How To Provide Wintering For Indoor Plants, Pest Control

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

How to provide a cozy wintering for indoor plants

In autumn and winter, both people and plants begin to suffer from a lack of sunlight. The appearance of indoor flowers changes noticeably: some specimens are strongly stretched, losing their usual shape and decorativeness. Leaves turn yellow and dry, begonias, violets, pelargoniums, fuchsias turn pale and fade faster.

With the beginning of the heating season, the temperature and dryness of the air rise sharply, which also complicates the life of home flowers. In ferns, arrowroots, pelargoniums, chlorophytums and many other species with delicate leaves, the edges and tips of the leaves often dry out. I would like to immediately help my pets get through a difficult time and keep their attractive appearance. What needs to be done for this? Let's try to open a "beauty salon" for flowers.

First of all, every plant needs

peel off damaged and dried leaves by carefully cutting or breaking them off. At the end of flowering, strongly elongated stems must be cut off to a successful lateral branch or axillary shoot. This is done with pelargonium, fuchsia, gracilis begonia and ever flowering (semperflerens), clerodendron, jasmine trachelospermum and other species.

If in August the potted flowers were not transplanted into fresh soil, then the time has come to

improve the soil substrate.… To do this, carefully loosen the top layer of soil 1-1.5 cm thick with a pointed peg and remove from the pot the top layer of soil 1-1.5 cm thick. residues from fallen leaves, flowers, seed pods and other debris.

The next watering of the plants should be done with a dark pink solution of potassium permanganate. Such health watering should be done as needed, but at least once a month.

Now you can

add flower dressingfor the entire autumn-winter season. A very suitable fertilizer is AVA - nitrogen-free, chlorine-free complex fertilizer with all the necessary macro- and microelements. The absence of nitrogen in the fertilizer during the period of insufficient lighting will inhibit excessive growth with a balanced plant nutrition from slowly dissolving blue crystals. For each flower pot with a diameter of 10-12 cm, you can add 3-4 medium-sized fertilizer crystals, piercing an earthen lump with a peg to a depth of 2-5 cm. For better aeration of the roots of flower plants, you can make several more punctures of an earthen ball. The next procedure should be to add fresh fertile soil to the pots. In height, the earthen lump should be 1-1.5 cm below the edge of the pot for proper watering.

Watering in autumn and winterdepends on the type of plants and the air temperature in the room. It is known that succulents (cacti, bastards, milkweed) in autumn and winter go to a state of dormancy and almost do not require watering. They are watered 2-3 times a month, or even less often, and kept in a cool, bright place. Summer-flowering species are in a state of relative dormancy at this time: pelargonium, fuchsia, roses and others. They also need a bright, cool place and occasional watering. Most decorative deciduous indoor plants continue to grow and need moderate watering only when the earthy clod dries up. Do not allow stagnation of water in the pan of the pot - in 20-30 minutes after watering, excess water must be removed (An exception is Cyperus, he likes to live "knee-deep" in water). Water for irrigation must be defended for at least a day to remove toxic chlorine. Its temperature should be several degrees above room temperature. Watering with cold water inevitably leads to disease and death of plants.

Humidification of the air to a relative humidity of 50-60% is a very important condition for the well-being of indoor flowers. Natural air humidity in residential premises with operating central heating batteries is no more than 40%. Such dry air causes discomfort in the organisms of people and plants. Therefore, the very presence of flowering plants in the house improves the ecology of the home: the air is enriched with oxygen, purified from carbon dioxide and many harmful components emitted by synthetic household materials, as well as products of incomplete combustion of gas, tobacco smoke. In this case, air humidification occurs, but clearly insufficient for the plants themselves, unless they are succulents.

