Cypress

 
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Cypress family. Homeland Mediterranean, America.

Commercially available Cypress large-fruited Cupressus macrocarpa - differs in small size and is bred specifically as a indoor crop. Cypress is a coniferous crop, it is an evergreen tree with a pyramidal crown. The leaves are small, needle-shaped or scaly, sessile, tightly fitting to the stems. Cypress tissues contain a large amount of essential oils, so the plant is very useful for the house.

The methods of its cultivation and care are the same as for araucaria. In stores, especially on New Year's Eve, you can find cypresses of a wide variety of forms - trimmed in the form of a pyramid, shrub, small tree. Cypress really resembles a miniature live Christmas tree and can be a wonderful New Year's gift. True, there are cypresses, which are processed in the store with special sparkles so that they look more like a Christmas tree. In reality, this harms the plant, so it is better to purchase cypress in its natural form, without decorating with sparkles and toys.

If you want to decorate cypress under the Christmas tree, then you can hang multi-colored rain or paper toys on it, which are practically weightless and will not harm the plant. In general, cypress is an unpretentious plant, the difficulty lies in the fact that it does not tolerate dry air.

Home cypress care

Temperature: moderate in summer - cypress does not tolerate heat, cool in winter - at least + 5 ° С, optimal wintering at 8-10 ° С. From the end of May to the end of August, it is better to keep cypress in the fresh air, in shading and with protection from drafts. Hot air from heating batteries is destructive for cypress.

Lighting: Cypress needs bright diffused light, shading from direct sunlight, especially in summer. In winter, cypress needs a bright room. If in summer the content of cypress on an open (unshaded) windowsill (except for windows with a north orientation) is unacceptable due to the heat, then in winter it will be necessary to rearrange the cypress as close to the light as possible, even to the south window, but only to the hot early spring sun. With a lack of light, the cypress stretches and loses its shape, on the contrary, with an excess of light, the leaves turn yellow and crumble.

  • Watering: plentiful from spring to autumn - but exclusively on well-drained soil! Cypress does not tolerate excess water and does not tolerate drying out of the earth. More precisely, drying out an earthen coma is simply destructive for a conifer. Watering in winter depends on the temperature in the room, for example, when kept at a temperature of + 8 ° C, watering will be about once every 14-20 days, and at a temperature of 12-14 ° C once every about 7-10 days (everything is purely approximate, it will be more correct to check the soil by touch or estimate the weight of the pot
    • ).
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Fertilization: from May to August, a month after transplantation, cypress is fed with complex fertilizer for conifers (for example, Bona Forte for conifers) at the recommended dose or for deciduous indoor, but in half, of the recommended dose. Feeding is carried out once a month.

Air humidity: regular spraying in spring and summer. If in winter it is not possible to provide the cypress with a cool room, then it also needs to be sprayed with warm water in the morning and evening.

Transplant: annually in the spring, in April - May. Cypress very poorly tolerates injury to the root system, so a complete transplant with land replacement is only necessary, usually transshipment is used, with partial replacement of the upper layer of the earth. Simply put, only the land that easily separates from the roots itself if the conifer is taken out of the pot is replaced. The soil for cypress is the 1 part of the turf land, the 2 part of the sheet (or peat), the 1 part of the coarse sand (fine gravel). Cypress loves loose soil, when transplanting, make sure that the root neck is not buried in the ground, otherwise the plant may die. Good drainage to the bottom of the pot is a must.

Breeding: woody cuttings in spring and summer. Seeds in spring.

Heft cypress

  1. Find a twig of last year's growth on a cypress tree - a two-year-old , still green, but already beginning to wood the shoot. Cut about 10-12cm from the crown. Remove the needles from its lower part, leaving about 4 cm of smooth petiole.
  2. Prepare about a cup (125g) of a mixture of peat earth and sand in equal parts (the sand can be replaced with vermiculite). Disinfect it for 2 minutes in the microwave, cool and slightly moisten with boiled water.
  3. Put the soil in a transparent zip bag (with plastic zipper). Take a wide package, and at the bottom glue with tape from two corners so that you get a cone. Place the handle in it, spray from the spray bottle (boiled water only), and close tightly.
  4. Hang the bag on a very bright spot where direct sun only hits in the morning or evening. Do not open the bag, there is no need to ventilate and water - the humidity will remain 95-97%. Roots should wait 2-3 months. When they grow about 5-7 cm, you can plant a twig in a pot with a diameter of 8 cm.

Growing problems

  • Yellowing of leaves in cypress may occur due to a lack of watering (drying out the soil and roots), or vice versa - excessive watering, when the soil inside the pot does not dry out at all.
  • Cypress is also sick from too warm content: in winter at temperatures above 12-14 ° C and above 24-25 ° C in summer, from dry air, lack of nutrients in the soil, excess calcium in the soil (watering with too hard water or latching the soil
    • ).
  • Brown leaf tips become after excessive fertilization, as well as from dry air, watering with cold water, especially on a hot day.
  • The hardest thing about keeping cypress is combining good light and cool. Remember how beautiful cypresses are somewhere in the Crimea? There they are in the sun, and illuminated at least 10-12 hours, but in fresh and humid air! At home, on a sunny windowsill, cypress can burn as early as February. Therefore, if there is nowhere to rearrange it, you need to shade it with a white veil, for example.
  • Spider mite: this pest is initially inconspicuous, just needles dry for an unknown reason, and only when the web becomes visible, it is clear - through whose fault. You need to treat immediately with chemicals: spray with an actellic solution (1-2 ml per liter of water). Phytoverm, apollo, neoron and other acaricides can be used.

    • Buying cypress

    This is a very tempting idea - to buy cypress for the New Year - a real miniature Christmas tree on the window. Not so simple! Plants often cannot adapt and die during the first weeks of living in an apartment. In what conditions they were in the store, how long they traveled and what stimulants they grew up on, one can only guess.

    To facilitate acclimatization - do not transplant cypress immediately after purchase, place on the coolest windowsill, water very carefully, literally drink from a spoon, but spray more often (water should not flow into the pot). If cypress is bought in late winter-spring, ensure shade from the midday sun.

    When buying cypress, pay attention to branches and needles - it is not necessary to be dry and yellowed needles (often yellowed from waterlogging, dry, brown - from the heat), spend carefully - i.e. stroke the cypress with your hand, if there is dry needles, it will begin to crumble. On some types of cypress, dry twigs and needles are almost indistinguishable from live ones - it gives a barely distinguishable pale (dull) tint.