Planting calceolaria. Indoor calceolaria - growing from seeds and care. Preparation before planting calceolaria

She has a beautiful name, and most importantly, rare - calceolaria. But seriously, the flower is really unusual. Everyone. Miniature size, exotic, screamingly bright beauty, the shape of a flower, similar to either a slipper or sea ​​shell. Due to the fact that it is so unlike anyone else, it is rarely grown in the garden, they prefer to admire it from a close distance, planting it in a room or on a balcony. But if you want to decorate flower beds with it, first of all, deal with agricultural technology, and we will tell you what to look for.

The first impression of a flower is a tropical butterfly among our whites and urticaria

Calceolaria in nature

Most of the plant species (and there are more than 200 of them) come from South America. When gardeners hear this, for some reason they immediately imagine a tropical climate, heat. And they are wrong. Our heroine lives on the mountain slopes of the Southern Andes (Chile, Argentina), where the average temperature of the summer months rarely exceeds 20⁰ C, but in winter it does not drop below 7–8⁰ C. Nothing in common with Russian climatic differences from heat in summer to bitter cold in winter. It is problematic for us even in a room to create such a microclimate.

In nature, the calceolaria flower is a herbaceous perennial or biennial plant with a long growing season. It germinates for a long time, slowly gaining vegetative mass - from sowing to budding, it usually takes 6-8 months. It blooms for about a month, sometimes a little more, after which the old outlet dies off. These are our primroses on the contrary - "late flowers".

What does it look like?

Most calceolaria, both species and hybrid, are miniature plants 20–30 cm high with a rosette of medium-sized, succulent, slightly corrugated leaves. In some varieties, they are velvety, somewhat reminiscent of a violet. There are generally crumbs, barely reaching 8-10 cm, but there are also larger specimens that grow up to half a meter.

From the center of the rosette, the plant expels thin flower stalks, ending in small drop flowers. With what they are just not compared - with a shoe, a purse, a bag, a shell. In modern hybrids, up to 50 such drops can bloom at the same time. That's very beautiful!

The "chip" of the flower is a spectacular color. It is always bright - yellow, orange, carmine, terracotta, lilac. Rarely - monophonic, more often - speckled, with brown dots, contrasting edging. Calceolaria, the photo of which we provide as confirmation of what has been said, is one of the most modest, but it also looks like splashes of the sun with perky freckles on the petals.

What does he love?

To learn how to grow a plant you like, you need to understand what it loves. Weaknesses of our beauty:

• bright but diffused light (no direct rays!);
• abundant watering;
• high humidity;
• cool room;
• light nutrient soil.

Under these conditions, the plant will feel great, and delight with longer flowering.

Indoor or garden - dot the "i"

Several types of exotic plants have been introduced into the culture.

• K. mexican at home is grown as a biennial. Most often it has a yellow-variegated color, small flowers against the backdrop of bright greenery, they look like lanterns.
• K. tripartite is a heat-loving perennial with pure yellow drops on long pedicels. It does not occur naturally north of Mexico.
• K. wrinkled - a perennial that is grown in Europe as annual flower. With appropriate agricultural technology in urban landscaping, it is used as a border plant. If seedlings are grown by April, they will bloom in June.
• K. purple is distinguished by a rich purple-red color, cultivated in room conditions.

But the most numerous group is hybrid calceolaria - a flower that we grow as an indoor flower. Breeders managed to bring out dozens of varieties with a wide variety of colors - plain, two-tone, speckled, brindle, shaded. Hybrid forms are characterized by delicate pubescent foliage, compact size. You can grow them yourself from seeds or purchase ready-made plants.

But calceolaria is not quite a houseplant, rather a closed ground or temporary maintenance in room conditions. Firstly, for the summer it can be used as a container plant to decorate a balcony, terrace, patio. Secondly, no matter how you cherish the flower, it will live with you for a year after flowering, and then it will grow and lose its appearance.

Conclusion - a beautiful plant, but short-lived, and there is a lot of trouble with it.

If you buy a plant in a store, choose specimens at the budding stage, healthy, strong, without yellowing leaves. So you get a flower with full flowering periods, especially since in many varieties they are not so long - 1-2 months.