The methods of additional humidification of the air in the zone where plants are located are very diverse. First of all, spraying flowers with undisturbed leaves with clean, settled water several times a day. But this may not be acceptable for everyone due to the lack of time. In this case, for constant, uniform air humidification, special humidifiers made of plastic or ceramics are suspended from the batteries. These are special vessels where water is poured for slow evaporation. Ordinary plastic bottles can be adapted to provide a larger evaporating surface area by simply cutting off the neck. Perhaps the easiest way to increase air humidity is to place wide and low vessels with water on the windowsills between the plants. The content of potted flowers on trays or trays with clean river sand, expanded clay, moss, coconut substrate poured onto the bottom effectively humidifies the air. A thin layer of any of these materials is watered or sprayed with water, which slowly evaporates and surrounds the plants with sufficient water vapor. As a result, the leaves of flowers retain their turgor well, do not dry out, and remain beautiful and healthy.

To

keep plants free of pests, they need clean leaves, stems and potted soil. This is easily achieved by regularly rinsing the crown from the shower with warm water or rubbing the leaves of large tub plants with a soft sponge. A shower is necessary as it gets dirty, but preferably at least once a month. After bathing, the leaves of many plants exude a rather perceptible pleasant aroma due to the active release of essential oils and phytoncides, which is very beneficial for health. This is especially true for home thuja, cypress, myrtle, rosemary, roses, citrus fruits, pelargonium (geranium) and other species.

Remember that showers and baths love plants with smooth leaves. Pubescent foliage requires particularly gentle handling. Dust is removed from it with a soft brush. This applies to representatives of the Gesneriaceae family (violets, gloxinia, streptocarpus, colerias), as well as to cacti, for which any waterlogging is generally very dangerous.

If a spider mite nevertheless settled on the plants, which often happens in the autumn-winter period, then rinsing the crown should be done more often, 1-2 times a week. In this case, baths with laundry soap are useful.

All

water treatments with home plantscarried out by well packing the pot of earth in a plastic bag so that the earth does not wake up and does not get wet. The crown of the plant is gently immersed several times in soapy water, then taken out and allowed to dry for 1-2 hours without washing off the soapy film. Pests, as a rule, die without air access. Then the crown of the plant is washed from the shower with clean water, the leaves are allowed to dry and the flower is placed in a permanent place.

A radical way to get rid of pests on flowers is as follows. The wrapped pot is turned upside down and the crown of the plant is lowered into a full bucket of clean water, placing two parallel sticks for support. Such bathing can last up to two hours. During this time, the pests suffocate without air. It remains only to wash them off with a stream of clean water at room temperature. The shield is removed by hand, wiping the places of its attachment with vodka using a cotton swab.

Healthy potting soilprovide mainly with proper watering. From waterlogging in the soil, small insects start up, the presence of which is easy to notice on the surface of the water during irrigation, until it is absorbed. These "intruders" must be drained from the pot and allowed to dry before the next watering. To disinfect the earthen coma, from time to time, flowers are watered with a dark pink solution of potassium permanganate.

Shineplays, perhaps, the main role in the life of plants, since they receive their nutrition mainly due to the process of photosynthesis, which occurs only in the light. In autumn and winter in the middle and northern latitudes, the lack of natural light greatly complicates the life of flowering plants. In this regard, the plants are exposed on the windowsills as close to the light as possible. But more often than not, this is not enough. The best option for keeping plants during this period is their additional lighting with special lamps: fluorescent or high pressure (mercury, metal halide or sodium).

The duration of daylight hours for indoor flowers should be at least 10-12 hours, of which about 6 hours are artificial lighting. Lamps have to be turned on in the morning and in the afternoon until late at night. Conventional incandescent lamps do not provide adequate illumination for plants, since most of their radiation is in the red spectrum. The high heat output of incandescent bulbs can even burn flowers. The height of hanging the lamps above the plants depends on their type: for flowering plants it is 15-30 cm, for decorative deciduous plants - 30-60 cm. Sometimes indoor plants are kept on special stands, shelves away from windows. In this case, artificial lighting should be on for the entire 12 hours.

Indoor flowers are the closest part of nature to us. They are lively and beautiful, create good "weather at home", helping to survive the long colds of autumn and winter. We have similar needs with them: to be healthy, clean, well-groomed and beautiful. All of the above "beauty salon" procedures for flowers will help our pets to maintain their health and attractiveness.