Palm trees

Palm family. Excellent members of this family are the best representatives of ornamental and deciduous plants for growing in indoor conditions, although the best place for a palm tree is in the conservatory. The birthplace of most palm trees is the tropics and subtropics. At home, palm trees grow to huge sizes, for example, leaves can reach 15-17 m in length and 2 m in width. Nevertheless, many of the palm trees turned out to be rather not whimsical, and a fairly slow growth allows them to be successfully grown in city apartments.

There are several species of so-called domestic palms - they can be grown as houseplants. Conventionally, according to the shape of the leaves, they can be divided into two groups:

• pinnate (dipsis, coconut, date, hovea, hamedorrhea)
• fan-leafed (caryote, hamerops, trachycarpus, liviston).

At-home palm care

Most palm trees grown at home require a fairly spacious space. A lounge or lounge is best. Even if your palm is not big, it is still a single plant, and nothing should interfere with it. By the way, if there is a cat in the house, then keep in mind that a palm tree may turn out to be a very tasty green for it. Palm care is simple: timely watering, annual transplantation, periodic feeding and rinsing of leaves from dust.

Lighting

The room where the palm tree will grow should be bright, with good sunlight. Bright diffused light is best, since not all palm trees tolerate direct sun well, most of them require shading in the hottest spring-summer time - from 11 to 16 hours on the south and west sides. As a shade in summer, a light tulle curtain on the window is enough. But this is only in summer, and in the period from August to February, the palms are not afraid of any sun. In winter in the middle latitudes, shading is not required at all.

Very often they try to decorate the dark corners of the room with palm trees, forgetting that there are no shade-loving indoor plants, there are only shade-tolerant ones. In addition, the crown of palm trees is spreading and requires uniform lighting from all sides. Therefore, already a meter from the window, it is desirable to organize additional lighting with fluorescent lamps.

Temperature

Palm trees of tropical origin require maintenance in winter in moderately warm or warm rooms, where from 16 to 24 ° C. Palm trees, whose homeland is subtropical, are best kept in winter only in cool rooms, where the temperature is about 8-12 ° C. All palm trees do not tolerate drafts. You should especially be wary of cold air when airing the room in winter through the window and door. Palm roots are very sensitive to cold, so palm pots are not placed directly on a cold windowsill or marble floor slabs. To prevent the root system from hypothermia, a pot of palm is placed in another larger pot, or wooden tub, and the space between the walls of the containers is covered with expanded clay, filled with sphagnum moss, or peat.

• Palm trees of warm rooms: areca, coconut, caryote, hamedorrhea, acanthophenix, phoenix Robelini - require warm content and high humidity.
• Palm trees of moderate premises: hovei (Belmore, Forster), Bonneti coconut, geonoma, clinostigma, ropalostilis, rapis.
• Palm trees of cool rooms: hamerops, brachea, Washington, trachycarpus, etc.

Watering

All palm trees, even those that come from dry areas, are quite moisture-loving, so watering in summer is plentiful, almost every day, and moderate in winter. But this notion of moisture-loving only applies to palm trees planted in loose ground, with good drainage. I.e. when watering, the earth should have time to dry out in the upper third of the pot. And in the depths (if you touch your finger) - to be slightly moist all the time, but not raw. The frequency of watering directly depends on the air temperature, for example, when keeping a palm tree in a very cool room in winter (about 5-7 ° C), the plant is watered very rarely (once every 1.5-2 months), or watering is replaced with light spraying. Palm care also consists in periodic loosening of the top layer of soil after watering  .

Air humidity

Palm trees love moist air, for them the optimal humidity is 40-50%. Therefore, palm trees need regular spraying, especially in summer in the heat and in winter in a heated room. Due to the dryness of the air, palm trees suffer greatly (the ends of the leaves dry) and lose their decorative attractiveness (see below). Water for spraying should be warm, while spraying the plant on both sides of the leaves. In winter, the humidity in apartments is on average 20-25%, while spraying only temporarily facilitates the situation, but in no case should the watering be increased. Remember that extra watering does not compensate for the lack of humidity! In such cases, it helps to hang the batteries with wet sheets and install an air humidifier, and for small palm trees, place the pot on a wide tray with wet expanded clay or moss-sphagnum.