The subtleties of growing indoor flower

If this is your first introduction to calceolaria, start by growing a room variety of the flower. You will see this beauty with your own eyes, fill your hand with transplanting, observe how the plant develops, how long it takes to bloom. Experience and observations will come in handy if you later decide to move the fragile beauty into the garden.

Let's return to the climatic preferences of the South American guest and try to adapt the conditions of an ordinary Russian apartment to these needs.

Creating the Right Conditions

Relations with the sun in calceolaria are approximately the same as in orchids - there is no way without it, and it is bad with it. The main thing is not to limit the solar flux, but to scatter it so that there is a lot of light, but direct rays do not fall on delicate flowers and leaves. How to do it?

• If the plant is on a windowsill, balcony facing southeast, close the windows with translucent curtains in the morning, southwest - after three in the afternoon.
• The second option - place the flower pots opposite solar window, including the southern one, but at some distance from it. light curtain- required.
• Northern windows for a light-loving plant, like a strong shadow, are not suitable.

It is laid down by nature that calceolaria blooms at a temperature of 14–16⁰ C, does not like it when the thermometer rises above 20–25⁰ C. We have this - autumn months, flowering just ripens to them if the plant is sown in early spring. At higher temperatures, the duration of flowering is noticeably reduced, aphids and whiteflies attack the bushes.

So experiment with different terms sowing should be done carefully, focusing on the weather. And also on whether you can ensure that the temperature in the room drops to acceptable levels.

The plant is sensitive to air humidity, but does not tolerate spraying on leaves and flowers. His petals are delicate, easily damaged, lose their decorative effect. Humidifiers are used to create the right microclimate. You can put the pots on a pallet with expanded clay, which is regularly moistened.

Sowing seeds: timing, features

You can get a hybrid calceolaria yourself by growing from seeds. True, sowing them is akin to aerobatics, they are so small. It's not even a petunia. Dust. But you should not be afraid, it is better to stock up on sand. Seeds are mixed with it for a more even distribution over the soil surface.

For sowing, they acquire or mix their own light substrate, consisting of peat and sand. Instead of the latter, you can use vermiculite. Seeds with sand are sprayed with light shaking movements on the wet surface of the planting container, covered with glass (film) and sent to a bright, cool window sill. Do not try to sprinkle the seeds with sand or soil, they will not overcome this barrier.

When the hooks appear, and this will happen in about a month, do not immediately remove the film - let the greenhouse microclimate remain. Air the crops regularly. When removing the shelter, make sure that drops from the glass do not fall on the seedlings.

20-30 days after germination, the first pick of the plant is carried out. They are transplanted into small plastic cups (200 ml). You can add 1 part of sod land to the original substrate. A month later, a second pick is carried out in liter containers.

Note! To get a calceolaria that blooms in autumn, the seeds are sown in February-March. If you want flowers in May-June, you need to sow in the summer - in July-August.

Organization of care

By creating suitable conditions for calceolaria, caring for it at home is greatly simplified.

Watering

The plant is sensitive to the moisture of an earthen coma, does not tolerate drying out of the substrate, but it cannot be flooded either. Roots can rot. Abundant watering is needed at the stage of growth and during flowering. After flowering, the vegetative mass gradually dies off or is cut off for aesthetic reasons. Watering, respectively, is reduced to a minimum and resumed when young shoots begin to appear.

top dressing

Calceolaria loves to eat. While it is actively vegetating, every 10-12 days, feed the plant with a solution of complete mineral fertilizers enriched with trace elements. It is best to purchase targeted fertilizer for indoor flowers and take half the rate indicated by the manufacturer in the instructions.

During the dormant period, feeding is stopped. But as soon as young shoots appear, and this is approximately February-March, the plant needs to be supported. The first top dressing is organic - with a weakly concentrated solution of mullein or bird droppings, the second - mineral (2 g / l of water).

plant formation

To get a lush bush with a lot of flowers, it is recommended to pinch the calceolaria when it has 6-8 leaves. This stimulates the growth of shoots from the axils of the leaves. If large flowers are needed, on the contrary, pinching is carried out - the removal of arbitrarily grown side shoots.

