An ideal plant for decorating a garden or summer cottage is girl's grapes. With its help, you can easily give a perfect look to a brick fence or blank wall of a country house. Any seemingly unsightly structure comes to life right before our eyes, when its walls are surrounded by branches of girl's grapes. Do not think that this is not the end of its decorative properties. Gardeners use the plant to decorate arches or pergolas. Moreover, the beautiful palmate dark green leaves of this plant will help create coolness in the gazebo, which is so indispensable on a hot summer day. Due to the special antennae, girl's grapes are attached to any support. This is easy enough to do.
Girl's Grapes: Planting
This garden plant is universal and completely unpretentious to the growing conditions. By frost resistance, growth rate, power and strength of trunks, no plants can compete with girl's grapes to decorate a summer cottage. Usually, in an artificial environment, the liana grows very quickly, so you can not do without special supports and ropes.
To grow this magnificent garden plant, you don’t have to put a lot of effort, because it is absolutely not demanding on the mineral composition of the soil and grows well on any type of soil. It develops well in sunny areas, but also feels good in shading.
Separate shoots must be planted with an interval of at least one meter in a pre-prepared hole about 60 cm deep. At its bottom, you can lay a layer of drainage from sand or crushed stone, and on top of it - fill the recess with a soil mixture. When planting a girl's grape, note that its root neck should not rise above the soil.
The garden crop does not need additional watering, with the exception of a dry summer.
Crown formation
For the first two or three years, girl’s grapes will not give a lush crown, since at this time the root system mainly develops . However, in the subsequent period, vines begin to grow actively, which in a short time will braid the exposed supports with their leaves. The need for them will disappear as the antennae with tenacious suckers at the tips appear on the plant. In general, over the course of a year, a young shoot can reach a height of two to three meters. Therefore, initially it is very important to form their crown correctly. For this purpose, you can use the usual garden secateurs. To obtain a uniform plant density, it is necessary to trim individual stems at a small height from the soil level, and to direct young shoots in the right direction and fix on a support. The main thing is to prevent the woodiness and coarsening of the shoots until this time. All excess lashes are subject to removal. Cut them off above the kidney, which must be healthy.
After the formation of the main lashes, you can begin to sanitary and restraining pruning of damaged and old branches. If you leave the plant without proper care, then the strengthened and rooted girl's grapes will turn into uncontrolled green thickets that cannot be untangled, and even more so, to cultivate. You will have to cut it off at the root itself and start growing again, so pruning should not be postponed for a long time.
Girl's Grapes: Reproduction
Horticultural culture is very easily propagated by both stem and woody cuttings, as well as seeds and layering. Suitable for this time of year - autumn or spring.
You can also get young shoots from seeds. In the autumn planting, the seed must be stratified 3-4 days before being placed in the soil, and in the spring - about a month. Soaked seeds are laid out in soil to a depth of about 1 cm.
When propagating by cuttings, it is better to use woody shoots, as they take root better. Planting green shoots is a more troublesome business.