Lupine flowers are bright and distinctive representatives of the legume family, used in group plantings with other annuals and perennials to decorate flower beds and lawns. Quite often, lupine is underestimated by amateur gardeners, since most of them know only varieties with blue, blue-white and pink color of inflorescences, close to wild ones. In fact, there are a lot of garden lupine hybrids with a wide variety of flower colors: white, yellow, blue, pink, carmine, red, cream, purple, etc.
General characteristics and description
Lupin is a herbaceous plant native to the meadows of the Mediterranean and North America. Its leaves, resembling a spread palm, are attached to the trunk alternately on long thin petioles. The inflorescences are racemose, when ripe they form a fruit - a bean. Lupine flowers are unpretentious and surprisingly productive plants: for the appearance of real thickets of lupine, it is enough that just one seed is picked up by the wind, falls and germinates in the ground. howand many other plants from the legume family, lupine can thrive and grow successfully even in poor, depleted soils, as its root system can extract nutrients from the deepest soil layers. And if experienced flower growers appreciate lupine flowers for the magnificent shape of its bush and bright shades of inflorescences, then agronomists appreciate the ability to enrich the soil with nitrogen that accumulates in nodule bacteria on its roots.
Features of care
Lupin is an undemanding plant. All he needs for a comfortable existence in your backyard is timely watering, pruning and transplanting every few years.
Water
Garden flower lupine does not require a special organization of the irrigation system. Provided that in the summer it rains at least once a week, lupine does not require additional watering at all. In addition, its leaves are able to collect dew. If the day turns out to be especially hot, in the evening the lupine will not refuse to spray with cool water.
Shaping a bush
Outwardly, the lupine bush looks like lush curly thickets, but over time the plant ages, the neck of the bush rises above the ground, the middle dies off, and the side rosettes move away from each other - as a result, the plant no longer looks so attractive. To avoid this, lupine bushes are spudded to stimulate the formation of lateral roots, which help maintain the decorative bush.
Flower period
As a rule, lupins bloomin the middle of May. If the fading "candle" is cut in time, you can achieve re-blooming in August.
Departure during dormancy and wintering
Lupine flowers are frost-resistant plants: they withstand temperatures down to -8 degrees, so no particularly careful preparation for wintering is required. It will be enough to cut the stems of the plant short.
Transplantation and reproduction
A lupine bush can grow in the same place without a transplant for 4-6 years. Propagation of this garden plant is carried out using seeds or by dividing an adult bush. If you want to keep a collector's hybrid that you love for its original coloration, it's best to choose to propagate from cuttings from an adult plant, because seed cannot be guaranteed to achieve the same color in the next generation.
As you can see, everything is quite simple. Trust your imagination and fantasy, you will see how lupine flowers will transform your backyard. The photo shows how original a flower bed decorated with these garden flowers can be.
