Learning to care for your gardenia at home
Rooting or jasmine gardenia is one of the most beautiful indoor plants. But if a gardenia settles on the windowsill, home care for it should be constant and very attentive.
In nature, this culture forms large shrubs or even trees. During flowering, they spread a magnificent fragrance for many meters around, and the most lush peonies and roses can envy gardenia flowers.
The first stories about the amazing gardenias that adorn the chambers of the Chinese emperors date back to the Song dynasty, which existed about a thousand years ago. Although gardenias could show themselves to the fullest in the palace, even then gardeners tried to achieve the most lush flowering, preventing the growth of the crown. This is how gardenias became spectacular miniature bonsai. In Europe, where culture first appeared in the second half of the 18th century, it was also limited in growth by cutting and shaping the crown.
How to care for your gardenia at home? This question haunts modern flower growers who have decided to decorate their collection with an amazing, but capricious flower.
Conditions of detention and features of caring for a room gardenia at home
A decorative species native to Southeast Asia, in nature, it prefers to live in warmth, needs acidified, aerated soils, loves the sun, but at noon it can suffer from too bright rays.
The optimal arrangement of gardenia pots is with windows facing south or west. True, in the first case, especially in the summer, the plant will have to be covered from the scorching rays. In winter, gardenia is not limited to "sunbathing", on the contrary, it is placed in the sunniest places.
Like many evergreen species, indoor gardenia has its own range of temperatures that are comfortable for growth and flowering:
- In summer, during the daytime, the air in the room can warm up to 21–24 ° C, and at night it can cool slightly to 15–18 ° C.
- In winter, gardenia flower care at home changes and the room temperature drops to 16 ° C. The minimum allowable is to cool the room to 10 ° C.
It is possible to maintain the temperatures necessary for the plant by airing, but at the same time, the flower should not be allowed to fall under the jets of cold air. This will negatively affect the formation of buds, and in some cases the gardenia simply discards the existing flowers, and the flower buds dry out.
An equally unpleasant effect can be observed if the room is not humid and hot enough. To saturate the air near the plant with water vapor, you can use household appliances or put the pot in a tray with moistened expanded clay so that the roots do not have direct contact with water.
To keep foliage healthy and fresh:
- use regular irrigation of the crown with warm filtered water;
- wipe the sheet plates with a damp cloth;
- when caring for a gardenia, arrange a warm shower for it, preventing the substrate in the pot from getting wet.
Watering and fertilizing gardenias for home care
In the spring and summer, the soil is kept moist, but does not allow moisture to accumulate in the pan under the pot. Such watering mode helps gardenia maintain strength during active vegetation and flowering. For the cold season, watering is reduced. This is caused by the almost complete cessation of flower growth and a decrease in its moisture requirement. If this feature of the plant is not taken into account at home when caring for a room gardenia, there is a risk of flower loss due to rotting of peripheral roots and the spread of infection.
Since gardenia thrives in acidified soil, a small amount of citric acid can be periodically added to the irrigation water. Just a few drops per liter of warm, settled water will improve the absorption of nutrients from the soil.
More convenient and rational to use complex mixtures and means for flowering, like gardenia azaleas. Such dressings are carried out according to the instructions for a particular product. But along with replenishing the nutrient composition of the soil for gardenias, it is useful to arrange weekly foliar feeding with microelements. Even in winter, the plant will benefit from such a procedure if signs of chlorosis are found on the foliage. But the intake of minerals from the soil alone is not enough, therefore, it must be fed. This is done only in the spring and summer, 4–6 weeks after transplantation.
Caring for a gardenia after purchase has its own characteristics. Plants intended for sale are planted in soil saturated with prolonged-release fertilizers, so they bloom for a long time and without additional soil fertilization throughout the growing season.
But if such a gardenia has been in an excessively wet peat mixture for a long time, or its roots are so entangled with a clod of earth that the roots stick out of the drainage holes, urgent measures will have to be taken to care for the gardenia and save it. And here you can't do without a transplant, which is carried out in the spring before the start of active growth.
Transplant and other gardenia care measures
A sign of the need to transfer the gardenia into a new pot is the complete braiding of the earthy coma with a thin network of roots.
It means that:
- soil nutrition will soon be insufficient for the full development and flowering of the bush;
- the plant will stop growing, its decorative effect will decrease significantly;
- gardenia will bloom less or even refuse to open the buds.
The transplant is carried out by carefully transferring the lump into a larger pot. The free space is covered with fresh soil for gardenias or azaleas. If the transshipment is carried out during emergency care of the gardenia after its purchase, it is better to cut the flowers on the crown so that they do not exhaust the already weakened specimen.
Pruning helps to keep the gardenia in a home-friendly shape. They begin to pinch or cut off excess shoots from the second year of the flower's life. You should not be afraid of such as in the photo, caring for a gardenia at home.
After wilting, the flowers must be cut, dried or overgrown stems are removed.
Since the buds are laid on the tops of new branches, the formation of the crown causes branching of the shoots and at the same time helps to lay the future lush and long flowering.
The cut parts of the branches can be used for rooting. Cuttings with several leaves for a couple of centimeters are immersed in water, where a little root formation stimulator is added. After the appearance of its own roots, the young gardenia is transplanted into a light nutritious substrate. With proper care, gardenia at home will bloom the next year.