Evergreen yucca flower has universal qualities, it is suitable for decorating an apartment, a personal plot, used for making cosmetic and medicinal products. Growing tiny palm trees will give the gardener the opportunity in a temperate climate to create in the country the real corners of tropical nature.
How does the yucca blossom?
This plant comes from America, but it has adapted well to the European climate. In the open ground it can be found in the Black Sea region, in Central Asia, southern regions of Ukraine. The yucca flower grows in the form of bushes or false palms with a small tree-like trunk. Leaves on the plant are elongated, with a pointed tip, hard, up to a meter long. They may differ in color or be striped depending on the species. Exotic mini palms do not shed their leaves in winter.
Yucca emits high flower stalks during blossoming, on which numerous fragrant gentle bells of light color appear. Decorative panicle leaves the middle of the bush, reaching a height of half a meter to 2.5 m. Peduncles grow straight or fall. Flowers can be yellow, creamy-green, snow-white. Feature of yucca - flowering occurs at night, while the plant exudes a fragrant aroma, reminiscent of the smell of an expensive detergent.
Types of yucca
In the wild areas of America, there will grow up to 30 types of yucca palms, often large in size, exceeding many trees of our temperate climate. For example, the aloeletic variety of the plant reaches 5 m in height and has a pronounced barrel. In Europe, amateur breed and grow mainly three decorative species, which are well adapted to our weather conditions and have suitable for living space dimensions.
Popular varieties of yucca flower:
- Yucca filamentous. The plant can be planted in areas with a temperate climate, it can withstand up to 20 ° of frost. Its leaves are oblong, bent in the upper part, up to 60 cm long, with characteristic white threads. The flower of a yucca filamentous variety has a flower stalk up to 2.5 m in height, gentle bells on it grow large, up to 7 cm in length.
- Yucca is still. The trunk of the flower is short, the leaves are thin and elongated, bright at the edge. The bells on the gray yucca are greenish-pale or yellowish. The leaves grow on it in the form of a single beam, reaching a length of 90 cm. It can not be called a gentle southern yucca, it grows normally in the air, it is well tolerated by moderate frost and drought.
- Yukka is an elephant. The name got its given form because of the original thick leg. The leaves are located on top of it, and the smooth trunk gradually becomes bare during growing. Falling leaves leave marks on the trunk. In the summer, the yucca flower in the upper part is decorated with inflorescences with white bells.
Cultivation of yucca
The main criteria for the normal growth of this ornamental palm are good lighting of the site and regular moderate watering. Solving the question of how to grow yucca at home, you need to look for a sunny place where it is easier to recreate a temperate climate. Indoors, the optimum temperature for the growth of the flower is about 25 ° C, but not higher than 30 ° C. In the winter we try to protect the yucca from drafts and keep it at 18-20 ° C. In the dark months we light up the plant with lamps, artificially prolonging the light day.
How to plant yucca?
The flower is grown in the form of pot culture or in the open ground. For garden yucca, planting and care is suitable in an open area. We avoid troughs and too shaded areas near the northern walls or under the tree crowns. Ideally, a flower should be planted on a raised place in direct sunlight. Wells must be digged in advance in the autumn months, making holes with a size slightly larger than the diameter of the roots.
Tips for planting a yucca flower:
- it is desirable to transplant the plant if the bush grows strongly, when the root system can be safely divided into parts;
- roots of yucca are easy to damage, they lie to a depth of more than half a meter;
- transplantation is carried out in the spring or in August;
- the yucca flower is afraid of a draft;
- the first top dressing after planting is done no earlier than 14 days later.
Homemade yucca flower - soil
For this flower is the optimal pH in the range of 5.5-6.5 (weakly acidic medium). We select the soil with nutrient and porous composition, so that the root system is well ventilated. Gravel for drainage we use fractions from 3 mm to 4 mm. For indoor yucca, there are several options for good soil, the florist can easily make a simple and affordable composition.
Soil recipe for planting yucca:
- Soddy land (2 parts), leafy earth (2 parts), well perepred humus (1 part), gravel (2 parts).
- Finished soil from the store (2 parts), fine gravel fraction 4 mm (1 part), flaked compost (1 part), substrate from coconut (1 part).
Yucca home - choose a pot
The container for this plant is strong and heavy, as stable as possible. Large plants in the form of small palm trees, like dracaena, yucca, areca, require a pot of solid and durable material. A good-quality clay or plastic version with a hole for drainage of liquid will do. In the ceramic container, the soil dries more uniformly, the rotting of the root system here is less frequent. When transshipment of the flower purchased in the store, we select the container 2-3 cm more in diameter than the transport pot.
