Planting a blue spruce and caring for a tree

Planting a blue spruce near the country house will immediately turn a nondescript structure into a beautiful fairytale tower. In summer, the site is buried in greenery and flowers, and in the cold season, little is pleasing to the eye. In winter, the charm of the territory can be given by lush drifts, bizarre patterns of branches covered with frost. But in early spring and late autumn, empty flower beds are a pitiful sight. Liven up the landscape with evergreen plantings, the center of the composition can be a fluffy herringbone with silvery needles, grown from seeds or cuttings. Proper care will help grow a tree in the shape of an even cone.

How to get planting material

Centers for the sale of planting material of any plant can be found in every region. Residents of remote remote villages can order packages of seeds remotely, and properly grow any of the rarest crops on their land. It is not difficult to purchase blue spruce seedlings, many nurseries are ready to sell you young conifers. If you want to buy Christmas trees, find the supplier closest to your place of residence, then the plants will not need to adapt to climate change. Be sure to take an interest in the type of spruce, its height, color and shape, tree care depends on it.

• Waldbrunn - dwarf tree, less than a meter high. With age, the crown acquires a spherical shape.
• Bialobok - a variety that reaches a height of 2 m. It is valued for its unusual golden hue in young shoots. The branches are unevenly located, this feature makes it difficult to form an even crown.
• Blue Diamonds - a tall tree reaching 7 m. It grows very slowly, 15 cm per year.
• Bonfire - spruce with branches pointing up. The height reaches 10 m, and the span of the branches is 3 m. On young shoots, a bright orange bark shines through through the bluish needles.
• Montgomery - a slow-growing variety, not exceeding 1.8 m. The needles on young Christmas trees are soft blue, and on adult trees they are blue.

If you want to grow your own tree, you can prepare seedlings from seeds. They ripen by November, at this time and collect the material from the plant you like. Disinfect the seeds in potassium permanganate and sow in soil for conifers to a depth of 1.5 cm. Under natural conditions, the seeds overwinter under snow and germinate in spring. Put the container with crops in the refrigerator and keep it there for 3 months, so you can "trick" the embryos and make them wake up.

When 3 months have passed, place the seed crops in a warm place. Care and cultivation is to keep the soil slightly moist at all times. Do not let the water stagnate, make sure the drain holes work well. With the onset of warmth, move the seedlings to the site. To prevent them from suffering from the cold, cover them with plastic overnight. Protect young plants from bright sunlight, lightly shade them. Christmas trees are planted in a permanent place at the age of 3 years.

You can grow Christmas trees not only from seeds, but also by cuttings. The spruce from which the twigs are taken must be at least 5 years old. In the spring, take a sharp knife and cut off shoots about 20 cm long from the upper branches.Prepare a planting pit, choose its dimensions so that the distance between the seedlings will be at least 10 cm.The depth should be 20 cm, fill the entire volume with layers:

1. Small stones, crushed stone for drainage - 5 cm.
2. Soil - 10cm.
3. Sand - 5 cm.

Dip the cuttings of the twigs into a disinfectant, then into a root formation stimulator and stick the cuttings into the ground to a depth of 5 cm at an angle of 30⁰. Until August, it will be correct to shade the seedlings from direct sunlight.

Spruce planting in open ground

How to plant a blue spruce from seeds or seedlings so that the evergreen beauty shows you all its charm? Place it in a sunny place, provide proper care, then the trunk will be vertical, evenly covered with branches, the crown will grow even, resembling a cone. Such outlines are only in low trees, if you plant a Christmas tree in a fat fertile black soil, it will stretch out and lose its decorative effect. The earth should have a neutral or slightly acidic reaction, if the site is located on limestone, spill the soil with an acidified composition.

