Notes on flower cultivation: reproduction

sowing

The seeds must be harvested when fully mature.

Dry and low-temperature storage conditions can prolong the life of seeds. For home storage, they can be packed in plastic bags and stored in the refrigerator.

Spring-flowering biennial herbaceous flowers are sown in mid-to-late August. Annual flowers that bloom in autumn are sown in spring in late March to early April.

The thickness of soil after sowing should be 2 to 3 times the height of seeds.

Seeds need temperature, water and air to germinate. Generally, 20~25℃ is the most suitable temperature for germination. The soil in the seedbed should not be compacted or waterlogged to provide the oxygen required for germination.

After germination, when they have 2 to 4 leaves, they should be transplanted.

Cuttings

It is to cultivate new plants by utilizing the regeneration ability of plant organs such as roots, stems, leaves, and buds after they leave the mother body.

The soil (substrate) used for cuttings should be loose, breathable, and harmless. For home breeding, you can use materials such as rice husk ash, yellow sand, perlite, and frog stone.

For stem cuttings of woody plants, choose branches with full growth in the current year. The material should be 10 to 15 cm long, with 3 to 4 buds, and inserted 5 to 6 cm into the soil. The cut at the lower end of the cuttings should be at the node point. Dormant branch cuttings are carried out 10 to 15 days before germination. Cuttings of green branches with leaves can be carried out during the growing season, after the new branches mature. However, the leaves on the above-ground part should be pruned appropriately to reduce transpiration and facilitate rooting.

For herbaceous plants to be propagated through cuttings, you should choose tender stems with full tissues. Begonia, petunia, Ho's balsam, Guinea balsam, impatiens, and marigold are all easy to propagate.

Most succulents can be propagated by leaf cuttings.

For home cuttings, use flower pots as the grafting bed, put tiles at the bottom of the pot to facilitate drainage, always keep the soil moist, and avoid direct sunlight on the pots. If you can spray frequently to maintain a certain air humidity and place it in the sun, the rose cuttings will take root in about 10 days in summer.

Division and division

Some perennial flowers and shrubs, such as daylilies, rice clumps, asparagus fern, bamboo palm, Cyperus rotundus, wintersweet, and peony, will grow larger after several years of growth. You can dig up the clumps in early spring or autumn and divide them into several individual plants. When dividing, try to keep as many roots as possible on each plant and reduce the area of ​​the wound.

Bulbous flowers such as tulips, lilies, daffodils, gladiolus, and red-flowered Oxalis can be divided into small bulbs for propagation.

Layering

For flowers and trees such as osmanthus, camellia, and wintersweet, you can bend the branches close to the ground without separating them from the mother tree and press them into the soil, so as to encourage rooting at the middle nodes of the branches that are buried in the soil. Layering is usually carried out in March and April. The part buried in the soil needs to be scored or ring-peeled to facilitate the growth of new roots in the callus tissue at the wound. In autumn, the plant is cut below the rooting site to grow new plants.

On the upper part of the flower and tree plants, select branches with a diameter of about 0.5~1.0cm and perform ring peeling with a ring width of 0.3~1.5cm. Use bamboo tubes or film bags to fill with breathable and moisture-retaining materials to promote rooting in the ring-barking areas. This is called air layering. The suitable season for air layering is before the plum rain season.

grafting

The key to successful grafting lies in: the nutritional status and affinity of the grafting material, the temperature and humidity environment after grafting, and the grafting technology. There are two commonly used methods: branch grafting and bud grafting.