Thuja - one of the brightest representatives of evergreen conifers. It is often used in the planning of landscape design. Beautiful slender pyramids of this plant are very unpretentious in care and have a useful property to emit active substances into the air - phytoncides. This is what the lush green handsome gardeners and summer residents, who know how to grow thuja, fell in love with. Thuja breeds cuttings and seeds. Planting cuttings of various varieties can be purchased at the nursery or from an experienced gardener who breeds them. From the same seed, it is quite easy to grow a thuja by yourself Let's try to figure out exactly how you can grow thou yourself.
Did you know? Thuja western grows in all conditions of cultivation, such unpretentiousness it will appeal to novice gardeners.
Thuja seeds: the pros and cons of this method
A great advantage of growing a tui seed at home is the possibility of growing a large number of seedlings at the same time, and they will be the same size and age. This is interesting to those who are planning to make a hedge or a composition on a large plot. In addition, thuja grown from seed, will be better adapted to the area of cultivation.
This method is cheap to use, but it has its drawbacks:
- a long process of seedling development. The period from seed to planting the plant in the soil lasts about 5 years;
- seedlings will be similar in appearance, but may lose the shape and quality of their predecessor varieties.
How to harvest seeds and prepare the soil
If you thought about it well and decided to reproduce the thuja with seeds, you need to seriously approach this issue. It all begins with the collection of seeds in early autumn. For this, ripe brown or brownish seed buds are removed from the parent tree and dried in a warm room for several days. When the bump is revealed, you need to gently knock on it. This will provide an opportunity to extract and collect small brown seeds. After collecting the seeds, it is necessary to stratify.
Wrap the collected seeds with a cloth and bury them in the ground, cover them with fallen leaves or with existing insulation. Overwintered seeds are removed from the thawed earth and poured into a container filled with sand from above, which must be placed in the refrigerator for a couple of months. The next important stage is soil preparation. For good growth, thuja need a special nutrient mixture: sod land and peat in equal parts and a double portion of sand.
Important! To give the crown of the Tui the necessary outlines can be a garden shears, cutting off the upper parts of the shoots on the side and on the top.
Sowing technology: how to propagate thuy seeds
At the bottom of the wooden box, pre-laid drainage of at least 2 cm, prepared nutritional mixture is poured in from above, leveled and compacted. Then, thuja seeds are sown evenly in the furrows made. The aisle should not be less than 6-7 cm. The seeds are slightly crushed with peat-sand mixture, irrigated with a spray gun, and the box is covered with a film or glass before germination. Watering is carried out using a spray bottle to avoid leaching of seeds from the soil.
The pot should be in a warm place before seed germination. After the sprouts appear, the pot with thujas is moved to a cool place with sufficient lighting. In this case, the airing and removal of spoiled sprouts is mandatory. 40 days after planting, thuja seedlings should ascend well, after which the film is removed. This method of growing thuja from seeds gives a very good germination, but requires considerable effort and the availability of a pot for planting.
Did you know? The variety of Tui Smaragd is a real survivor, it grows up to 150 years.However, there is another option, how to grow thuja from seeds in an easier way. For this purpose, the collection of the seed is carried out in November and immediately seeded into the ground without prior treatment. It does not hurt to fall asleep for sowing the sawdust, which will create favorable conditions for the seeds. In the spring, if this method is successful for your seeds, shoots will appear in appearance resembling dill. With this most natural method of growing a thuja seedling can grow up to 7 cm in height.
How to care for seedlings
So, we figured out how to thuja breeds, and now we will study the process of caring for seedlings. If the so-called Tui seedlings are not heavily thickened and there is room for each plant to grow, then in the first year of their life, the seedlings are not transplanted. You can pour into the box the soil mixture in which the seeds were planted.
In the second year of life in the spring, seedlings should be planted in separate pots and put in a dark place on the street. Watering at the same time should be moderate. In the winter the plants are transferred to the room. In the third year of life since May, the seedlings are put out into the street, and in the fall they are ready for planting at a permanent place of growth.
Temperature support
The plant should be in the penumbra, the optimum temperature for seedlings in the summer from +17 to +23 degrees. A pot with a thuja should winter with a temperature of +15 to +18 degrees.
After planting in the open ground for the winter, seedlings must be wrapped.
The choice of lighting
Seedlings need protection from direct sunlight. When storing a box with thuja seedlings at home, place it on a window to the north or west. Plants will have perfect diffused light for development.
Feeding seedlings
To improve the growth of seedlings need to organize regular feeding of minerals such as potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen, will also be useful molybdenum, boron and manganese. The Agricol and Mortar fertilizers are well suited for such purposes. Fertilize seedlings twice a month.
Important! When transplanting, do not deepen the root neck of the plant; this may cause its death.
When to transplant seedlings and how to do it
Transplantation of seedlings into the open ground is made not earlier than the third year if necessary, but it is better to do it in the fifth year of life. First you need to choose a darkened seat and prepare it. To do this, it is necessary to fertilize every square meter of future garden area with the following composition: a bucket of humus, 2 tbsp. spoon "Nitroammofoski" and a glass of wood ash. This mixture must be mixed, spread on the ground and thoroughly dig up the area.
Now the most important point - how to grow tuyu in open ground. Seedlings are planted so that within a radius of 30 cm there is free space for growth and development. Having transplanted a seedling, it is watered and mulched with peat. Further care is simple, requires infrequent watering, loosening and removing weeds. After the thuja seedling reaches a height of half a meter, the plant is ready to transplant to a permanent growing place.
Now we know how to propagate thuy seeds. Although it is a long process that takes more than one year, but very interesting. Collecting the seed, its preparation, planting, the first shoots, bewilderment - all of a sudden it is dill, not thuja, the appearance of the first needles, then the characteristic for the thuja "scales", several transplants - and the plant pleases you with its juicy crown.
Since real gardeners are not afraid of difficulties, they use this method of reproduction of pyramidal and spherical varieties of thuja.
