How to plant a Christmas tree in the country and take care of it

Unlike deciduous trees, the appearance of conifers remains attractive at any time of the year, so many owners strive to decorate their plot with this attribute of Christmas. But before planting a spruce on the site, you should decide on the type of tree, choose the optimal placement and properly prepare the soil in the country for planting a plant.

Choosing a variety of Christmas tree

The main criterion when choosing a type of coniferous tree is the shape of the crown and the height of an adult plant.

When decorating a summer cottage, three types of spruce are mainly used.

• Common spruce is a type of plant 1.2-3 meters high. The shade of the needles is from golden to bright green. This species can most often be found in the country.
• Gray spruce - got its name due to the grayish color of the tree bark and the gray-blue or ash shade of the needles. Tall varieties of spruce have a cone-shaped crown, and in dwarf plants, the top looks like a nest or a ball.
• Thorny spruce is a tree with a decorative conical crown, sometimes reaching a height of 40 meters. Less common are dwarf trees up to 2 m. The needles of such spruces are very prickly, their color ranges from whitish-blue or silver to turquoise.

When choosing a spruce for a small summer cottage, you should stop at a plant of medium or dwarf height, and tall ones are suitable for a country house with a large area. When decorating plots in the country, medium or dwarf species are especially popular.

Purchase or search for a seedling

You can start a Christmas tree in different ways. It can be picked from a nursery, brought from the forest, or grown independently in a container.

• Nurseries sell grown trees, dig them up in the presence of the buyer, or offer spruce in containers. Trees that have a bare root system may not survive until they are planted in the ground. Therefore, it is very important to choose a fir tree with intact roots and an earthy clod that protects them from the external environment. It will be much easier to grow such a tree, since the tree will tolerate transplantation well, it will hurt less and adapt faster.
• If the type of wood does not matter, then you can bring a Christmas tree from the forest by choosing a tree from 1 to 2 meters. The tree should be dug on all sides to extract with a large earthy clod. Small trees can be transported from the forest with bare roots, but during transportation, cover them with tarpaulin material, and upon arrival immediately plant them in a prepared pit.
• To grow a seedling from a seed, you must bring open cones from the forest in winter and collect the seeds. In the container for planting plants, add soil taken from the forest, or pour soil mixture for conifers. The seeds are planted in the ground to a depth of 5 mm and placed in a cold place.

In the warm season, the tree should be regularly moistened, and in the cool season, watering should be reduced to two times in 30 days. To ensure dormant periods, the plant should be periodically exposed to the balcony or yard. In one year, a spruce can grow up to 25 cm in height.

Seat selection

Since the spruce can reach a height of 10 and a width of 5 m, you must carefully choose a place for planting. Under natural conditions, the plant thrives on the river, where its root system can receive enough moisture. But the tree does not like wetlands, so caring for it involves arranging drainage.

Advice

Spruce strongly depletes the soil, so it should not be planted next to fruiting crops. In addition, it should be borne in mind that in adulthood, spruce is a fairly large tree.Therefore, it is undesirable to plant it under electrical wires.

Fir trees feel great surrounded by birches. They are not afraid of the shade that birches give, on the contrary - it is even useful for them. Spruce is one of the rare trees that retain their beauty in the shade.

Digging up the fir

In the forest, you can find and dig up small one-year-old Christmas trees. To carefully transplant a tree, you should first dig around it. The pit circumference should be equal to the diameter of the lower branches, and the depth should be at least 0.5 m.

The roots of the plant must be carefully removed from the ground, without shaking off. Then lay the spruce on a thick fabric and pack carefully, marking the cardinal points with colored tape. Load the tree and the bag with forest soil into the transport and transport to the planting site, taking care not to damage the branches and root system during transportation.

The soil in the forest is different from that in the garden. Therefore, we must take the land from the forest from the place where the tree was dug.

All varieties of spruce love light soil. They grow poorly on heavy soils. Before planting a plant, mineral fertilizer (about 100 grams) must be applied to poor soil.

Planting a tree

The best time to plant spruce is spring or early fall. At this time, the plant has already passed or has not yet entered the phase of active growth. Container-grown conifers can be planted later as the roots are not affected.

The size of the pit for planting the plant should match the volume of the earthen coma. For small plants 2–3 years old, a deepening of 60 by 80 cm is enough, and if it is necessary to plant a large tree, the hole should be slightly larger than an earthen lump. The distance between the recesses for large plants should be three meters, for medium ones - 3-5 m, and for dwarf ones, from 0.5 to 1 m is enough.

Sequence of actions for landing

1. To ensure drainage, fragments of bricks are placed at the bottom of the dug hole. Soil is poured on top. For this purpose, forest land mixed with humus is suitable.
2. The plant is placed in a pit along with an earthen clod. In no case should the root collar be deepened into the soil, it should be correctly positioned flush with the ground.
3. Cover roots carefully with soil and compact slightly. It is important to keep the original position of the tree relative to the cardinal points when transplanting. To do this, you need to make a mark on one of the sides of the tree, so that you can then navigate by this sign.
4. The tree must be fixed by tying it to two stakes, and an earthen roller should be made around the tree to delay irrigation water and form a near-trunk circle for laying mulch from chips and sawdust in order to protect it from frost, drying out and rodents.
5. At the first time after planting, the seedling needs regular watering and care. In the summer, the soil under the tree must be watered, but in the winter this is not necessary.

Mineral dressing should be introduced next spring. If the spruce is properly planted and cared for, it will adapt pretty soon.

Plant care conditions

Ate loves sunlight, but young seedlings need extra care and shading. They can suffer from the spring sun, because of which they can lose needles and lose their decorative effect. It is better to plant them near walls and fences, which will give them the necessary shade at first.

It should be borne in mind that the root system takes up a lot of space around the spruce and may eventually rest on communications and the foundation of the house. It is located shallow and does not like soil compaction, so it is undesirable to trample the surface of the earth near the tree. Young seedlings for the winter should be covered with spruce branches, which must be removed after the termination of spring frosts. Adults ate hardy enough and do not need insulation.

With prolonged drought, the plant needs additional care in the form of watering. It is necessary to closely monitor the level of soil moisture. When watering, water should not be poured under the trunk, but in a circle within a radius of 30 cm from the tree trunk.The amount of water to moisten the soil in hot weather should be from 10 to 12 liters per plant with watering every 7 days.

Blue spruce is a rather demanding plant, the care of which consists in pruning dry and diseased branches. This event should be held in spring and autumn. When growing blue spruce for decorative purposes, it is necessary to provide them with appropriate care, it consists in the formation of the crown of trees. The first pruning should be done in the year of planting, and then every 2-3 years, cutting off the branches by 10-15 cm.

Observing these simple rules, you can create a picturesque corner in the country, and a healthy and well-groomed plant will fit favorably into the landscape of the site. Spruces have many decorative varieties and shades of needles, so a suitable specimen can be selected for almost any style direction.

Spruce caring consists of proper planting, shading, fertilization, pruning, and watering infrequently. Coniferous trees planted on the border of the summer cottage or on the sides of the road look very decorative. The plant is quite difficult to adapt and take root, but if the result is achieved, the spruce will delight the eye with its lush needles all year round.