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 flower grower. It can be used in creating compositions, although the flower looks good as an independent piece of decor for an apartment or garden.
Tradescantia: breeding
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 it is necessary to cover with glass or tighten with a film, moisten from a spray bottle. With the appearance of the first sprouts, seedlings should be tempered, periodically opening the greenhouse. After young shoots get stronger and put out their first full leaves, seedlings can be planted in individual pots. In the first months of departure, young tradescantia should be warm and of sufficient humidity.
- Cuttings are convenient in that you can cut the shoots at any time of the year. They can be divided into several parts, the main condition is that at least two full nodules must be on the handle. Cut branches are placed in water, after two days the first roots should appear on them. Root should be in a loose mixture of peat and sand. The pot should be taken small with a good drainage layer, since the roots of the tradescantia do not like moisture retention.
Purple beauty
- During a plant transplant, you can seize the opportunity and propagate it by shoots. During active growth, the tradescantia shoots from the root, which are then easily separated from the main bush. You need to root immediately in the prepared soil for tradescantia. After transplanting, you need to put the pot in a warm place, do not forget to spray 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 breed directly during its growth. It is enough for the shoots to touch the ground, as after some time the roots appear from the nodes. The shoot from the parent plant is cleaved, the cut is treated with charcoal. It is advisable to do a transplant with an earthen lump or immediately put a separate pot and place the shoot there for rooting.
The most common type of propagation is the cultivation of tradescantia from cuttings.
Small-leaved tradescantia: home care
This is the most tender and miniature of the whole variety of tradescantia. The shoots and the back of the green leaves are purple. The leaves are round, slightly pointed, not more than 0.6 cm in length. It grows quickly and densely, looks better in a hanging planter, elegantly hanging its shoots.
Variety 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 requirements for care for her. Loves light, heat and plentiful moisture. It can easily grow completely under artificial lighting, a lack of light is manifested by elongated shoots and rare leaves on them.
Direct rays can leave burns on the leaves or deprive them of a rich green color. In summer, watering should be daily, as well as spraying. In winter, the temperature is preferably lower than 15 ° C, although the tradescantia easily tolerates a decrease to 10 ° C.
Note! Watering in winter is reduced as the soil dries. If the air is dry, spraying is also necessary in the winter.
To grow a lush bush, it is imperative to pinch and shorten the long shoots. Every spring during transshipment into a larger pot, the crown of the future plant should be formed. After the transplant, it is advisable to feed with organic and mineral fertilizers every two weeks until the fall. After transplantation, care should be taken, focusing on maintaining heat and humidity.
Home care for tradescantia Reo is similar to small-leaved species
Selection of pot and soil for tradescantia
The root system of the plant is thin and does not grow too thick. The pot for her is not needed big, let it be wider than deeper. The surface makes it possible to shoot more shoots.
For your information! The choice in favor of ceramics can play a cruel joke with the hypothermia of a flower, if you keep it on the veranda or balcony in the summer.
The best pot for tradescantia will still be plastic. Mandatory presence of drainage holes and a drain pan. Expanded clay is better suited as drainage.
In the ground, the tradescantia is non-selective. It can grow in water, sand, moss and even in the open ground in season. The best mixture for her would be leafy and humus with the addition of vermiculite or sand for looseness.
Growing tradescantia in a bottle
The unpretentiousness of the tradescantia allows it to feel great in the water. Propagating it there is very simple - it is often used as algae for the bottom of aquariums. Shoots creep and grow splendidly in a miniature sea. It is very simple to make unusual compositions with the help of decorative bottles of different shapes and colors, growing tradescantia in water.
The flower adapted in conditions even without fresh oxygen and watering
David Latimer and his tradescantia is an unusual story. An amateur gardener 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 outside.
In the early 70's. David corked the bottle with a cork and since then has never opened it. 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 decay, producing carbon dioxide and giving fertilizer to the mini-forest. This is the house for the plant, supported by himself.
Tradescantia garden: planting and care in the open ground
The garden tradescantia is very beautiful and not at all like its roommate. The garden option is a perennial bush up to half a meter high with thick long leaves and many inflorescences at the ends of the shoots. The flowers are curly around the edges, bunches of white stamens stand out brightly on the dark purple and violet petals. Some types of garden tradescantia are groundcover.
Important! Like the indoor tradescantia, the garden garden also boasts a variety of colors for its latent leaves. Some varieties have yellow, bluish and purple leaves.
The color of inflorescences in purple and violet shades, and flowering pleases all summer until the colds
In the care, the garden beauty is unpretentious and quite hardy. He loves partial shade, too bright light does not allow this plant to bloom fully. How to pinch the tradescantia, so as not to harm its growth? This should be done twice a year. Shoots are pinched without peduncles before and after flowering. In spring, pinching provokes active flowering, in autumn, preparing the plant for wintering.
With the onset of cold weather, the plant is pruned. Leaves should be left no longer than 10 cm long. To preserve the roots of the plant, the bush is mulched: sprinkled with peat, fallen leaves or moss.
Important! If the plant is young and this is its first wintering, it is better to cover the roots with a film and mulch with a thick layer.
It is better to transplant the tradescantia to another place at the age of 3-4 years, otherwise the roots that are not fully matured may not take root in a new place. Tradescantia is demanding on the soil: if it is sparse, the top layer should be removed and covered with a 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 land for the bush of the tradescantia should be nutritious and loose.
Bloom
Why do tradescantia leaves dry
No matter how unpretentious this leafy beauty is, problems with her cultivation can still arise. 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 completely dry, this indicates a burn of the leaf plate in direct sunlight;
- long elongated shoots and rare small leaves indicate a lack of light in the winter. If there is plenty of light, and the shoots are still rare, then the soil has exhausted its trace elements, so it's time to fertilize. Depletion also occurs due to the abundant growth in a small pot, there is simply no place for roots, due to which the shoots grow damaged and weak;
- if the flower stops growing, stops letting out new shoots, does not throw buds for flowering, it seems that it just froze in place, the reason is the temperature of the tradescence. This condition is called stagnation - inaction. It occurs when temperature conditions appear that prevent the plant from continuing its natural development. In the summer, this is when it is above 35 ° C, and in the fall - below 16 ° C;
- plant roots are very sensitive to oversupply and stagnation of moisture. Rhizomes quickly decay, giving external signals - leaves and stems begin to blacken. Excess moisture can be caused by excessive, too frequent watering and poor operation of the drainage layer. To confirm the "diagnosis", you should remove the earthen lump and inspect the roots for rot. It is necessary to eliminate all damaged parts of the plant and replace the drainage layer.
Note! Tradescantia is fed from the beginning of spring to the end of summer. Every two weeks, complex mineral fertilizers and organics alternate. The concentration of baits use 50% of what is indicated on the package. To feed the plant in winter is a bad idea - it can ruin the root system.
Thus, there is nothing complicated in growing a flower. It grows quickly, multiplies easily, survives in any conditions, even in a bottle. What is not a grower's dream ?!
