Many people love house plants, but not everyone knows how to care for them. How many housewives pluck leaves from friends and acquaintances, plant them in pots, but they themselves don’t even know the names of their pets. What kind of care can there be if you don’t know the specifics of each plant?!
But experienced, serious flower growers know and willingly share the little secrets of the lush growth of pets.
1. Hydration.
Moisture-loving plants can hardly tolerate summer heat and winter central heating. The leaves begin to dry out and turn yellow, the buds fall off without opening. The owners try to help as best they can: they often spray with a spray bottle, pour water into trays, even lay out wet cloth on the window sills. These methods are not very aesthetic and are not always practical.
It perfectly absorbs moisture, and subsequently evaporates it, humidifying the surrounding air, ordinary sphagnum moss. You can simply put it in a pot with a plant, or you can create an unusual mini-garden. To do this, you need to take a large plastic container with drainage holes at the bottom and fill it with a layer of gravel 2-3 cm thick. Place pots with plants on top of this pillow, and fill the gaps between them with moss to the very top of the container, including the soil in the pots. Visually, the result is a smooth, green lawn with tufts of greenery. If the size of the container allows, the composition can be decorated with stones, shells, and branches.
2. Kitchen fertilizers.
Of course, a more professional approach would be to purchase the necessary fertilizers, specially selected and balanced for certain plants, but sometimes everything you need for your pets can be found in your own kitchen.
To get more lush and beautiful flowers during the flowering process, you should feed your pet with sugar water at the rate of 1 tsp. for 1 liter of water;
If rice and peas are soaked in water for several hours before cooking, then this solution will subsequently serve as an excellent mineral fertilizer for plants;
Many useful substances are contained in water after boiling potatoes, beets, carrots and even pasta. Just boil the food without salt, then dilute the broth 1:10 with clean water and use it for watering. Under no circumstances should you pour a decoction of legume products; it tends to retard plant growth;
To stimulate the flowering of a home rose, it should be “drunk” with a glass of vodka diluted in 1/2 liter of water;
You should not water flowers with leftover tea, although many people consider this to be an effective fertilizer. It contains useful substances, but at the same time contributes to the active breeding of midges.
Did you know how to properly care for house flowers? If you have one or two flowers at home, then caring for them will not be difficult and will not affect your budget in any way. And if the house is a continuous flower garden, then the monthly expenses for fertilizing and “medicines” can result in a good amount.
How can you save these costs? You need to learn how to use home remedies, replace fertilizing and drainage with them.
Learn how to care for home flowers with minimal expenses
Let's reveal some clever tricks and secrets for caring for indoor plants.
How to water flowers correctly?
Each flower has its own watering regime, this needs to be clarified individually. But there are general rules that apply to all plants in the house.
The most important thing is water quality.
Do not water flowers with hard water. How to determine water hardness at home? The easiest way is to look at the walls of the teapot. If scale appears quickly, the water is hard and not suitable for irrigation.
How to soften water for watering flowers?
For every liter of water you need to add 2 tablespoons. spoons of formic or citric acid. This water must be kept for 3-4 days in an open jar with a wide neck. Then carefully pour, straining off the sediment. Water for irrigation is ready.
Another important point in watering plants:
- In summer and spring, flowers are watered in the evening.
- In autumn and winter - in the morning.
How to spray indoor flowers correctly
Not all flowers benefit from this procedure, but in general flowers love irrigation, and for many it is vitally important.
- The water should be soft, warm or even hot. During spraying, the water instantly cools down.
- To get bright leaves with rich color, add 3-4 drops of camphor alcohol per 1 liter of water to the spraying water.
- Spray early in the morning or after sunset.
How to save on feeding house plants
For beauty, every flower needs additional vitamins, especially during the flowering period.
- For feeding cacti Sometimes you can use natural milk. For 1 liter of water, a dessert spoon of milk. No more is needed, otherwise an unpleasant odor will appear. When you use this fertilizer, sprinkle the top layer with dry soil.
- In winter, water for irrigation can be enriched with sugar: 1 tsp. for 200 gr. water. Some housewives pour sugar directly into the pot. Use this method of feeding flowers 2 times a month.
