JUNIPER VIRGINSKY: THE BEST VARIETIES, ESPECIALLY PLANTING AND CARE

Mankind has been accustomed to decorating juniper gardens for more than one millennium. This plant can be in the form of a slender tree, grow as a shrub, and even cover the ground with a fluffy carpet. Its evergreen branches are decorated with needles in the form of scales or needles. Many species of juniper are dioecious: pollinators for men, and women produce crops. The fruit of the plant is called "pine cone". Of them cook fragrant jam and jam, which are pleasant to the taste.

Description of the species

Red cedar - This is a conifer that grows in North America. Most often, this tree is monoecious, less often - dioecious. The species belongs to the Cypress family and often grows on rocky areas. Thanks to its tarry smell, reminiscent of needles, juniper virginsky cleans the air around itself from germs, which can be found in a detailed description in the popular encyclopedias of botany.

The sensations that an unusual tree causes in others are incomparable to anything: a person gains peace of mind, peace of mind, headaches disappear from him, he gets enough sleep. The plant is also unique in that it is able to cure by its presence everyone who is nearby.

Did you know? The Egyptians fumigated the needles with premises during terrible epidemics, rubbed the floors, and the North American Indians brought plants under the bushes to the sick, hoping for their recovery.

Landing rules

For planting it is better to choose young saplings grown in containers. So they will grow faster. To transplant adult juniper requires skill and gardener's skills. Usually they grow plants in the ground, then dig them up and sell them along with a clod of earth covered with wet sacking or in containers where the plants are already rooted.

The best time to plant a plant is April, May, and October. Seedlings, sold with a closed root system, can be planted in any period, creating the conditions for them: a little shade and proper watering.

You will be curious to learn about such coniferous plants as Nordman's fir, mirikaria foxtail, cryptomeria, western thuja, larch.

Choosing a place for shrubs

Due to its decorative junipers - a good choice for a young gardenwhen a group of several conifers is able, immediately after planting, to fill in the voids in the landscape and form an attractive composition. For planting light-loving junipers, an open, well-lit garden zone is selected, with loamy or sandy light soil - nutritious and moist.

If the soil is clay and heavy, then a mixture of garden soil, peat, sand, and coniferous earth is added to the landing pit. At the same time, they preliminarily drain the soil, filling broken brick or sand to the bottom of the landing pit.

Plants grow well and on thin soils, can easily withstand drought, but the stagnation of moisture in the soil for them is destructive.

Moisture stagnation will provoke root system rot in viola, lovage, brugmansia, fescue, barberry, tui, karyopteris.

What should be the soil

Place choose lit, open. If you plant a plant in the shade or near the wall with climbing flowers, you can not count on its decorative. Virgin juniper will lose its beauty and sophistication, it will become sluggish and painful.

The nature of the soil depends on the type and variety of the virginian handsome. Most of them are undemanding to the soil and grows in sandy, limestone soil.

However, there are some varieties that need their own conditions. The optimal solution, acceptable for almost all types of juniper, is a mixture of peat, coniferous soil and sand in equal shares.

Then - mulching the soil around the trunk with peat with the addition of wood shavings from coniferous trees. The landing pit is dug by size depending on the size of the seedling, and the depth of the layer is 2 bayonet spade. After planting do not forget to water the seedling at the very root.

Important! A prerequisite: if you plant several plants, keep a distance between them, taking into account the branching of the root system from 1 meter.

Landing pattern

The most successful soil mix for planting juniper: 2 parts of sod land, 2 - humus, 2 - peat, 1 part of sand. It is also advisable to add 150 g of Kemira-universal and 300 g of Nitrophoska, as well as Epin after planting to the mixture. The dimensions of the landing hole depend on the size of the root system of a virgin plant, for example, for large species they dig a hole about 60 by 80 cm.

Planted the plant quickly, so that the roots do not have time to dry, but carefully, so as not to damage the earthen room or young roots. After planting in open ground, the tree is watered abundantly and covered from direct sunlight.

The density of placing the tree on the plot depends on the landscape composition - whether it will be a hedge or a group planting. The distance between the seedlings when planting should be from 0.5 to 2 meters. For a small garden is better to stay on compact views.

Features of cultivation of virgin juniper

Growing up - a matter that does not require hassle. During the growing season you will have to water it only in extreme heat, pouring 10-20 liters of water under one adult tree or shrub.

From time to time you will need to loosen the soil shallowly in a circle around the tree and remove weeds from the plot if they appear. As for dressings, in most cases it will be enough to sprinkle in the spring around 30-40 g of Nitroammophos in a circle, close it up in the ground and then pour the area.

If on the site where the bush grows, the soil is too poor, feed it this way the whole season, but not more than 1 time per month.

Read also about these types of juniper: Siberian, Chinese, horizontal, "Stricta".

Watering and feeding

Young seedlings require regular, but moderate watering, but the adult plant is quite drought-resistant: it is rarely watered, depending on the heat (2-3 times a month). During the hot period it is better to spray the shrub in the evening or in the morning (1-2 times in 10 days). From mid-April until the end of May, Nitroammophoska is applied for each plant at the rate of 30-40 g per 1 square meter.