When the plant is in bloom, pick off wilted flowers regularly, unless you plan on collecting seeds. But even in this case, 1-2 seed pods are enough.

cuttings

Cut the faded bush over 3-4 pairs of leaves, transplant into fresh soil. After some time, you will see that it has taken root and gives side shoots from the sinuses. They are used for cuttings. For rooting, you need a light mixture of peat and sand and a mini-greenhouse - as the easiest option, a transparent cap made of plastic bottle or glass. The optimum temperature for rooting is 16–18⁰ C. After 20–25 days, the cutting forms its own root system.

Cutting a flower has its advantages. Firstly, this method of reproduction allows you to save varietal characteristics, which is not always possible with seeds. Secondly, calceolaria grown from cuttings bloom faster.

Calceolaria in the flowerbed

Hybrid forms of the plant are more suitable for growing indoors. But there are varieties of calceolaria that can be planted in open ground- landing and care in this case is somewhat different.

Better than others, wrinkled calceolaria and varieties derived from it are suitable for the garden.

• Gold Bouquet - a plant up to 30 cm high with large flowers.
• Sunset is a hardy dwarf hybrid in yellow, orange and red. color scheme. Flowers resemble bells.
• The Triumph of Versailles is a small-flowered, fast-growing variety.

In February-March, seeds are sown for seedlings, so that in May they can be planted in a flower bed or in flowerpots. garden forms they tolerate bright light better, but it is better not to offer them the sun.

Due to their miniature size and bright color, calceolaria is classified as a foreground flower that needs an advantageous frame. Can you imagine orchids next to petunias and marigolds? So here. If we choose partners for her, then the appropriate ones are tuberous begonia, semperflorence begonia, ageratum, pansies.

Preferred Growing Method garden varieties- in flowerpots or flowerpots. Why?

• In containers, it is easier to maintain the optimal composition of the soil, to carry out top dressing.
• Flowerpots can be placed anywhere, removed from the bright sun, put on the lawn.
• In bad weather, the plants are removed under a canopy, on the veranda. If a flower is planted in a flower bed, a downpour with a hurricane for delicate petals can have not only deplorable, but even irreversible consequences.

Summarize. Calceolaria is a difficult plant, you will have to tinker with it. But having grown it once, you feel something akin to an itch - it seems to be troublesome, but it is impossible to resist such beauty.

Growing Calceolaria:

The genus Calceolaria includes approximately 400 species of plants from the boletus family, which are successfully grown in home care. In the wild, the plant is most often found in Central and South America.

General information

Basically, the plant grows as a grass, shrub or shrub with whorled-arranged or opposite leaves. The flower is a four-membered calyx with a swollen bright and two-lipped corolla, in which 2-3 stamens are located. The fruit is box-shaped.

Many species are decorative, creating numerous garden varieties, used hybrids of species: crenatiflora, arachnoidea, corymbosa, etc. Hybrid forms of the plant have red, orange, yellow and purple colors of flowers, with a shaded or spotted corolla, which are most often grown in a cool greenhouse, and propagated by cuttings or seeds.

Calceolaria is classified as decorative flowering plants, although it is quite difficult for her to provide care at home, due to the fact that she likes cool content. The flowers of this plant are very peculiar in shape, two-lipped and vesicular, the upper lip is barely noticeable, very small in size, but the lower lip is spherical and swollen, quite large in size. The flowering period occurs from March to June, for one month, at which time from 18 to 55 flowers appear on the plant, which are very often covered with various dots and spots.

Varieties and types

Under this name, many varieties of this plant are combined, which, in particular, have a very attractive appearance with soft and delicate pubescent leaves of a light green color and original flowers of the most different colors ranging from pure white to orange. In indoor cultivation, it has the form of a small bush, which reaches up to 50 centimeters in height.

In the wild, it is found in Chile as a perennial herbaceous plant, reaching up to 50 centimeters in height. Basal leaflets are pointed, spatulate in shape with notches along the edge. Small flowers with a reddish or purple tint, with an oblong, furrowed lower lip.

