Lavender…Mountain lavender! Our meetings with you are blue flowers”- these are the lines from the well-known song of Sofia Rotaru. No wonder she sings of this wonderful plant, the beauty of lavender deserves it. Like any other flower, lavender has its own characteristics not only in care, but also in reproduction. It will be discussed in the article.
Appearance and features
Lavender is a warm and light-loving honey plant with healing properties. It is widely used in medicine, contains essential oils, due to which it emits a persistent strong aroma. This is a frost-resistant flower that can survive at temperatures below minus twenty-five degrees. Not afraid of drought.
Evergreen shrub with a diameter of about a meter, some plant species can reach two meters in height. The standard size of lavender is about 70-80 centimeters, for dwarf varieties - no more than thirty. The plant blooms in the middle of summer, the flowers are oblong spikelets of lilac-blue, blue hues. The leaves are quite large, can be both narrow and wide; rich green, with silverpubescent, slightly curled down at the edges.
Origin
Lavender is native to the Mediterranean, India and the Canary Islands. At the same time, it was already known to the ancient Egyptians, who grew it in Thebes. From Ancient Egypt, the flower came to Ancient Rome, from where it spread throughout Europe, including appeared in Britain. In the Middle Ages, English monks were very fond of this plant. After the reign of Henry VIII, lavender also appeared in private gardens throughout the British Empire.
At the beginning of the last century, a certain French chemist began to study the essential oil of lavender, thanks to which the flower received a “second birth” - its popularity, which had faded by that time, flared up again with renewed vigor. Entire lavender plantations appeared, known throughout the world - in particular, just in France, in the town of Provence. In Russia, the plant is currently cultivated in the Crimea. In the wild, it can still be found in the Canary Islands, in Africa, in southern Europe, in Arabia.
Lavender varieties
There are narrow-leaved and broad-leaved lavender - their difference, as the names suggest, is primarily in the leaves. The first is considered the most popular garden culture. As a rule, when they say "garden lavender", they mean it. Broad-leaved lavender also has a second name - spikelet, because, unlike narrow-leaved lavender, this plant has as many as three inflorescences on the stem. There is also a hybrid lavender - a bizarre mixture of the two above species. It differs from them in that it is worsetolerates frost, so this variety is best grown in warm southern Europe. In Russia, narrow-leaved lavender is mainly preferred, and there are about thirty species of this plant in the world.
Garden lavender: planting and care
The first thing to remember if you want to have this flower in your garden: lavender loves not only heat, but also light. Therefore, when choosing a place for a plant, it is necessary to find one that gets as much sunlight as possible. If lavender happens to be in the shade, it is extremely unlikely that it will be possible to wait for flowering from it, in any case, abundant. It is desirable that there are no tall trees next to it that cast a huge shadow.
Everyone who dares to acquire a beautiful flower will be interested in how to grow lavender correctly. In order for all the bushes / seeds to take root, you should not place them closer to each other than 80-90 centimeters, otherwise they will interfere with their neighbors. Any other plants should be about the same distance from lavender.
Before sowing, it is necessary to carefully plow the soil. You need to make sure that it does not remain too wet, lavender does not tolerate waterlogging. In the event that the entire area suffers from dampness, it is wise to use drainage, otherwise the lavender may die without really starting to grow, and all efforts will be in vain. A flower is planted in well-spilled soil to a depth of no more than ten centimeters (if it is seedlings) or one and a half centimeters (if it is seeds) with warm springafternoon (late April or early May).
Caring for lavender in its first year of life is not particularly difficult. If necessary, remove inflorescences and restore dead shoots. Regularly it is worth processing the aisles, loosening and feeding the plant. In the spring, be sure to prune. If this is not done, then instead of a beautiful shrub, you will get an ugly crooked bush. It is not recommended to prune lavender immediately after flowering, because young shoots may appear that will suffer from the onset of cold weather. Also, when pruning, it is important not to overdo it: this can lead to the death of the plant.
In spring and autumn, it is necessary to hill and mulch lavender, and for the winter - be sure to cover it. This can be done using various branches of conifers. It is not recommended to warm the flower with leaves - it will rot under them. That's all the wisdom of how to grow lavender. With proper care, it will bloom all summer and live quietly in one place for more than twenty years.