Correct pruning

Juniper is pruned when a hedge is formed from it. In other cases, he is in the garden is good for its natural beauty.

But if you have a desire to give the bush a certain shape, be careful, try to reconcile every movement, because in case of your mistake, because of slow growth, your bush will recover for a very long time. It makes sense to just gently trim the carelessly spread ends of the branches, make a sanitary and obligatory thinning pruning and limit it to this.

Winter care

In winter, the formed crowns of trees under the weight of snow can decay, some branches break.

In order to avoid such troubles, crowns of molded junipers are tied in advance in the fall.

Some species are sensitive to changes in day and night temperatures in early spring, active winter and spring sun, and require shelter in February and March. Conifer burns lead to a change in the green color of the crown of the conifers to a brownish-yellow hue and, consequently, to a loss of decorativeness.

In order for the needles to maintain their brightness in winter, the plant should be regularly watered, fertilized in the spring and at the end of summer with granulated bait, and the needles should be sprayed with microfertilizers.

Gardeners practice such shelters:

Snow. A great option for miniature and creeping forms - snow is simply thrown on the branches of the conifer. But with heavy snowfall it is recommended to make a protective frame.
Lapnik. Fix on the branches in tiers, moving from the bottom to the top of the bush.
Non-woven and woven materials. The ephedra wrapped sacking, kraft paper in two layers, light cotton cloth and tied with a rope, leaving the lower part of the crown open.
Screen. It is installed on the lighted side of the plant.

Did you know? It is believed that juniper dreams of happy changes in life: wealth and luck in all matters.

Breeding virgin juniper

Actually, seedlings can be found everywhere, so there is no need to multiply them amateurly. But if you are interested in how to propagate the needles on your own, then you should know that the bush and tree forms reproduce by seed, cuttings, grafting, and creeping species - by layering.

Cuttings

Decorative forms cannot be obtained from seeds, therefore they are propagated vegetatively. Rooting cuttings are cut in spring from woody young shoots.

The cuttings are 5-7 cm long, each should have 1-2 internodes, and the most important condition is that the heel should be on the handle, that is, do not cut off the sprout from the branch, but be torn off so that a piece of bark from the mother branch remains at the end . Planting material is immediately treated with a root formation stimulant, planted according to scheme 7 to 7 into a mixture of sand, humus or peat in equal parts, sprinkled on top with a layer of coarse sand 3-4 cm thick, and cover each cutting with a glass jar.

Depth of planting cutting 1.5-2 cm. By the fall, roots appear in the cuttings, but they need to be grown another two years before the time comes when they should be planted in a permanent place.

Important! There is one peculiarity: creeping cuttings rooted under the slope, and columnar - vertically.

From seed

To grow a bush from seed, the material must first be subjected to cold treatment. For this, seeds are sown in boxes with earth, carried to the garden and stored under snow for 4-5 months.

In May, the seeds are sown in the beds. You can, of course, sow the seeds in May in the beds and without prior "freezing", but in this case they will ascend only next year. The seeds of some tree species have a very dense shell, therefore, before planting, they accelerate the germination by acid or damage the seed coat by mechanical means.

The easiest way is to rub the seeds between two boards., upholstered in sandpaper. After they are buried in the ground at a depth of 2-3 cm.

It is simple to care for crops: to mulch a bed, to water, for the first 2 weeks to cover shoots from the sun, to loosen and weed a bed. When the seedlings are 3 years old, they are transplanted together with a lump of earth to a permanent place.

Inoculation

This method propagates especially valuable juniper varieties. Usually the selected valuable grade is grafted onto an ordinary shrub.

To do this, cut the shoot tightly pressed to the stock, and the junction is tied with a tape of transparent plastic film. This method of reproduction is not popular among gardeners, as the survival rate of the scion in this case is small.

Major pests and diseases

Juniper often affects the fungal disease, from which on the needles, shoots, branches and cones of the plant spindle-shaped thickenings are formed, the root collar has nodules and swellings on which the bark dries out, crumbling, exposing shallow wounds.

The affected branches begin to dry and die off, the needles on them become brown and crumble. If the disease run, shrub may die. To avoid such a situation, it is necessary to remove the branches affected by the fungus, disinfecting all wounds and sections with a one-percent solution of blue vitriol and smearing them with garden pitch. Deleted plant residues must be burned.

In addition to the fungus, juniper sometimes suffers from Alternaria, necrosis of the bark of the branches, but the methods of treatment of all these diseases are the same. Of the pests can be distinguished moth, aphids, spider mites, scutum.

Popular varieties

Virginia bush has about 70 varieties. Their shape, height, color are very diverse and allow the use of cultivars in the preparation of various landscape compositions.

All varieties are winter-hardy, but narrow pyramidal and columnar forms can suffer from snowmen, so for the winter the branches of such trees must be tied up.