To plant seedlings, dig holes both 0.6 m deep and 0.6 m in diameter at a distance of at least 2 m from each other. Be sure to fill the bottom with a stone for drainage: a spruce grown from seeds or seedlings cannot live on soils where water stagnates. If growing on poor soils, add peat or compost to the soil dug out of the hole; Mix heavy clay with sand. The roots of the Christmas tree will be located shallow, the composition of the surface layer of the soil is very important for them.

The best time to disembark is early spring. Try to make a hole: if the soil is already thawed, it's time to plant. The herringbone will spread the roots in the upper layer of the soil so as not to disturb them by loosening, after planting, mulch the near-trunk circle. If you add hydrogel to the soil, the plant will not suffer from a lack or excess of moisture.

Coniferous tree care

On good garden soil, blue spruce feeding is not required. If the cultivation takes place on too poor soil, apply some mineral fertilizers under the young trees in the early spring for the first 5 years. Avoid formulations with a high nitrogen content, and fresh manure is completely contraindicated for plants. With an excess of nutrients, the trunk will quickly stretch out, the branches will become lignified, they will actively release new shoots, and the crown diameter will become too large.

Council. If you want to arrange a corner of a wild coniferous forest on the site, plant blue spruces in fertile soil and fertilize them well. With this care, the trees will grow tall, with a wide branching span. If you use fast-growing high varieties, after a few years on the site there will be a real thicket covered with a silvery haze.

Caring for blue spruce includes loosening the soil. In these trees, the roots are located under the very surface of the earth and cannot get moisture from the deep layers. Overdrying the soil threatens the plants with death. Seedlings need to be watered several times a day, little by little. For mature trees, one watering per day is enough, but the portion should be at least a bucket for each plant. Mulching or hydrogel will help slow down the drying of the soil.

For the crown to have the shape of an even cone, you need carry out formative pruning... In the spring, inspect the tree, remove all deformed, diseased and dried out branches. After that, trim the healthy branches to give the crown the correct shape. This procedure is carried out only on young Christmas trees; after 8 years, it is not recommended to cut off healthy shoots.

Blue spruce, grown from seeds or seedlings, is adapted to frosty winters and does not need protection from the cold. In young plants, a heavy layer of snow can break off branches. Until the trees get stronger, in the fall, bend the shoots to the trunk and secure them in this position with a net or strong rope. In summer, Christmas trees feel good in the sun, and in the snowy season, bright rays can cause them burns. In the cold season, it is better to curtain a coniferous tree with a cloth from the south side.

Diseases and pests

Conifers rarely get sick, and they have few pests. Often problems with blue spruce arise from improper care or inappropriate conditions. If one half of the branches looks great, and the other half dries and crumbles, the plant lacks light, perhaps you planted it too close to buildings or solid fences.In a damp and dark place, the needles may become covered with yellowish stripes or turn completely yellow. Treat the tree with an antifungal drug, but if it remains in the same conditions, the disease will recur.

Hermes larvae can settle on the branches. If you notice any obscure thickening, remove the damaged shoots and spray the trees with insecticide. If grooves appear on the trunk, from which resin is released, a spruce sawfly attacked the plant. It is necessary to treat the spruce with pest control drugs.

When the trees begin to wither, the needles acquire a brownish tint, the young shoots wither - the plant is affected by a fungal infection. It will be correct to completely remove the Christmas tree from the site and burn it in order to protect other specimens from infection. If you don't want to part with the blue spruce, treat both it and the soil with antifungal drugs.

So, buying a blue spruce seedling is an expensive pleasure, and caring for a tree takes time and effort. The soil surface should be loose and the roots are shallow. If you do not grind the soil, you will have to loosen it as carefully as a sapper or archaeologist works. Daily watering in dry weather is also very tiring, and drip irrigation systems can come to the rescue.

If you do not want a dense forest to grow near the house instead of decorative Christmas trees, do not overfeed the plantings. Grow from seed or choose a seedling of the variety that best suits the design of the site in terms of height, crown shape and color. Growing and caring for a silvery spruce will take time and effort from you, but isn't a fabulous tree shrouded in a bluish mist worth it?