Growing Hippeastrum: Care, Reproduction And Pests

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Read the previous part: Growing hippeastrum: preparing and planting bulbs

At home, hippeastrum is grown as a garden plant. Many guides on floriculture advise us to grow this flower in the garden in the summer. But I am totally against it.

Once I followed this advice and planted all my hippeastrum in the country at the beginning of June in the open ground. I hoped that a larger bulb would grow in the wild, and its flowers would be larger next season. And it was much more convenient to care for them than in a pot culture. She watered and fed them in passing when she tended the garden flowers. But by the end of the summer, when she began to plant the plants in pots, she was amazed and outraged by what happened.

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The bulbs did not grow at all, but, on the contrary, even became much smaller. In the open field, they were gradually eaten by some soil pests, and a typical disease of this flower “red burn” appeared on the leaves. The leaves at the base of the bulb, like the bulb itself, were covered with red spots, strokes, and lines.

I had to clear the bulb from the covering scales, cut out the diseased areas and lubricate all the cuts with greenery before planting the plants in pots. You can use Bordeaux liquid instead of brilliant green. After such an experiment, the next year, all the bulbs did not bloom. Therefore, I do not advise you to follow these recommendations. Indoor flowers should grow at home!

In order for the hippeastrum to bloom next year, they must be put into a state of rest. To do this, at the beginning of September, I begin to prepare them for this, having stopped watering.

The leaves gradually, but not all at once, begin to dry out. If by the end of November not all the leaves are dry, then I cut off the remaining ones. I take out the onion from the pot, shake off the soil, trim the roots, leaving only 2-3 cm from them, remove the outer brown covering scales, exposing the bulb (to white).

I dry it for a day at room temperature, then sprinkle the onion with Bisolbifit powder and wrap it in two layers of newspaper. I sign each such package, indicating what date I placed the bulbs there, and, counting off two months, I write the second date - this is the time when it can be planted again.

You can keep it in the refrigerator for more than two months, but not less! In the same place, on the newspaper, I write the name of the variety and put the bulbs in this form in the refrigerator door or in the vegetable compartment. At this time, the hippeastrum begins a period of rest. If this is not done, then varietal hippeastrum will not bloom next season! So it is more convenient to store them than to leave them in pots, which need to be removed to a cold place, which is simply not in the apartment.

Moreover, the soil in the pot dries up, and the microflora dies there. Two months later, at the beginning of February, or later, I plant the rested bulbs in fresh soil. Hippeastrum bulbs can be retired in September and October, only they will need to be planted earlier in this case, but they will also bloom earlier. If you decide to provide rest to the bulbs earlier, then stop watering and feeding at the beginning of July.

Hippeastrum grows at me and at work. There is no way to keep the bulbs in the refrigerator. But on the windowsill in winter it is cold there, and hippeastrum themselves shed their leaves in the fall and retire, sitting in a pot. During this period, I do not water them. In the spring, I remove the top layer of the earth and add fresh. I transplant them every three years, when it comes time to remove the babies. Care is the same as for hippeastrum growing at home.

Reproduction of hippeastrum

The hippeastrum is multiplied by children, which are formed near the mother's bulb. At the same time, there is such a strange pattern: the more beautiful the variety, the less often and fewer children it grows. But annually, children are formed in mongrels - hippeastrum with orange tubular medium-sized flowers.

In the first year, the baby is tightly attached to the mother's bulb, so I do not advise, sending them to rest, to separate it. It will be worse stored from this, it may even dry out. This can be done after the second year of her life together with her mother, when she will have independent roots. They can be planted in separate small pots already in the third year. They will bloom after 3-4 years of independent life, it all depends on the quality of care for them and on the variety.

I plant the children separated in the spring in separate small pots. I take care of them in the same way as for adult plants. You don't need to put them in the refrigerator for the winter. They continue to vegetate. As soon as the diameter of the bulbs reaches 7 cm, I begin to put them in the refrigerator at rest.

You can still propagate hippeastrum with seeds, but I do not practice this method, because after flowering, I immediately remove the peduncle so that it does not take away the strength from the bulb when the seeds ripen. This method is used by breeders when developing new varieties. These plants easily interbreed with each other, so a huge number of new varieties appear every year.

Hippeastrum can be propagated in another way: cut an adult bulb into four parts (but not completely) and plant only the bottom of the bulb in the ground. Children will appear in the sections by the end of the season. This method is practiced when you need to get a lot of planting material for sale.

After caring for hippeastrum, hands must be washed with soap and water, because all parts of the plant are poisonous ! If you touch your body with an unwashed hand, then it will turn red in this place and will itch strongly for a week. It is also necessary to watch out for cats who like to eat the leaves of plants in pots in the spring. If they chew on a piece of a leaf of the hippeastrum, they will get severe poisoning!

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Pests

I have not observed pests on the plant in indoor conditions for many years. In the reference books, they write that the main pests are: aphids and spider mites. But since this plant is poisonous, these pests are bypassed by my hippeastrum.

Hippeastrum varieties

There are 75 species in the genus Hippeastrum. There are a huge number of varieties of hippeastrum - about a thousand with simple and double, large and miniature flowers. The shape of the flower is also different. The most beautiful can be considered, of course, varieties with double flowers. The color scheme is varied: red, black, white, pink, yellow. Only blue and blue flowers are missing. When buying new bulbs, you need to pay attention not only to the absence of diseases and pests, but also to the size of the bulb.

For example, white-flowered hippeastrum bulbs never have a large bulb. If the package contains a bulb with a diameter of more than 8 cm, then you will not see white flowers - this is a re-grading. Bulbs of hippeastrum varieties with dark flowers (red, black) also do not come in large sizes. Having reached a certain size, they begin to reproduce. But the bulbs of giant sizes are found in double-colored hippeastrum: white with pink shades or pink and white.

Olga Rubtsova

florist, candidate of geographical sciences,