Tradescantia reproduction and cultivation of tradescantia from cuttings
Content:
Tradescantia is able to create home comfort and a real holiday in the garden. Unusual decorative leaves, beautiful flowering and unpretentious care give the right to call it a real find of a florist. It can be used to create compositions, although the flower looks good as an independent piece of apartment or garden decor.
Tradescantia: reproduction
A new bush can be obtained in several ways:
- One of the most difficult and painstaking is the cultivation of Tradescantia from seeds. They are sown in a mixture of sand and peat. From above you need to cover with glass or tighten with foil, moisten from a spray bottle. With the appearance of the first sprouts, the seedlings should be tempered by periodically opening the greenhouse. After the young shoots get stronger and put out their first full-fledged leaves, the seedlings can be planted in individual pots. In the first months of leaving, young Tradescantia should be warm and humid enough.
- Cutting is convenient because you can cut off shoots at any time of the year. It is permissible to divide them into several parts, the main condition is that there should be at least two full-fledged nodules on the handle. The cut branches are placed in water, after two days the first roots should appear on them. It should be rooted in a loose mixture of peat and sand. The pot should be taken small with a good drainage layer, since the roots of Tradescantia do not like moisture retention.
Purple beauty
- During the transplantation of the plant, you can take the opportunity and propagate it by shoots. During active growth, Tradescantia shoots from the root, which are then easily separated from the main bush. You need to root immediately into the prepared soil for tradescantia. After transplanting, you need to put the pot in a warm place, do not forget to spray it daily. After 10 days, you can feed with mineral fertilizers.
- How to propagate Tradescantia without cutting off the shoots? Rooting. This herbaceous beauty can easily reproduce right during its growth. It is enough for the shoots to touch the ground, as after a while roots appear from the nodes. The shoot from the parent plant is split off, the cut is treated with coal. It is advisable to do a transplant with an earthen lump, or put a separate pot at once and place the shoot there for rooting.
The most common type of reproduction is growing tradescantia from cuttings
Small-leaved Tradescantia: home care
This is the most delicate and miniature of the whole variety of Tradescantia. The shoots and the back of the green leaves are purple. Leaves are round, slightly pointed, no more than 0.6 cm in length. It grows quickly and densely, looks best in a hanging planter, elegantly hanging its shoots.
A kind of tradescantia with small leaves
Despite its fragile appearance, small-leaved Tradescantia is a very tenacious and strong plant. It takes root quickly, there are no special care requirements for it. Loves light, warmth and abundant moisture. It can easily grow completely under artificial light, the lack of light is manifested by elongated shoots and sparse leaves on them.
Direct rays can burn leaves or deprive them of their rich green color. In the summer, watering should be daily, as well as spraying. In winter, the temperature is preferable below 15 ° C, although Tradescantia easily tolerates lowering up to 10 ° C.
To grow a lush bush, it is imperative to pinch and shorten long shoots. Every spring, during the transfer to a larger pot, the crown of the future plant should be formed. After transplanting, it is advisable to feed with organic and mineral fertilizers every two weeks until autumn. It is necessary to care after transplant, with an emphasis on maintaining warmth and humidity.
Home care for Tradescantia Reo is similar to the small-leaved species
Selection of pot and soil for tradescantia
The root system of the plant is thin and not too densely overgrown. The pot for her is not big, let it be wider than deeper. The surface makes it possible to start up more shoots.
The best pot for tradescantia will still be plastic. Drainage holes and a pallet are required. Expanded clay is better suited as drainage.
In the ground, Tradescantia is not picky. It can grow in water, sand, moss and even outdoors in season. The best mixture for it would be deciduous and humus with the addition of vermiculite or sand for looseness.
Growing Tradescantia in a bottle
The unpretentiousness of Tradescantia allows it to feel great in the water. It is very easy to propagate it there - it is often used as algae for the bottom of aquariums. Shoots spread and grow remarkably in the miniature sea. It is very easy to make unusual compositions using decorative bottles of different shapes and colors by growing Tradescantia in water.
The flower has adapted to the conditions even without the supply of fresh oxygen and watering
David Latimer and his Tradescantia is an unusual story. An amateur gardener has created an entire ecosystem in a closed vessel. His experiments began with various attempts to plant different plants in a 40-liter bottle with soil. Tradescantia took root, which in the first years received watering and oxygen from the outside.
In the early 70s. David corked the bottle and has never opened it since. The plant has created all the conditions for a comfortable life. Sunlight allows you to actively carry out photosynthesis, during which the leaves produce oxygen. It is because of the latter that water flows down the walls of the vessel. In the center of the bottle, shoots that do not receive enough light rot, producing carbon dioxide and fertilizing the mini-forest. This is the plant's home, maintained by itself.
Garden Tradescantia: planting and care in the open field
Garden Tradescantia is very beautiful and does not at all look like its indoor relative. The garden option is a perennial shrub up to half a meter high with thick long leaves and many inflorescences at the ends of the shoots. The flowers are curly at the edges, bunches of white stamens stand out brightly on the dark purple and purple petals. Some types of garden tradescantia are ground cover.
The color of the inflorescences is in lilac and violet shades, and flowering pleases all summer until the very cold
In care, the garden beauty is unpretentious and hardy enough. Loves partial shade, too bright light does not allow this plant to fully bloom. How to pinch Tradescantia so as not to harm its growth? This should be done twice a year. Shoots without peduncles are pinched before and after flowering. In the spring, pinching provokes active flowering, in the fall, preparing the plant for wintering.
With the onset of cold weather, the plant is cut off. Shoots should be left no more than 10 cm long.To preserve the roots of the plant, the bush is mulched: sprinkled with peat, fallen leaves or moss.
It is better to transplant Tradescantia to another place at the age of 3-4 years, otherwise the roots that are not fully strong may not take root in a new place. Tradescantia is demanding on the soil: if it is scarce, the top layer should be removed and covered with the prepared mixture. You can take purchased soil for flowering plants, you can make it yourself - mix the soil with peat, humus and vermicompost. The main thing is that the soil for the Tradescantia bush is nutritious and loose.
Bloom
Why do the leaves of Tradescantia dry
No matter how unpretentious this deciduous beauty is, problems can still arise when growing it. Most often they relate to the appearance of the plant and are associated with improper care:
- if the leaves begin to turn yellow from the edges to the center, and then dry altogether, this indicates a burn of the leaf plate by direct sunlight;
- long elongated shoots and rare small leaves indicate a lack of light in winter. If there is enough light, and the shoots are still rare, then the soil has exhausted its trace elements, so it's time to apply fertilizers. Depletion also occurs due to abundant growth in a small pot, there is simply no room for roots, which is why the shoots grow damaged and weak;
- if a flower stops growing, stops sprouting, does not throw out buds for flowering, it seems that it just froze in place, the reason is in the temperature of the tradescantia content. This state is called stagnation - inaction. It occurs when temperature conditions appear that prevent the plant from continuing its natural development. In summer, this is when it is above 35 ° С, and in autumn - below 16 ° С;
- the roots of the plant are very sensitive to excess and stagnation of moisture. Rhizomes quickly rot, giving external signals - leaves and stems begin to turn black. Excess moisture can be caused by over-watering, over-watering, and poor drainage performance. To confirm the "diagnosis", you should remove the earthen lump and examine the roots for rot. It is necessary to remove all damaged parts of the plant and replace the drainage layer.
Thus, there is nothing difficult in growing a flower. It grows quickly, multiplies easily, survives in all conditions, even in a bottle. Isn't it a flower grower dream ?!