How to propagate yucca?
It is difficult to dilute this flower in Europe, in our zone there are no necessary kinds of insects pollinating in the nature its gentle bells. Breeders came up with several methods available to obtain new bush of a favorite palm tree, which can be easily carried out at home. You will need a powerful adult plant from which you can take offsprings or other vegetative organs for reproduction.
Ways of breeding yucca:
- Reproduction by root offspring. Use of layers cut off from the mother bush. The roots with a developed system are selected, which are guaranteed to take root. For yucca, reproduction in this way is easy, caring for the seedlings does not require much effort.
- Reproduction of the flower of the elephant yucca by the apex of the palm. If you want to achieve branching crowns cut off the tip of the plant up to 10 cm long, leaving part of the leaves. Slices on the flower are sprinkled with charcoal, dried, we put the resulting residue in water or in moist sand. Rotting leaves are removed, water is changed, to prevent the appearance of bacteria we add charcoal to the liquid. After the appearance of tiny roots, we transplant the yucca into the ground.
- Reproduction of yucca by a piece of bared stem. The lower end of the stem is soaked for a couple of days in the rooting stimulator, then it is planted in light soil to a depth of 5 cm. The sand is continuously moistened until the leaves appear. You can put a large thick piece of yucca flower horizontally in the sand, half deepening it into the substrate. When sprouts appear, they are separated and rooted.
- Reproduction of yucca seeds. Sow fresh and soaked seeds for a day to a mixture of sand, earth, turf (1: 1: 1). Moisten the soil and cover the container with glass. Seedlings will appear under optimal conditions in a month.
How to take care of yucca at home?
An important condition when growing ornamental palms on the street is a reliable protection in the cold months from the freezing point of growth. For an adult yucca, winter care consists in covering the plant with foliage or lapnik, placing it in a wooden container. Before this we tie the leaves with a rope, collecting them all neatly upwards. You can not be late with the discovery of yucca in the spring, after the arrival of heat, the foliage gets out and mold develops.
How to water yucca?
The plant itself tells you when you want to water it. Under good conditions and normal soil moisture, the leaves are straightened out, and the threads on them are twisted. In the drought, the xiphoid leaves begin to twist painfully, and the threads hang freely. Yucca flowers when leaving at home, watered with such frequency that the soil in the pot dried up to about half the height of the container.
How to feed yucca?
Fertilizer is introduced the entire warm period in 3-4 weeks from April to August. In the question of how to care for yucca, universal compounds for flowers, palms and medicinal plants - "Kemira" , "Agricola" , other similar preparations are suitable. Good help infusions of mullein, leaf humus, peat processing products. It is possible to produce foliar top dressing in a leaf after 2-3 weeks, exactly following the instructions to the purchased products.
Yukka transplantation at home
In the case, how to transplant yucca on the street, it is important not to burn the plant under the sun. Must be purchased seedling subjected to hardening, every day we take it out to the open sun. The time for planting is chosen warm at a temperature of about 20 ° C. You can not plant a plant near the occurrence of groundwater. At the bottom of the hole we arrange a layer of drainage from gravel and sand.
Transplantation of a yucca flower into a new pot is carried out every two years. Capacity is large and stable. The plant is powerful, the leaf mass is heavy, so the flower requires good support. The volume of the drainage mass is up to 7 cm (about 1/3 of the total soil volume). For more weight we use not lightweight expanded clay, but gravel or broken brick. Be sure to add some charcoal to the ground.
How to trim yucca at home?
If there is one trunk, we cut off the stretched flower at any chosen altitude. In the case when the plant has several trunks, we cut the shoots with a height difference of 10-15 cm. So you will get a multileveled lush crown and the leaves will not obscure each other. For a yucca flower, care during this period is to reduce irrigation before the soil dries. Sprinkle the trunk with gray or charcoal.
Diseases of yucca
The main causes of most flower diseases are excessive watering and hypothermia of the roots. The development of fungi is impeded by the arrangement of good drainage and planting of plants in a light aired soil, periodic loosening of the earth. From infections the yucca tree can be treated with fungicides - "Previcurus", "Phytosporin". We follow the composition of the soil, a strong acidity or alkalinity leads to the death of the bush.
If there are signs of disease (sagging and blackening of the leaves), the trunk is extracted from the ground, rotted rootlets are cut off, the plant is soaked in fungicides ("Maxim"). Leaving leaves from poor lighting, so you need to move the yucca closer to the window or make a transfer. Rolling of leaves with a tube occurs in the summer from the heat or when growing a flower next to the battery.