Spruce Konika Glauka: planting and care at home + rules for planting in open ground

• Type: coniferous
• Flowering period: Aug. Sept
• Height: 15-40m
• Color: green with a dark red tint
• perennial
• hibernates
• Shade-loving
• drought tolerant

On the eve of the New Year holidays, each family thinks over where to get and how to decorate the main character of the celebration - the Christmas tree. But if ten years ago, many owners switched to artificial beauties, today everything real is returning to fashion. Moreover, it is considered special chic to acquire your own homemade Christmas tree, which will please the eye all year round, and not a couple of days. That's why potted green prickly beauties appear in many shopping malls in December. They are bought both as a gift for friends, and for themselves in the interior. But there is one problem: the plant needs competent care, otherwise the needles in the heat can turn yellow and crumble. Let's consider how the home planting of Konik spruce and caring for it is carried out correctly (this particular variety is the leader in New Year's sales!).

The main suppliers of coniferous potted plants are Denmark, Holland, Poland. These are countries in which the flower business is on stream and they can grow even the most complex crops in a pot.

Coniferous plants are considered almost unsuitable for growing indoors, as they need a long dormant period and low temperatures during this time. And all the Christmas trees that are sold in pots are grown only for temporary use. Konika is no exception, but just a dwarf hybrid of the usual gray spruce, formed as a result of a mutation.

For two Christmas weeks, the Christmas trees will be kept warm - and then 90% of the plant dies. But there is still a 10% chance to keep the horse until spring, in order to then land it on the street, and in exceptional cases, tame it to the home climate. If you were given a prickly dwarf beauty for the New Year, get ready to fight for her life. This is not a houseplant, and its life cycle should be in tune with the temperatures and humidity in which spruce grows naturally.

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 horse tree has appeared in your apartment, and you need to do everything so that it survives at home.

Choosing a place in the house

First, find the coldest place in the house. This can be a window sill on the north side, a place inside double window frames, a glazed loggia or veranda. The ideal temperature is 3-5 degrees. The higher the temperature, the less likely the tree is to survive, since conifers have dormant time in winter. And it can only be provided with low temperatures.

You can decorate the horse with beads and tinsel, but bring it into a warm room only during the holiday, for a couple of hours. In a short time, the spruce will not have time to enter a stressful state due to temperature changes.

If you want to decorate a purchased plant, do not use floral sprays, as the crown will not be able to breathe normally and will die

If the loggia freezes during severe frosts, wrap the pot with a woolen cloth (an old sweater, scarf, etc.) to prevent moisture from freezing on the roots. Krona is not afraid of sub-zero temperatures.

We provide humidity

High humidity is the second factor in the normal development of the plant. The needles are very sensitive to dry air, so it is necessary to put an air humidifier near the pot, which will constantly blow on the crown. In its absence, place bowls of water on both sides of the plant and spray the needles 5-6 times a day.

Watering, on the contrary, should not be plentiful, since the root system is also sleeping. It is enough to keep a clod of earth moist. To prevent drying out, cover the top of the soil with a sheet of paper or newspaper cut out in a circle. They will not retain air, but will not allow moisture to evaporate quickly. It is necessary to water and spray with water, which stood for several hours and warmed up to room temperature.

The problem may be that under all the window sills of the house there will be radiators, which from below will give too much heat and drain the earthen lump. In this case, the pot is not placed on the window sill itself, but is raised to an elevation, such as a home-made stand, an inverted pan, etc. The main thing is to remove it higher from the heat source.

We adjust the lighting

Conifers are very sensitive to direct sunlight. They cause needle burns. Therefore, the window sill must be chosen from the side where the sun is only in the afternoon (not the south side). Diffused light is ideal. At the same time, you need to turn the conic once a week so that each side of the Christmas tree receives light recharge. If this is neglected, 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 Christmas tree leads to the fact that some of the needles turn yellow, and then crumble, and the tree loses its beautiful appearance.

In the absence of shaded window sills, they arrange a homemade cover by placing a large sheet of white paper between the plant and the window frame (above the height of the Christmas tree). This is especially important to do at the end of winter, when the February-March sun begins to get very hot, and the plant has not yet come out of hibernation and is therefore very sensitive to temperature changes.

Transplant rules

Usually potted plants are transplanted into fresh soil immediately after purchase, because they are sold in a substrate 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 the seedlings are growing in nurseries, watering and fertilizing are carried out by airborne droplets, without affecting the soil. At home, no one will provide such conditions. Therefore, they try to immediately transplant the purchased plants into fertile soil.

Herringbone requires slightly acidified soil, which can be obtained from a coniferous forest and sterilized in a microwave oven for 10 minutes

Glauka spruce is very picky about transplants. The disturbed root system takes root for about 3 months, so the tree can be transplanted only in the spring. In winter, the seedling is still in a dormant state, and if it is provided with cold, then it will quietly live in the transport substrate until March.

Another thing is a warm room. Peat dries instantly in heat, 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 must still be transferred to a larger pot, filling the bottom and sides of the container with normal soil. There is no need to disturb the earthen ball with roots, leave this operation until spring.

If in winter you find a Christmas tree with many young shoots in the supermarket, refuse to buy it, as it is unlikely to survive in the house.