Calceolaria home care

The plant does well in diffused bright light, but it should be shaded from direct sunlight. Feels good when placed at the east, west or north window, if this south-facing window, the plant should be shaded using translucent paper or cloth. The plant should also be shaded during the flowering period. In the autumn winter period you can provide the plant with additional lighting with fluorescent lamps.

At any time of the year, the calceolaria plant is best kept at a moderate temperature of 14 to 17 degrees.

Watering top dressing and air humidity

During the flowering period, the plants are watered with settled and soft water, after the top layer of soil dries up and do not allow the water to stagnate in the pan. At the end of the flowering period, watering is reduced, moistening the soil only occasionally, but at the same time they do not allow the earthen clod to dry out completely. When new shoots appear, watering should be gradually resumed.

The plant needs to provide high humidity. In this case, it is not recommended to spray the plant. To ensure the necessary humidity, the pot with the plant can be placed in a tray with wet expanded clay, peat or pebbles, preventing the pot from touching the water.

Calceolaria should be fertilized after two weeks, after planting the plant in a dish, and continue to do so until the flowering period. Each top dressing occurs once every two weeks with mineral fertilizers.

Flowering and dormancy

After the end of the flowering period, the plant can be cut and left for 1.5-2 months, in a shaded and cool place, occasionally watering to prevent complete drying of the soil. After the growth of new shoots, the plant should be returned to a lighted place where it will begin to bloom.

The flowering period will begin approximately 2 months earlier than with plants grown from seeds, but in this case, such cultivation contributes to the stretching of the plant and the loss of decorativeness. For this reason, it is best to grow the plant annually from seed.

Plants also lose their decorative effect with age, so it is best not to transplant them, but to replace them with new ones.

Calceolaria growing from seeds at home

Seeds are sown in March, to obtain flowering in the autumn, if you want the plants to bloom in the spring, you should sow in June.

The seeds are quite small, 1 gram contains about 30 thousand pieces, they should be sown on the surface of the soil. After that, the crops must be covered with paper, periodically moistening it. And as soon as the seedlings have two true leaves, they must be dived into the prepared substrate from equal parts of hardwood, humus and peat soil, as well as ½ of the sand.

Also, calceolaria seeds germinate well in peat. To ensure the flowering of plants in March, the seeds should be planted on June 5-15 in bedding peat, which is previously disinfected from rot by heating to 90-100 degrees. To reduce the acidity of peat, it is necessary to add ground chalk, approximately 15-20 grams per 1 kilogram of peat.

After that, 1 part of sand is added to the substrate, approximately 7 parts of peat and mixed well. The seeds are sown randomly, without sprinkling, after which the crops are covered with glass or polyethylene. If condensation forms on the inside of polyethylene or glass, the shelter must be turned over to prevent moisture from getting on the plants. Subsequently, the peat is kept moist.

Calceolaria Pick

Plants dive a second time, after the formation of a rosette, transplanting them into 7 cm pots and placing them on light windowsills. And already in September, the plants are pinched, leaving 2-3 pairs of leaves, from the sinuses of which shoots will appear and transplanted again, increasing the size of the pot by 2-4 centimeters

It is possible to form calceolaria bushes by pinching, removing lateral shoots that grow from the leaf axils.

In the period from January to February, the plants are transplanted again, into a large bowl with more nutritious and heavy soil. For this, a slightly acidic humus soil with a pH of about 5.5 is suitable.

When compiling the substrate ourselves, they take equal parts of peat land, sod land, and humus land, as well as ½ part of sand, with the addition of complete mineral fertilizer, at the rate of 2-3 grams per 1 kilogram of substrate. Flowering of the plant occurs after 8-10 months from the moment of sowing the seeds.

Possible difficulties

The leaves wither and the plant ages quickly , occurs due to insufficient humidity and high temperature content.

The plant requires annual replacement - it will be propagated by seeds or an already flowering specimen will be acquired, without leaving the old plant for the next year.

Damaged by: spider mites, mealybugs, whiteflies and scale insects , especially often this happens when leaving at home with a temperature of 20 to 25 degrees in a poorly ventilated area.