- During flowering, add fire oil to the water for irrigation at the rate of 1 teaspoon per 1 liter of water.
- Tea leaves without flavoring are also suitable for watering and feeding flowers.
And another tip on what can be used as drainage. Nut shells, especially walnut shells.
Shine large leaves Banana peel will help. Simply rub the inside of the peel on the leaves and they will look juicy and vibrant.
Agree, these are very affordable and effective ways to care for flowers. Now you can make a couple more green friends, because caring for home flowers will not cost much if you learn how to use home remedies correctly.
Caring for indoor plants - There are a great many types of indoor plants, but, as a rule, they are all conditionally divided into just a few groups, which differ strikingly in their care characteristics. Some plants are moisture-loving, others cannot tolerate excessive moisture. Some people prefer higher air temperatures, while others prefer the opposite. There are plants that love the sun and even direct sunlight, some cannot tolerate them. Our section on caring for indoor plants is aimed at ensuring that you can easily find the necessary information about the features of caring for a specific plant - how to water, how to deal with pests and diseases, what place in the house to choose for its growth?
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A colorful coral bush, evergreen subshrub, Cuban cherry is the name of the indoor nightshade, a plant that grows up to 50 cm in height.
Nightshade can be safely called an original crop, since the small berries that appear after flowering change their color from green to burgundy, and multi-colored “mini tomatoes” simultaneously ripen on one bush. To enjoy the beauty of this shrub, you should know the secrets of caring for it.
Planting nightshade
Nightshade is a perennial shrub that reproduces by both seeds and cuttings. Planting differences affect the number and size of nightshade fruits. If seeds are used for cultivation, the plant grows strong and bears fruit well. If propagated by cuttings, the bush needs time to adapt to the new soil and take root.
- 1 part peat soil;
- 3 parts clay soil;
- A handful of sand and drainage to the bottom.
The mixture is stirred and poured into a pot with a volume of up to 1 liter. Nightshade seeds are distributed at a distance of 2 cm from each other, and pressed into the ground with a stick or match to a depth of 1 cm. The sowing is moistened. The container with nightshade is placed on a well-lit windowsill. But it should be noted that the plant does not like heat. Lighting is necessary for good germination of grains. When the nightshade has already turned green, the plant should be darkened a little.
After 7 - 10 days, the first shoots appear. Within a week they gain strength and grow to 3–4 cm. When 2 leaves appear, small seedlings are transplanted into separate pots. Having reached 10 cm in height, the nightshade is pinched at the top and the side stems are removed to give the bush a spherical shape.
The conditions for keeping indoor nightshade mean:
- Temperature conditions;
- Lighting;
- Air humidity.
The optimal temperature for growing nightshade in spring and summer is +15, + 25 degrees Celsius. As autumn approaches, the bush will require a decrease in the heat level to + 12, + 15 degrees.
Lighting is an integral part of the process of successfully growing indoor nightshade, which loves light but not heat.
In addition, by the appearance of the nightshade, you can determine what the culture does not like.
- If nightshade has dropped its leaves, it will pick up light;
- If it blooms poorly and the fruits are small, there is a lack of heat;
- The leaves began to curl - excess sunlight;
- Leaves wither - insufficient watering and hot place;
- Fruits shrink – there is not enough moisture in the soil;
- Leaves become discolored - lack of fertilizer;
- Greens become covered with brown spots - magnesium is needed.
You should also control the level of air humidity. It should not fall below 60%. If the apartment or house is too hot, nightshade should be sprayed regularly or the pot should be placed in a tray with wet pebbles or expanded clay once a week.
Seasonal plant care
There is a lot of advice on the Internet about caring for indoor nightshade, but from personal experience I decided to write rules for seasonal nightshade care. I’ll start with spring, since it is during this period that nightshade is planted or sown and from that moment caring for it begins.
Spring nightshade care:
- Seedlings need to be watered as soon as the soil dries out;
- Be sure to cut off the side stems so that the plant grows in the form of a bush and all the energy goes into forming the central trunk and then the inflorescences;
- The lighting should not be too strong. I recommend placing a flowerpot with a flower on windows facing east or west;
- No fertilizing is required during the growth period; you just need to loosen the soil a little on the sides of the flowerpot so as not to injure the roots;
- When the nightshade begins to bloom, carefully transfer the dust from one flower to another using a cotton swab or brush. This action will help achieve a better harvest.
