Cuttings are soaked for 6 hours in a solution of heteroauxin (2 tablets are diluted in 1 liter of water).
Azalea flowers
Rooted in a mini-greenhouse in a loose moist nutrient soil with an acidic reaction. They constantly monitor the soil moisture level and ventilate the greenhouse. The greenhouse should be located in a bright, warm room with an air temperature of 22-25 ° C.
After transplanting into a flower garden, a transparent cap from a glass jar or a cut plastic bottle is installed above the plant for 2-3 weeks and the ground is periodically ventilated and moistened again.
After 2-3 months, flower buds will appear on the tops of the rooted bushes, they need to be plucked and the tops of new shoots cut off to force the bush to start branching.
Secrets of long blooming azaleas
Asking why the plant does not bloom, begins to wither, shed flowers and leaves, it should be remembered that azaleas grow in humid subtropics. During flowering, they need coolness, that they love only acidic soils. Therefore, during watering, a few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice or a few crystals of citric acid are added to the water.
In order for the plant to bloom for a long time in winter, all flower buds that appear in spring and summer are removed from it. In the summer dormant period, azaleas should rest, build up the root system, and please the owners with their flowering - on short winter days.
The beauty of azaleas is extraordinary in that it comes to people when there are gray tree trunks outside the window, and the rest of the indoor flowers are in hibernation. Azaleas in winter are a gift to people from summer.