Plant calceolaria (lat. Calceolaria) belongs to the genus Calceolaria of the Norichnikov family, although English scientists distinguish the genus Calceolaria in a separate family. The genus contains about 400 plant species native to Central and South America. In translation, "calceolaria" means "slipper". Representatives of the genus herbaceous plants, semi-shrubs or shrubs, among them there are perennials, biennials and annuals, but in room culture, calceolaria flowers are usually grown as annual herbaceous plants.

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Planting and caring for calceolaria

• Bloom: in April or May for 3-5 weeks.
• Lighting: penumbra (northern, northwestern or eastern window).
• Temperature: not higher than 15 ˚C.
• Watering: constant so that the soil in the pot is slightly moist all the time.
• Air humidity: very high. It is recommended to keep the plant on a tray of wet pebbles or line the pot with peat and keep it moist at all times. Spraying the plant is not recommended.
• Top dressing: two weeks after planting and before flowering - with mineral fertilizer solutions twice a month. Do not fertilize in autumn and winter.
• Pruning: after flowering.
• rest period: after flowering for 1-1.5 months.
• Transfer: are not transplanted. The life of the plant is 2 seasons, then the plant no longer blooms.
• Reproduction: seeds, cuttings.
• Pests: aphids, whiteflies.
• Diseases: gray rot.

Read more about growing calceolaria below.

Calceolaria flowers - description

The calceolaria flower grows in height and width up to about 30-50 cm. The leaves of the plant are lanceolate, corrugated, bright green in color, with pubescence on the underside of the leaf plate, reach a length of 5 to 10 cm. The main advantage, due to which calceolaria and gained its popularity are its flowers, shaped like clogs of bright yellow, orange, white or red, plain, with strokes or speckled. The shape of the flower is very funny: it seems to consist of two lips - one large, inflated, spherical, and the other small, almost imperceptible. blooms indoor flower calceolaria in April or May and blooms for 3-5 weeks. On one plant at the time of flowering, up to 50 flowers ranging in size from 2.5 to 6 cm can open.

Calceolaria care at home

How to care for calceolaria

In the question of how to care for calceolaria, the most difficult thing is to create the conditions necessary for the plant. Caring for calceolaria flowers is complicated by the fact that heat and dry air are contraindicated for them, and in apartments that are not equipped with an air conditioning system, it is hot and dry in the summer. Calceolaria at home prefers the penumbra of the north, east or northwest window, the temperature is not higher than 15 ºC and humid air, so you need to keep the pot with calceolaria on a pallet with wet pebbles, and water it with soft settled water so often that the soil does not dry out.

After flowering, watering is gradually reduced. So that the plant does not suffer from dry air, you can keep the pot in a spacious flowerpot, laying peat between the walls of the pot and the flowerpot, which should be wet all the time. Spraying calceolaria is undesirable. If the plant is too hot and dry, it drops buds, is easily affected by pests, and generally ages quickly.

Calceolaria fertilizer

Caring for calceolaria involves feeding the plant with soluble mineral fertilizers twice a month, starting two weeks after planting and before flowering. In autumn and winter, the plant is not fertilized, after flowering it is cut off, transferred for one and a half to two months to a cool, gloomy place, occasionally moistening the soil in a pot. When new shoots begin to grow in the calceolaria, the moisture intensity is gradually increased, the plant is moved to its usual place and mineral supplements are resumed.

Calceolaria transplant

The overwintered plant blooms two months earlier than the calceolaria grown from seeds this year, but the decorative effect of last year's bush is much lower than that of the newly planted or purchased one, so professional flower growers recommend that calceolaria lovers buy or grow a new plant every year.

If you are faced with the problem of how to transplant a purchased plant from a technical pot into your own, decorative, then it is easy to do: put a decent layer of drainage in a new pot, then transfer the plant along with a clod of earth from a technical pot to a decorative one and add land for heather or substrate for geraniums to fill the voids. You can make up the soil for the calceolaria yourself, for this you will need two parts of sod and leafy soil, one part of peat soil and half of the sand.

