Planting and care for a spectacular barberry shrub

Unpretentious shrubs are well known to gardeners around the world. Today, there are about five hundred species of barberry, which can be interesting due to its medicinal and decorative properties. Many plants are used as fruit bushes. And during flowering a lot of bees fly over the plants, which makes the culture a valuable honey plant.

For those who want to see barberries on their land, planting and caring for shrubs will not cause serious difficulties. And yet, some features of culture should be known in advance.

Preparing the site for planting

In nature, large, spreading barberry bushes can be found on the beginning of the overgrowing of clearings and dry sunny slopes. Therefore, the garden will have to find a fairly spacious area with good lighting of the place, not shaded, but protected from drafts.

• Extremely negative shrub refers to the proximity of groundwater and the stagnation of moisture, so it is better to plant it on a slope or a small elevation.
• The soil for planting barberry should be light and loose. The culture does not suffer from a deficiency in the soil of organic matter, but with its excessive acidity above pH 7.5, it is better to take care of adding limestone or dolomite flour to the shrub.
• If loam or chernozem prevail in the area, it is necessary to ensure good drainage for the barberry and add peat or limestone flour.
• On peatlands, liming is carried out, and also wood ash is introduced.

Before planting a barberry, a pit is prepared for it in advance. This is especially important if the seedlings are large or there is a division of an existing adult bush.

• For bushes not older than three years, the pit should have a diameter of about 25 cm and a depth of 25–30 cm.
• For seedlings aged 4 to 7 years, prepare a hole with a diameter of about 50 cm and the same depth.
• If the barberry is planted to create a hedge, you need a trench 40 cm deep and wide.parts of humus or compost, sand and loose garden soil. Superphosphate is often used as a fertilizer when planting barberry.

  How to plant a barberry?

  If the root system of a seedling in a container is reliably protected by a soil clod, you can replant the plant at any convenient time, after thoroughly wetting the container with a young shrub.

  But when to plant a barberry, if rooted cuttings or cuttings with open roots are at disposal of the gardener?

  • The best time for the event is spring. It is important to have time to plant the plant in time. When the soil is already warm, but not dry, and the buds have not yet moved to the growth.
  • If time is lost, the barberry can be planted in the fall, when the shrub begins to lose foliage, and all life processes in the plant begin to slow down.

  The same barberry can be propagated using both vegetative putu and seeds of ripe berries. When the barberry grows on the site, bushes with an age of 3 to 5 years with branching below the ground level can be divided, getting two or three seedlings with an independent root system, and seating.

  Almost all species can be easily reproduced by means of green cuttings:

  • You need to select branches for cuttings from strong shoots of this year, quite elastic and brittle when bent.
  • Unripe cuttings risk rotting and longer acclimatizing during planting.
  • A coarse woody parts of the branches are more difficult to take root. If they are used for planting barberry, in the fall, the cuttings are cut and stored until spring at a temperature close to zero.

  The middle parts of shoots about 0.5 cm in diameter, suitable for grafting, are divided into segments from 7 to 10 cm long with two healthy nodes and one interstitial between them. If the cutting is too short, you can leave three pairs of leaves.

  • The top of the shoot is cut horizontally.
  • The lower cut should have an angle of 45 °.
  • At the top node, the leaves are cut in half.
  • The lower leaves are removed completely, without affecting the axillary buds and spines.
  Read also: How to propagate the barberry in the garden area

  Rooting the barberry is better in the sand-peat mixture, in which the cuttings are dipped at a 45 ° angle. Between rows, 5 cm is left, and from one cutting to another should be at least 10 cm.

  
  

  For better survival, you can use Kornevin, indolylacetic acid or other stimulants, as well as create temperature-friendly barberries for, andhumidity conditions. To maintain an air humidity of about 85%, the planting is watered up to twice a day.

  When the barberry gives roots, small saplings continue to grow in greenhouse conditions for up to two years, and then the barberry is planted in the fall or in the spring in the ground.

  Reproduction of barberry seeds

  You can get seeds for sowing by mashing fresh berries. The extracted grains are washed and dried thoroughly.

  • If sowing is done in the fall, it is enough to make grooves centimeters deep to 1 cm for seeds in loose nutrient soil. When spring planting, the seeds stratify. The procedure takes place at a temperature of from 2 to 5 ° C and lasts from two to four months, depending on the variety and type of barberry.

  As two true leaves form on the seedlings, they can be thinned out, leaving one plant for every three centimeters. The further process proceeds in the same way as in the case of propagation by grafting. And two years later, it is time when you can plant a barberry on a permanent place in the garden.

  How to care for the barberry?

  Mature barberry bush is not so demanding in irrigation, as long as moisture in abundance is at the stage of planting and rooting.

  A shrub planted in a garden can be watered only with significant drying of the soil under the crown. It is much more important that the soil is carefully loosened, so that oxygen and moisture have free access to the roots of the barberry.

  To preserve moisture and improve the structure of the soil under the crown, it is mulched with an 8 cm layer of peat, sawdust or other available means. How to care for the barberry during the warm season? Does the plant need additional feeding, and which fertilizers are preferable for this crop?

  • From the second year of life, the shrub should receive nitrogen-containing spring dressings. Barberry responds well to watering with diluted extract of mullein or bird droppings.
  • Before flowering, adult shrubs receive complex fertilizers with microelements. It is better if these are granular products that will gradually enrich the soil under the crown.
  • In September, 10 grams of potash fertilizer and 15 grams of superphosphate are applied to each plant under the bushes.
  Read also: The nasturtium flower as the visiting card of the summer

  How to trim a barberry?

  No matter how simple it was to plant and care for the barberry, the photo clearly shows the well-developed spines, which literally seated all branches of the shrub. They then constitute the most serious problem for the gardener, because without trimming a bush you cannot do without. With this kind of work, robust gloves and tools with fairly long handles are vital.

  Low-growing varieties, often used in single plantings or as a decorative green border, you can not specifically form, and only remove damaged and dry shoots. But when and how to cut the barberry, if the shrub forms a dense hedge?

  • In this case, the first molding pruning of plants is carried out a year after planting, and in older bushes, branches from one to two years old are shortened by a third or even half the length.
  • Barberry cutting is done after flowering is complete and until the autumn cold.

  During the spring cutting of a barberry, it is necessary to cut off or completely remove all damaged branches that have frozen through the winter and with signs of the presence of pests or diseases. The procedure must be carried out before the foliage appears on the bushes.

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