Bakopa - growing

Flowers - the best decoration of the house and infield. Every year gardeners get acquainted with new types of ornamental and fruit plants and master the methods of growing exotic crops.

In this article, we'll talk about the bakop - tell you about the growing of seeds and the peculiarities of caring for this extraordinarily beautiful South African flower. To date, in addition to the traditional white bakop, there are many varieties with colors of different shades - purple, blue, pink, yellow, blue, red, purple. But the plant with white flowers is the most stable, unpretentious and resistant to various kinds of external influences. In addition, many varieties of bakopa tend to degenerate and perepylyatsya, turning a few years from color to white forms.

Bacopa: planting and care

Bakopa (sutera) is a low perennial plant with many small single five-petalled flowers (about 2 cm in diameter) blooming almost continuously from spring (March) to autumn (October). Most often the bakop is grown as an ampel plant (decorating fences, pillars, walls of buildings, balconies with vases), but it also looks great as an unpretentious and effective perennial soil cover. If desired, in one pot with a bakop you can grow other types of ampelian plants: petunias, nasturtiums, fuchsias, lobelia, and aregatum. In landed landings, the bacon is used as an attractive background plant, forming a lush blossoming carpet around the central plant of the composition. The advantages of the plant include resistance to prolonged rains - the bacon does not lose its attractiveness even in such conditions. In addition, even in the absence of flowers, the plant is rather decorative, due to the presence of many small bright green leaves.

The very first thing to find out who wants to grow this beautiful flower is how to plant a bakop. After all, the right planting makes it possible to grow quality seedlings, which means healthy and beautiful plants. Planting a bacon is a simple activity, but here, as in any other case, one should adhere to a certain algorithm of actions.

First of all, you must choose the right soil. For a bakopa, a slightly acid mixture (peat and garden soil 1: 1) is best. For cultivation in pots, you will also need to add humus and sand (2 parts each) to the mixture. It is also necessary to ensure good drainage, as water stagnation has a bad effect on the condition of the root system.

Pour bakop should be often, but little by little, not allowing the drying or waterlogging of the soil. From time to time, the plant should be fed with liquid complex mineral fertilizers.

Depending on the variety, the distance between the plants should be between 10 and 25 cm (the higher the plant, the more space it will need).

In the open ground bakop can be planted immediately, as the threat of nocturnal frost disappears.

Best of all, the bakop grows on sunny, sheltered areas. Growing in the penumbra is also possible, but remember: the smaller the sun, the fewer colors. With full shading, the bacon is stretched and a few loses decorativeness.

For wintering, the bacon is hidden in a cool moist room (with an air temperature of 8-15 ° C). The plant is able to withstand short freezes up to -5 ° C. When wintering in too hot rooms, the risk of diseases increases - gray rot, black fungus, shoots can be stretched and bare.

Do I need to pinch a bucket?

Pinching a bacon is not an obligatory procedure, but it significantly increases the number of colors, so it is very popular among florists.

It is performed according to the classical scheme - on the young shoots the growth points are pinched, which stimulates the development of lateral processes and flower buds. You can pinch shoots on any length.

Bacopa: reproduction

This plant can be propagated by various methods: sowing seeds or cuttings.

Seed method of reproduction involves growing through seedlings, direct planting in the soil of the bacon is not grown.

Seeds are small, in 1 gram more than 5 thousand seeds. Germination lasts for 2-3 years.

For germination of small seeds, light, light-, moisture- and air-permeable soil is best suited. The optimum temperature for germination is 20-23 ° C. At temperatures below 18 ° C, the seeds do not germinate. Seeds should not be deeply closed - they are light-growing, it is better to only slightly apply them to the surface of the soil. For the same reason, it is impossible to cover pots with seeded seeds with opaque materials - without light, the seeds will not rise. It is also important to ensure high air humidity during germination of seeds.

The first shoots appear on the 10-14 day.

In the stage of one or two present sheets, the first picking (2 cm between the plants) is carried out. From this moment, regular fertilizing with diluted fertilizer (50% of the norm specified in the instruction) is required.

At the second pick, transplants are transplanted into separate cups (with a drainage hole). In this case, it is necessary to deepen the instances in the substrate by one node. After the second picking, the plants begin to harden, gradually lowering the temperature from + 22-23 ° C to + 15-22 ° C in the day and + 13-15 ° C at night.

How to cut a bucket?

Cuttings of bakops are carried out in January-March and in August-September. To do this, choose healthy young shoots, cutting them off apical part with two nodes (up to 10 cm) and root them in a moist light substrate to a depth of about 0.5 cm so that the lower node is below the surface of the soil (it will form the root). Remaining on the surface of the node forms ground shoots and leaves. To increase rooting, cuttings can be treated with phytohormones or stimulant preparations.

The container with the cuttings should be placed in a warm moist environment (can be covered with a package and put in a warm place). Rooted plants are planted in the ground (in a permanent place) in early May.

White varieties of bakop grow best.