Lavender soil
Important question: what kind of soil does lavender like? Perhaps it’s easier to answer which one he doesn’t like: heavy and wet. The latter needs special attention. Light sandy, gravel or clay soils, through which water passes well, are best suited. If the soil on the site is heavy, it is recommended to mix it with sand, gravel or granite in a ratio of one to one before planting lavender - then it will take root. If the soil is acidic, the flower will also be capricious, so in suchsoil must be added lime or ash. The more responsible approach to the “soil issue”, the better lavender will grow and bloom.
Water and fertilize
Another question of interest to gardeners is how often to water lavender? This should be done in moderation, because the flower does not like not only moist soil, but also excess moisture in general. Lavender definitely needs water immediately after planting, and then in a much smaller volume. If the ground near the plant has dried up, it can be watered, but only slightly. When lavender blooms, it doesn't need to be watered at all. It should be remembered that this is a drought-resistant flower. However, the lack of water will lead to a deterioration in flowering, so you need to observe the measure in this too.
Little lavender and fertilizer required. If the soil is good, such as the plant likes, you can generally do without top dressing. Lavender favorably relates to potash fertilizers, responds well to various mineral complexes.
Reproduction
Perhaps one of the main points in the care of lavender is reproduction. There are four ways in total: seeds, cuttings, layering, dividing the bush. The first two are the most popular.
Propagation of lavender cuttings
This is the easiest way. For good cuttings, young shoots from he althy, developed plants will be required, weak flowers will not work. It is best to carry out this "operation" in early autumn or spring, in the morning. To cut the shoots, you should take a sharp, well-sharpened knife. The cut should be made as close as possible.to the kidney so that the shoot does not rot. When propagating lavender with cuttings, it is recommended to select shoots from the middle, annuals that have never bloomed. The size of the cuttings should be from seven to ten centimeters, the leaves from below must be removed.
Finished cuttings need to be treated with a growth stimulator and planted in a mixture of peat and sand in a ratio of one to one. Place a container under the covering material (foil, polyethylene, and so on will do), which will need to be removed periodically to ventilate the plant (once a day is enough). When the soil dries, the cuttings should be watered. It will take about 5-6 weeks for them to give roots, after which time they can be planted in a permanent habitat.
Seed propagation
Reproduction of lavender is also carried out by seeds, this is the second most popular method, although it is somewhat more difficult than cuttings. The thing is that in this case stratification is required - measures to accelerate seed germination. This process is carried out within a month, the seeds must be mixed with sand or peat, put in the refrigerator and kept there for 30 days. The desired temperature is no more than plus five degrees.
Seeds are planted for seedlings in late February or early March. The sowing depth should not exceed three millimeters. Seedlings should be kept in the light, at an optimum temperature of fifteen to twenty degrees above zero. In such conditions, seedlings will appear quickly enough. When they reach several centimeters, you can plant the sprouts in different containers, and already inMay send to open ground. It is important to take into account the fact that the propagation of lavender from seeds in the first year will not bring flowers, all the efforts of the plant will be directed to the root system.
Reproduction by layering and dividing the bush
Propagation of lavender by layering is easier than seeds, but for some reason it is less popular. In order for everything to work out as it should, in the spring you should bend a couple of young shoots from a he althy plant, place them in a small groove prepared in advance (you don’t need to dig a deep hole), fix it, fill it up (both with soil and fertilizer) and water. Throughout the summer, it is necessary to ensure that the soil near the groove is moist. Already next year, the shoots will be able to "live a full life" and they can be easily cut off from the mother bush.
An even rarer way to propagate lavender is to divide the bush. This is done in the fall: all branches without exception are cut to a height of up to ten centimeters. The bush is spudded, left for the winter, and in the spring they add as much land as possible. Over the summer, a well-rooted young shoot appears, which in the fall can be dug up and divided.
Diseases and pests
Lavender is afraid of gray rot. It is necessary to carefully monitor the appearance of this infection, and if it appears, remove and burn the affected parts of the plant. Also, the flower suffers from the rainbow beetle, which feasts on it. Insects should only be removed by hand.
Although in the popular hit it is sung that lavender is mountainous, in fact it is quite a “plain” flower,which, with proper care and proper care, is able to please any gardener in any area!
