This is a guest from China on our sites, which is often referred to as the "autumn lilac." The plant is spectacular and you want to keep it in the winter so that you can enjoy the flowering season for the next season. A good news for gardeners will be the fact that it is quite easy to keep it in winter, since in warm regions it is perfectly experienced this time even without shelter. But even with such excellent indicators, you will have to prepare the plant several times.
Trimming Budlei for the winter
If you live in a warm strip, you can not do without pruning. It is important here not just to make clever cuts. The fact is that the success of hibernation is also affected by the literacy of planting the bush initially. The three-year-old bush should be in its permanent place in April-May. The younger bushes hibernate in tubs with soil in the basement.
Approximately from the end of June under a bush potassium-phosphoric additional dressings are brought. As soon as the foliage is noticed on the bush, it should be cut at a distance of about 20 cm from the ground. Cooking adult bushes budlei to winter begin in October after the cut was almost under the root: planting properly watered and then a day later they hibernate.
How can I cover for the winter?
Next, we turn to a more detailed consideration of the question of how to shelter the budlej for the winter. We also dwell on some contradictory points. After trimming, the bushes are hunted by one of the methods that we will consider below. And further opinions diverge. Gardeners use three basic methods of preparing budlei for winter:
- All the same hills only dry ground. Then there is the option to use boxes, which then will be covered with a layer of snow. Instead of wooden boxes, you can safely use pieces of slate or similar material. Your goal is to get an air layer between the ground mound and snow. The fact is that even such a shelter does not give you a guarantee of a successful wintering for the bush. Young plants and decorative varieties are afraid of spring frosts. And still can bear the danger and warm winter, when snow first falls a lot, then it begins to melt. This will lead to soil wetting and putrefaction of the buds of the bush in shelter.
- That is why there is a different opinion regarding the care for the budlei for the winter. The pruning scheme and the principle of hilling are no different. But instead of slate or boxes, some gardeners prefer to use iron arcs. On these arcs, a film or spunbond or other covering material is stretched , and already on top of it falls snow. You will get something remotely similar to a greenhouse. For the middle band, the height of the arcs is about 30 cm, and for the colder regions it is up to 40 cm. We thus obtain a large air layer and retain heat for the plant.
- There is also a third option for preparing the house for winter, but it is suitable only for the coldest regions. It is that after trimming and watering you do not need to fill the bush with soil, but use sawdust.
Approximately a bag of sawdust, we pour just on the prepared bush, and in the middle of May the sawdust is removed, and the plant successfully moves into growth. But this method is only for cold regions, as in a warm climate sawdust contributes to the accumulation of moisture and putrefaction of the kidneys.
Thus, care for the budlei for the winter is reduced to four main stages. First we feed the plant, then cut it right and water it. Next, we should choose the type of hilling (sawdust or soil) and the method of covering. It is difficult to say what exactly will be the ideal solution for you, but the goal remains the same: to prevent the pereprevanyvaniya. And this is achieved by the correct height of the embankment and the size of the air cushion. And by the way, a plant grown from seeds to colds is much better adapted and winters without losses.