On the Mediterranean expanses there grows a beautiful shrub that conquers people with its magnificent delicate aroma and grace. This is silver santolina - a shrub belonging to the family Compositae.
Due to the lush flowering, gardeners often use this plant to decorate flower beds, alpine slides and decorative borders. Is it difficult to make silver on your site? Planting and caring for this evergreen perennial is actually even the power of inexperienced gardeners. But over time, you can get an elegant bonsai from it, since its trunk will become lignified, and the crown can be easily formed. This type of santolin is distinguished by the changing color of narrow openwork leaves. At the beginning they are light green, but eventually become a pleasant silver color.
Choose the right site
In fact, Santolin is a plant that does not require special care. However, it will bloom profusely only in places well lit by the sun. This is another difference of the species in question. Some of the varieties of this plant are very moody and demanding.
Special attention should be paid to the amount of moisture in the area. It is necessary that rainwater does not stagnate at the landing site. The soil itself must be dry and have a waterproof structure. This shrub also feels great on poor soils with good drainage.
What seedlings to get
Usually, seedlings of shrubs are bought at the very beginning of autumn or early spring. Pay particular attention to what the acquired silver Santolin looks like. Planting and caring for the plant will not cause you trouble if it has dense strong leaves that have not changed color and have no noticeable damage. In addition, it is not recommended to buy seedlings with yellowed leaves or if their root system is exposed.
We plant santolina
If you plant plants in the spring, then you need to take care of the quality of the soil in advance. The earth is dug up (depth - not less than thirty centimeters), after which it is necessary to make a ditch in it. The soil, which has a heavy structure, undergoes additional processing. Sand is added to it so that rain and melt water do not linger in the ground. Only then will a strong and healthy santolin grow in your area. Planting seedlings is carried out according to this scheme:
- The plant carefully gets out of the pot.
- Fallen roots carefully and carefully straighten.
- Seedlings are placed in a prepared ditch, maintaining a distance of 20-30 centimeters between plants.
- The moat is covered with earth. The soil around the seedlings is pressed a little.
- At first, the soil is abundantly watered, but plants are not flooded. The amount of water decreases only when the bushes take root.
First plant care
Abundant watering is necessary only seedlings of Santolin. Young shoots without the proper amount of moisture will simply fade. However, do not get carried away, do not fill them, otherwise they will turn yellow and rot. If you do everything right, then the plant will take root and an elegant silver santolina will appear on your site. Landing and care at the first stage is already behind, but you should not relax. After a while, the shrub will need your care again.
Does Santolin need top dressing
As mentioned above, santolina is a plant that feels great on poor soils. That is why it does not particularly need special feeding. The only way to feed an adult shrub is complex fertilizers that contain a small amount of nitrogen. If there is too much nitrogen in the soil, then Santolin will not begin to bloom. Instead, she will gain green mass. Such feeding is performed from the beginning of spring to the end of summer.
Do not forget about pruning
At the end of the flowering period, santolina must be cut. In order to increase the bushiness, it is necessary to trim to a third of the height of the plant.
If you do not carry out this procedure, then the bushes will grow in width. Then a spherical plant will appear on your site, having at least a meter in diameter.
Often gardeners approach circumcision with imagination and form hedges from santolina. There is probably no plant more elegant than silver santolina. The photo above illustrates this perfectly.
Reproduction of silver santolina
Maybe you decided to independently breed this plant? It is not difficult if you already have an adult santolin on the site. Caring for the green cuttings that are used for this purpose is a task feasible for everyone. The length of the harvested green cuttings should be no more than ten centimeters. It is necessary to remove all the leaves from below and lower the bare ends into the hormonal preparation. After this, plants need to be rooted. For this, a cold greenhouse is used.
Preparing for winter in advance
Santolina silvery is a southern plant. Therefore, it is very sensitive to our cold weather. In those places where the climate is especially severe, the shrub can even partially or completely freeze.
Not always a person can dig a plant and transfer it to a house for the winter. In this case, he needs to make sure that the bush is out of the cold outside, but in a warm shelter.
The covering material may be different. For this purpose, lapnik, fallen leaves and so on are suitable. Santolin bush needs to be covered completely. In addition, the soil hides around it. Thus, the possibility of freezing of the roots of the plant is excluded.
Varieties of Santolin
In addition to silver santolina, there are several more varieties of this plant. Each of them is distinguished by the color of the flowers, the color and shape of the leaves, and the size of the bush itself. From this article, you learned about how silver Santolin is grown. Planting and caring for this plant is no longer a problem for you.
But in conclusion, I want to talk a little about other types of santolina. By the way, the combination on your site of several varieties of shrubs will only add to it beauty and originality.
- Graceful Santolin. A small shrub. He is demanding on temperature and very whimsical.
- Greenish santolina. The main difference between this variety is bright green foliage and delicate cream-colored inflorescences. At a great distance, it looks like a smoky greenish cloud.
- Cirrus Santolina. This plant reaches a height of no more than sixty centimeters. It has narrow leaves and long original peduncles. Its milky-white flowers gather in unusual inflorescences having a hemispherical shape.