- If the plant is several years old, we transplant it into a new container with an admixture of turf soil.
Summer plant care:
- It is necessary to take the flower out into the open air. You can go to the balcony, avoiding direct sunlight;
- Avoid drafts;
- Abundant watering as the soil dries out;
- Feed the plant once every 2 weeks with special liquid fertilizers such as “Rainbow”, “Ideal” or mixtures of useful microelements for tomatoes.
- Daily morning or evening spraying of leaves.
Autumn and winter care
- As winter approaches, it is worth reducing watering, since October - February is a dormant period. But you shouldn’t stop moisturizing. It is necessary to water once every 10 days only with soft water without chlorine.
- Place the pot with nightshade in a cool place, maintain high air humidity and lighting;
- Once a week, provide an influx of fresh air by ventilating the room with the plant;
- If there are non-flowering shoots on the bush, they should be cut off;
- At the end of February, when nightshade begins to “come to life,” it is worth increasing the amount of watering and starting to gradually spray the crop.
Characteristics of the plant and growing characteristics:
The end of December, daylight hours are beginning to increase, but there are still two winter months ahead, and at this time house plants need special care.
In winter, due to the operation of heating devices, the air in the room becomes very dry - this places special demands on watering house plants.
To create comfortable conditions for indoor flowers, they it is necessary to spray the leaves from time to time. You need to take the water a little warm, and you also need to make sure that there are no drafts at the time of spraying.
There are also flowers that you can't spray eg: violets, begonias, geraniums, gloxinias, coleus and calceolaria. You should also not spray indoor plants that have fuzzy or drooping leaves. For such plants there are three options for creating a suitable microclimate:
- Place saucers of water next to the plants;
- Place the plants in a tray or large planting container. In such a container, place pebbles or expanded clay at the bottom and wet them, not the plants.
- Spray water in the room where the flower is installed, but at a great distance from it.
It is worth noting that there are plants that need to reduce watering in winter. Such plants include, for example, cacti; the frequency of their watering can be reduced in winter to 1-3 times a month (for desert cacti - once a month, for tropical cacti - 1-2 times a month), also at this time such plants do not it's worth fertilizing them.
In order to determine how often you need to water your plants, you can use simple rules.
Watering should be reduced if:
- due to the time of year, the plant is in a dormant period;
- the room where the plant stands is cold and with humid air;
- the plant has few leaves or if the leaves are very succulent;
- plants in pots made of non-porous material, such as metal or plastic;
- the pot has no drainage holes;
Watering needs to be increased if:
- in the room where the plant stands, the air is warm and dry;
- the plant grows or blooms (this rule does not work with orchids, as they bloom when dormant);
- the pot is made of porous material, such as clay;
- When planting, a good drainage layer was made, and there are holes in the pot;
- Plants have a large and developed root system.
If you have plants that bloom in autumn or winter(for example, cyclamen, calla lilies and eucharis), then during the flowering period it is recommended to feed them with mineral fertilizers that are well soluble in water. It is possible that your flowers will also need additional lighting to bloom beautifully.
In order for the plants to receive maximum sunlight, in winter it is better to move them closer to the window (great if the window faces south, west or east). But there are three important points:
- If the plant is on a windowsill, you should keep an eye on the leaves and trunk. It happens that due to too cold a temperature, plants can become frostbitten during prolonged contact with glass. The best option is to leave a gap of about 15 cm between the plant and the glass.
- Radiators (you need to keep a meter distance from them) and heated floors (the plant should rise at least 20-30 cm above it) are dangerous to the health of plants.
- Plants should not be placed in a draft!
Due to dry air, a lot of dust can accumulate on plants, so it is worth wiping the trunks and leaves. If possible, the plants can be washed in the shower (before this, covering the ground with a film or bag). After a shower, you need to leave the plant to stand in the bath so that it dries; only after it is completely dry, you can take it into the sun.
These simple tips will help your plants look beautiful and well-groomed all year round!