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Bright, reliably Fuchsia at homeFuchsias are precious gems in the collection of any florist. Bringing a lush beauty to the house, you need to know that growing and caring for fuchsia at home will require the application of all the knowledge and strength from the house plant lover.
Fuchsias are famous for their long flowering from the very spring to late autumn. Plants can be grown as ampelous, bush and standard forms. The incredible amount of colorings and types of fancy lanterns surprises and fascinates. Fuchsias grow quickly and are very responsive to care. But if you feel a lack of attention, the plant can become capricious.
Peculiarities of Fuchsia Care at Home
When you take care of your home, a fuchsia flower retains its inherent nature in the season. The period of active growing season and flowering lasts from spring to autumn, and the plant rests in winter. Therefore, compliance with the temperature during the care of the indoor flower is very important.
In summer, plants feel best in a moderately heated room or in a garden at a temperature of 16–24 ° C.
If the atmosphere is cooler, the development of plants is slowed down, the formation of new buds stops, that is, cooling becomes a signal for the beginning of the dormant period for fuchsia.
Exceeding a 25 ° C stripe has a depressing effect on decorative culture. Fuchsia can throw off the buds, the foliage shrinks, pales. At such times, plants are at risk for pests and diseases, and this danger is most likely to occur when growing and caring for fuchsia in the garden.
On hot days, you need to take all measures to:
- protect the blooming beauty from the scorching sun;
- regularly irrigate greens with soft water;
- increase the humidity of the air in the room.
In indoor environments, fuchsia grows fine on western or eastern windows. There are plants necessary for flowering and preservation of juicy foliage penumbra. If the pot is forced to be on the north window, the flower provides illumination up to 12 hours a day.
Watering and feeding the fuchsia flower at home care
From spring to autumn, fuchsias should receive abundant watering, which gradually decreases towards the onset of the resting season:
- have the greatest need for water for flowering plants;
- when fuchsia rests, completing a massive flowering, the soil beneath it moisturize about once a week.
It's another matter if the flower is going to rest. How to care for fuchsia in the winter?
In winter, flowers are watered no more than twice a month. At the same time be sure to provide staying in a cool room at small positive temperatures. If this is not done, growing and caring for fuchsia at home will become much more complicated.
In the warmth and with a lack of light during the winter, the shoots are drawn out, the leaves fall partially or completely, and the bare frame of the former beauty remains on the window sill. With the arrival of spring, these plants are lagging behind in development, less amicably and willingly enter the time of flowering.
In winter, top dressing is not needed, but during the growing season they help fuchsia to form many buds and recover quickly after flowering. Fertilize flowers begin in the second half of March. For top dressing weekly apply complex means for flower cultures.
When caring for fuchsia and growing it at home, you need to remember that watering with fertilizer is carried out on a slightly moist substrate. Fuchsia foliar dressings are carried out on the back of the leaves.
After transplantation, the plant should not be fed for about a month. The same rule applies to young, only rooted seedlings.
In order to accelerate the formation of green mass, plants are watered with fertilizers with a high nitrogen content. And for the laying and maintenance of lush flowering need compositions with a predominance of potassium and phosphorus.
When growing and caring for fuchsia in the garden, feeding with organic-rich compounds gives a good result, and adult specimens respond positively to the introduction of trace elements.
Transplant while caring for fuchsia at home
In order for the plant to have enough strength for active flowering, it is important for it to get abundant and comprehensive nutrition. At the same time, the soil in which the flower grows plays a significant role. In the care of fuchsia at home, it is desirable to include the annual transplant, which should fall in the spring - the time of the beginning of the awakening and flower growth.
As a substrate, you can take any loose ready-mix for ornamental crops, mixing them with garden soil or well-rotted humus. If the fuchsia flower grows on the balcony or at home, a little loam can be added to the ground to reduce the rate of evaporation of moisture. At the bottom of the ceramic, protecting the root system of fuchsia from overheating the pot must do drainage.
Propagation of fuchsia at home
You can grow new fuchsia plants by propagating the flower with seeds or vegetatively. More often they use vegetative, as in the photo, reproduction of fuchsia, care at home in which it is much easier, and young seedlings mature more quickly and begin to bloom.
If desired, cutting at the top or stem cuttings is possible at any convenient time from spring and throughout the summer. It is only important that healthy buds form on the shoots and not green, but already semi-woody stems get into the ground.
If rooting of cuttings is carried out in autumn or winter, the plant must be provided with additional illumination and support the “summer” temperature and humidity conditions.
The cuttings are cut with a sharp, clean knife, after which all the leaves are removed from the shoots except the top pair. Root fuchsia with the same success can be:
- in water;
- in wet perlite;
- in a mixture of peat and sand.
How to care for fuchsia after grafting? Already after 1-2 weeks, when the formed roots become visible on the cuttings, they can be transplanted into separate small pots with a diameter of up to 9 cm. If planting is carried out in a large container, for example, for growing ampelous culture, several rooted cuttings are transferred to the container at once.
In order for the blooming of ampelous and cluster fuchsias to be as lush as possible, plants have to be renewed in two or three years. Standard specimens grow and retain decorative longer. But here, in growing and caring for fuchsia at home and in the garden, pruning is a must.
If it is not possible to cut cuttings suitable for breeding from a bush, use fuchsia leaves. Large healthy leaves are cut with cuttings, and then one centimeter is buried in wet perlite. Under conditions of a greenhouse, with daily spraying, high humidity and constant temperature, miniature sockets develop at the base of the stem.
When they are strong enough, they are separated from the leaf and planted in separate pots. In the future, care for fuchsia at home does not differ from the usual, when the flower is grown their cuttings.