How to transplant a palm tree

The soil is 2 part light clay-turf, 2 part humus-leaf, 1 part peat, 1 part rotted manure, 1 part sand and some charcoal. This is a very nutritious soil. Palm trees will not grow well on poorer soil mixtures. Palm transplants are carried out in the spring. Young palm trees up to 3 years old - annually, older than 3 years - after 3-5 years. In general, palm trees do not really like transplantation, but if it is done correctly, they tolerate it well. One of the conditions for proper transplantation is the selection of appropriate dishes. To do this, you need to examine the root system of the plant - if the roots have grown in width, closer to the walls of the pot, then they take a new pot of a larger diameter; if the roots grew mainly down, i.e. in the depth of the pot, then the new pot should be larger than the previous one, but not in diameter, but in height.

If diseased or damaged roots are found during the transplant, they must be removed without damaging healthy tissue.

Before planting, a good drainage is necessarily placed in the pot and compost (well rotted manure) is applied on top of it in a layer of 3-8 cm, depending on the age of the plant and the size of the dishes. Then the plant is placed in a pot and covered with earth, while the soil is slightly compacted. After transplanting palm trees, even the sun-loving do not put in direct sunlight. Watering the first two weeks after the transplant is moderate.

If the roots of a palm tree protrude strongly from the pot, then it is best to cover them with wet moss. Since adult palm trees are transplanted after a few years, and they consume nutrients quickly, despite regular feeding in spring and summer, it is recommended to annually (if the root system allows) remove the top layer of the earth (the most depleted), and replace it with fresh nutritious soil (you can compost - it, unlike fresh manure, does not smell).

Palm fertilizer

Top dressing is used in cases where the plant is healthy and is in a period of growth, not rest. Palm trees are fertilized in 2-3 weeks with fertilizers for ornamental and deciduous plants.

Top dressing is carried out only after the earthen lump is watered and saturated with water. You can feed with any purchased fertilizers suitable for palm trees, for example, "Ideal," "Uniflor-growth" "Tsniflor-micro," "Ispin," etc. Palm trees are not fed in autumn and winter, as well as the first two months after transplantation into fresh land.

Hygiene

To prevent the attack of thrips, aphids and other pests, it is necessary to periodically wipe the leaves of palm trees with a wet sponge, and small plants can be immersed in leaves in warm water with a solution of Persian chamomile or green soap. After 30 minutes, the plant must be washed with clean warm water. Palm trees are regularly sprayed, in summer they are carried out in the rain, or at home under the shower, if the size of the plant allows.

Propagation of palm trees

Palm trees can be propagated by seeds, but this is a rather difficult business and not everyone succeeds. Palm seeds lose germination quite quickly. Palm seeds germinate on average after 20-30 days (liviston, washingtonia, sabal, trachycarpus), with soil heating, palm seeds stored for 3-4 years germinate after 2-4 months. Therefore, buy only fresh seeds, best in flower shops.

Before sowing, large seeds having a hard shell must be carefully sawed so as not to damage the seed itself, not large seeds, but also having a hard shell soak for 3-4 days in warm water (30-35 ° C). Seed sowing is best done in late winter or early spring. Seeds are soaked in warm water for 2-3 days before sowing. Pots for planting seedlings take no more than 15 cm in height, otherwise the roots of the seedlings grow greatly in length. At the bottom of the pot, there must be one or more holes for water runoff.

First, a good drainage of shard and a mixture of river sand and expanded clay is placed in the pot (you can broken red brick or small pieces of foam), then a soil mixture consisting of 1 part of turf and 3 parts of coarse sand is poured. On top of the soil mixture, clean river sand is poured with a layer of 4 cm, into which palm seeds are sown, no deeper than 2-3 cm. The sowing density is 3-3.5 cm between the seeds. To keep the soil moist, it is covered with a small layer of moss from above. The optimal temperature for seed germination is 20-22 ° C for subtropical palms and 28-30 ° C. Seedlings are poured daily with water, the temperature of which is not lower than room temperature.

When the sprouted seedlings grow a first leaf measuring 8-10 cm, they are transplanted into pots with a diameter of 9 cm into a soil mixture consisting of 3 parts of turf, 2 parts of humus, 2 parts of leaf earth and 1 parts of sand. Good drainage is also poured on the bottom of the pot. If the seedling has a very long root, then it is twisted in a spiral and covered with earth, while it is necessary to preserve the remainder of the seed, which will provide nutrition to the young plant. The soil is compacted and watered abundantly.

It is even more convenient to sow palm seeds in peat tablets. After germination of the seed and emergence of seedlings, peat tablets, without violating their integrity, are planted in pots.

The pot is placed in a warm and bright place, but so that direct sunlight does not fall. For the first two weeks, planted seedlings are watered moderately, allowing the soil to dry slightly in the upper layers, and after that - more abundantly, maintaining the soil constantly in a slightly moistened state. But remember that palm trees cannot tolerate excessive dampness.