Anthurium is a tropical guest who has firmly settled on the windowsills of city apartments. With proper care, it becomes a real decoration of any collection, delighting the owner with glossy heart-shaped foliage and bizarre, like wax flowers. But often, everything happens the other way around: an exotic handsome man loses his colors, turns pale, becomes oppressed, and finally dies. The hapless florist blames the unserviceable nature of Dutch plants for everything, although, as a rule, errors in care are the cause of such failures.
In garden centers and flower shops, plants live in the so-called transportation soil - peat substrate, which is not intended for long-term use. Anthurium is no exception. Transplantation after buying any culture is simply necessary, but it must be carried out wisely. Firstly, you should definitely wait a couple of weeks for the plant to adapt to new conditions. Secondly, you need to find out what kind of soil a beginner “likes”. This is a very important stage on which the future fate of the plant depends - whether it will thrive, delighting the owner, or wither and go to the trash. In this matter, you should not rely on the advice of girlfriends or flower forums, as these are, to put it mildly, not the most reliable sources. You just need to imagine how the plant lives in nature.
And in nature, the genus Anthurium is represented by epiphytic or semi-epiphytic, less often terrestrial species inhabiting tropical and moist subtropical forests of the New World. And this means that plants live in dense woody thickets and have airy roots, with the help of which they extract water and nutrients dissolved in it. They settle in fallen bark, filled with soil particles and decayed forks of old trees, on fallen trunks and in other loose substrates with good aeration and water permeability.
Now it is clear what kind of soil the anthurium needs. Transplantation should be carried out taking into account the characteristics of natural growth, otherwise the plant is doomed. So, to make a tropical guest feel at home, you need to plant him in a mixture that resembles as much as possible tropical forest litter. The substrate should be loose, light, coarse fiber, well aerated and moisture permeable, with a slightly acidic reaction of the medium (pH not higher than 6). It can be composed independently using coarse fiber peat, chopped pine bark, chopped moss and sod land (proportion 1: 1: 1: 2). Many gardeners take as a basis the soil for bromeliads or orchids, diluting it with sheet or turf soil. Components such as coconut fiber, vermiculite, charcoal, expanded clay, crushed pumice are also relevant - they will make the substrate more loose, increase its moisture capacity and breathability, which anthurium so needs.
Transplanting this plant also provides for a good drainage layer, since stagnation of water at the roots is fatal for all members of the genus. The pot should be high, due to the structural features of the root system of the anthurium. In a wide flowerpot, the probability of acidification of unused soil is high. This also applies to containers that are too large in size.
Now, directly on the question of how to properly transplant anthurium. It is very easy to do. First you need to pour a layer of drainage (1/3 of the height) into a new pot, and spread a small layer of a prepared substrate on top of it. Then you should remove the plant from the old flowerpot, evenly install it in a new container, and fill the free space with soil mixture. In this case, you need to very carefully handle young leaves and fragile roots. In the end, you need to water the anthurium. A transplant performed correctly stimulates the intensive growth of a plant and favorably affects its flowering.
Recently acquired specimens are transplanted after an adaptation period (about 2 weeks), and the rest - in the spring, at the beginning of the growing season. Young plants need this procedure annually, and once in 2-3 years is enough for adults. In this case, each time you should slightly deepen the trunk so that the substrate covers new aerial roots. If you follow all the rules, the result will be a spectacular and healthy anthurium. A transplant, in fact, is not such a complicated procedure, if you understand the nature of the plant and feel what it needs.