The only case when the transplant cannot be postponed is a strongly 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 to grow in winter, it means that it was not provided with rest conditions, woke up at the wrong time, and fresh shoots are a sign of “despair”. Konika tries to give as many “offspring” as possible before death - young shoots that can be recognized by their bright light green color.

The root system will give all its strength to the vegetation, and there will be no nutrition in the substrate. As a result - the death of the plant. Often, such Christmas trees have rotten roots, since at the base of the neck the substrate is lumped into a lump during transportation, and moisture does not evaporate from there. Oxygen does not enter, which means that all conditions for decay are created. Therefore, such conic Christmas trees are transplanted into ready-made soil for coniferous plants immediately after purchase. At the same time, they do not use the transshipment method, but completely shake off the substrate from the roots of the tree and plant it in fresh soil.

Be prepared that after transplanting, the tree will shed some of its needles, it will be dull for a long time, and the young tips of the branches 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 the stress. You can only help him by keeping the temperature around 10 degrees and normal humidity.

Too wet soil causes rotting of the root system and the inevitable death of the seedling, and it is no longer possible to restore the grayed crown

How and when to "feed" the plant?

During hibernation and immediately after transplantation, conifers are not fed. At this time, the roots do not need much nutrition, otherwise the growing season will begin too early on a fragile tree. In the spring, they begin to treat the needles with epin or other biological products, especially those branches that have dropped the needles. The 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. "Feed" the plant once every 2 weeks from April to mid-summer. Next, they stop feeding so that the Christmas tree has time to go to sleep before winter.

How to choose the right tree for your home?

If you like the European tradition of decorating container trees for the New Year, and you are ready for the complexities of home care, then choose a Konik spruce in the store according to the following features:

• Do not buy a 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 still die.
• Gently move the stem. If he staggers 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 little chance of survival.
• If the volume of the pot is too small in relation to the crown, do not take this tree. To develop a good crown, the tree must have powerful roots. And most likely, when transplanting into a container, part of the root system was chopped off with a pruner, and the life of the crown was supported by stimulants.
• Carefully open the soil 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.
• Stumps of roots that are not woven together indicate that the horse was grown specifically for the holiday, and in the future it will not survive.
• A lot of young shoots at the ends of the Christmas tree in winter is a signal that the tree was untimely woken up. Soon it will start to hurt.
• A healthy Christmas tree has dense, evenly colored needles, a bare bottom trunk and roots coming out of the drainage holes of the pot.

In general, not conic, but araucaria is considered the ideal pot culture for the New Year's interior. This is the only conifer intended for growing at home, so it will calmly survive both the winter transplant and the warm room regime.

If in a pot you see a lot of roots knocked into a tight ball, then the Christmas tree has been sitting in this soil for more than one year.

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 a seedling unsuccessfully, and it begins to die, pluck all healthy branches 7-10 cm long from the Christmas tree and put them in a glass of water diluted with a root growth stimulator. Perhaps by spring some of them will take root, and you will have your own planting material.

Features of planting in open ground

Since glauca konik is not intended for growing at home, it can be saved by planting it in open ground. Plant a tree near your porch and decorate every winter instead of tormenting it in the heat of the room. True, glauca does not grow quickly, it adds 10-12 cm per year, so a meter-long copy will be obtained only after 10 years.

Container 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).

Location Requirements

Konica loves moist, well-drained, acidic soils. The ideal option is loam. Stagnation of moisture for its roots is certain death. If the site is located in a lowland 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 stagnant water.

The landing site should not be sunny. It is advisable to find a shaded area so that the needles do not fry in the summer under the direct rays of the sun. Can be planted near fences, near the wall of the house, in an ensemble with taller conifers.

In the first years, conic seedlings grow upwards, therefore they are not particularly decorative, but it is at this time that they should be planted in open ground.

Landing instructions

The order of work is as follows:

1. When planting, the Christmas tree is carefully removed from the container, trying not to destroy the earthen ball, and immersed in water for 1-2 hours.
2. If planting in spring / summer, the roots are freed from the substrate, the roots are straightened in different directions and planted on fertile soil poured by a hill. You can buy 10 kg of ready-made or bring land from a coniferous forest.
3. When planting in the summer, a rainy week is chosen so that the seedling has time to get out of a stressful state before the heat begins. For the whole summer, the Christmas tree should be shaded by creating a kind of canopy over it from non-woven material.
4. During the autumn planting, the root system is not disturbed, but only the tips of the tangled roots are carefully straightened, 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 maintain moisture, and in the fall - to warm the roots.

Glauka konica can be planted as a tapeworm or be the center of a small flower bed, but it grows very slowly and becomes spectacular after 10-15 years

What is glauca konik afraid of?

The most dangerous time for a Christmas tree is the end of winter. At this time, the sun and the snow reflecting the rays strongly burn the young needles, which makes it red, and then crumbles. Places of burns are restored poorly. Therefore, from the beginning of February, it is important to cover the seedlings with burlap or non-woven material, sewing a cone-shaped bag out of them or tightly tying it to the crown with a rope. Of course, the decorativeness of the site will suffer, but the plants will retain healthy needles.