Muscari (another name - grape hyacinth, "viper onion") is a perennial plant with small onions, a relative of a hyacinth . Such a plant can grow to a height of 30 cm. Its flowers have a vivid color and are often used in floristry to compose wedding bouquets. Gardeners also grow Muscari in pots at home, as well as on their own plot, placing them on alpine slides or curbs.
Muscari: planting and care
The plant is very unpretentious, and growing and caring for muscari will give you real pleasure. But before you buy muscari, you still need to know how to take care of it, in order to evaluate your strengths and the opportunity to create optimal conditions for the plant to blossom.
When to plant muscari?
Planting material are young bulbs, which usually have a lot of children.
Muscari are small-mouthed flowers and plant them in late August or early September. For landing is suitable for sunny or shaded place. But it should be borne in mind that the plant should be planted on a small elevation, because in case of possible stagnation of water in the soil of the bulb, muscari may rot in the soil.
The soil must be rather loose. In clay soil muscari may not settle down. Before planting, the ground needs to be prepared: for this, it is fertilized with organic fertilizers (compost, humus). Such a fertilizer will allow bulbs to grow faster, they will become large, and hence the flowers themselves will be larger. If the plant is regularly fed, then it can grow in one place up to ten years. After growing the plant for 10 years, muscari requires a transplant.
Then you can proceed directly to planting the plant. Since the bulbs are too small for him, it is possible to excavate not individual holes in the bed, but to make a whole trench 8 cm deep at a time. Then lay the bulbs in a trench a short distance from each other (no more than 10 cm) and sprinkle a little earth. Periodically, you need to remove the growing weeds around the muscari.
The plant is very demanding to watering and during the active flowering it needs a lot and often water. After flowering the muscari comes a period of rest and at this time watering should be reduced.
Since muscari has a tendency to grow rapidly, periodically (every 3-4 years) it is necessary to remove peduncles that have already faded.
Muscary: Reproduction
Reproduction of the plant is carried out with the help of bulbs and seeds.
The bulbs are planted at a distance of 5-10 cm from each other and at an average depth of 7 cm.
In one period, it can form up to 30 onions.
If you want to propagate the Muscari with seeds, then it should be done immediately after harvesting the seeds. Sow the seeds in the fall, placing in the soil to a depth of not more than 2 cm. It will not begin to bloom until the third year after the landing. Muscari reproduces well by self-seeding after flowering. However, the seeds lose their germination quite quickly and one should still give preference to reproduction with the help of bulbs.
When to dig muscari?
Every year you do not need to dig up muscari. You can plant plants once every four to five years so that the flowers do not interfere
After you have dug out the plant, you need to cleanse its roots from the ground and dry it in a well-ventilated room for several days. After this, the bulb is best transplanted to a new location. If you do not plan to do this yet, you can put them in a container with peat or wet sand, otherwise the bulbs will dry up.
With proper care and optimal watering, muscari will be the first in the spring to please you with their flowering on the garden.