The crocus flower (also called its saffron) is a bulbous plant and belongs to the iris (kasatikovy) family. Blooming crocuses are an incredible sight to behold.
Crocus is a flower that enjoys the love of almost all gardeners. After a long winter, crocuses, like other primroses, meet early spring, and in October they complete the season, pleasing their eyes with bright colorful shades before the upcoming long winter. Crocuses are a flower of open ground, but like other bulbous plants, they can be subjected to distillation and thus obtain "flowering fields" at home.
Crocuses are low onion plants (up to 25cm), their leaves are narrow and grow together with flowers directly from the corm. The leaves and stem of the flower below are covered with thin transparent scales. Crocus flower is unisexual, with a corolla-shaped colorful six-divided perianth. Inside the flower hides the stigma with 3 stamens, painted in bright orange, yellow, red colors. These flowers are pollinated by insects. They can be painted in cold violet and blue, or yellow, warm colors, and you can often find white crocuses.
Surprisingly, the crocus bulbs are edible. They are boiled, baked or stewed. But the most precious part of the plant is the stigmas. It is stigmas with stamens that are a valuable medicine, dye and seasoning - saffron.
Crocus (flower) - care
You need to choose healthy planting material to grow a beautiful, healthy crocus. This flower should have a bulb without rot, healthy, without any mechanical damage, with a smooth color, without spots.
When planting these colors, it is important to choose the right place. Crocuses grow well in partial shade, but give flowers larger and develop better in areas well lit by the sun. But you should not grow crocuses in places where water lingers for a long time, so the bulbs will quickly rot.
Crocus develops well on any breathable, cultivated soil. On clay clay soils, sand, peat should be added, and drainage should be provided with fine gravel. On light soil, it is better to introduce turf soil, high-quality humus. Acidic soil is desirable to liming.
Crocus, caring for which is not a very troublesome task, is quite resistant to change, cold weather. It can withstand temperatures down to -18 C, but if there are some plantings for the winter, then they must be covered with a layer of peat or foliage.
Crocuses usually do not require additional watering. They let you know about the lack of moisture in small blooms. In this case, it is better to water them moderately.
For good flowering and development, these flowers need to be fed. A good fertilizer for them is compost or humus. Such fertilizer is usually applied when preparing the land for the upcoming sowing.
Crocuses in the home environment
Growing crocuses in pots at home is a very exciting and interesting activity. The purpose of such a distillation is to obtain a blooming crocus at home in the winter or, as happens more often, by a certain date. Bulbs of the same size and one variety are selected for forcing, so that in the pot they are the same in height and bloom at the same time.
For distillation, the bulb of a crocus is dug out of the ground on a street in the region of August-September. Then the bulbs are kept at a temperature of 20-24 C for about two weeks. Then they must be removed for storage.
It is not always possible to make crocus bloom by a certain date. After all, it depends on the variety of the flower, on the size of its bulb, on external factors, but it is still possible to determine the approximate time.
About a few weeks after the flowers were brought into the room, under optimal conditions, the crocuses will bloom and will bloom for about 2 weeks. Be sure to continue to water them after flowering until all the leaves die out. Then you need to remove the bulbs from the bowl, put them in storage. Then the whole cycle repeats in the same way. True, with repeated distillation, crocus flowers are obtained a little smaller and weaker.