Pests and diseases of calceolaria

Of the insect pests, aphids and whiteflies most often affect calceolaria. Aphids can be collected mechanically and destroyed, but if the infection is total, then you will have to resort to processing the plant chemical preparation actellikom, which will help you out in case of damage to calceolaria by the whitefly. If the infection is too strong, it will be necessary to re-treat in 3-4 days - no more than four treatments are allowed with the same interval.

Of the diseases for calceolaria, gray rot is the most dangerous. It occurs when the plant has been chronically waterlogged for a long time at too low a temperature and too high humidity in the room. Growing calceolaria requires strict adherence to the rules, otherwise trouble may begin. The plant also weakens the excessive concentration of nitrogen in fertilizers, which provokes infection of the flower with gray mold. Heavily affected areas are removed with a sharp knife, and the plant is sprayed with Bordeaux liquid or oxychome, topaz, cuproskat - any copper-containing preparation.

Reproduction of calceolaria

Growing calceolaria from seeds

If you don’t know how to grow calceolaria from seeds, buy at the store or make your own mixture of sand and peat in a ratio of 1: 7 with a slight addition of ground chalk or dolomite flour (20 g per 1 kg of soil mixture). Calceolaria seeds are not in short supply, they can be purchased at any large specialized store, including via the Internet. Sowing of calceolaria seeds is carried out in April on a mixture previously disinfected by calcination and moistened, without embedding them in the soil, but covering the container with crops with glass or film, from which condensate will need to be removed as necessary.

Crops are kept in a warm (18 ºC), well-lit place, regularly airing and moistening the soil by spraying. After two weeks, when shoots appear, they are watered in a thin stream between the rows. After a month, they are dived for the first time, and after another two months, when rosettes are formed, they are dived a second time into individual pots with a diameter of 7 cm, watered once every two weeks. In September, the seedlings are transplanted into pots with a diameter of 9-11 cm and placed in a bright and more than cool - 8-10 ºC - room.

In January-February, calceolaria is planted in large pots with a nutrient mixture for adult plants, pinched over 3-4 leaves, transferred to a permanent place and waiting for flowering, which usually occurs 8-10 months after sowing the seeds.

Propagation of calceolaria by cuttings

You can try to root the cuttings from the shoots cut after flowering of the calceolaria. Cuttings can be cut in August, or in February-March. Root segments of shoots in a nutrient soil mixture. It usually takes 3-4 weeks for roots to appear. In order to get a thick bush, several rooted cuttings are planted in one pot.

Calceolaria is a perennial plant, but more often grown as an annual. The height and width of an adult calceolaria is about 20-30 cm. As a rule, calceolaria is bred because of its elegant, eye-pleasing flowers. The flowering period of calceolaria falls on April-May and lasts 3-5 weeks.

Lighting and temperature for growing calceolaria

Direct Sun rays and the calceolaria does not like high temperature, therefore it is recommended to keep the plant in a bright or semi-shady, non-hot room, the air temperature in which is in the range of 14-16 ° C. High temperatures(20-25°C) lead to rapid aging of the plant, as well as its damage by pests. IN summer period find a semi-shady place protected from the wind for calceolaria on a balcony or on garden plot. As for winter, calceolaria will feel comfortable in a bright room, the temperature in which is 8-12 ° C. This plant is ideal for growing in east, west or north facing windows.

If you decide to put the calceolaria near the south window, shade the plant from direct sunlight.

A little shading is necessary for calceolaria during the flowering period. In autumn and winter, you can provide the plant with additional illumination using fluorescent lamps.

Air humidity level

Calceolaria can be safely called a lover of moist air. In order to ensure a comfortable level of air humidity, place the flower pot on a tray of expanded clay or gravel, half filled with water. It is categorically not recommended to spray the flowers and leaves of calceolaria - there is a soft edge on the leaves of the plant, and getting drops of liquid on them is highly undesirable. Pots inserted into pots - perfect option for growing calceolaria. To fill the space between the two vessels, peat is used, which needs constant moisture.

Watering calceolaria

During the flowering period, calceolaria needs regular watering with settled soft water. The signal for the need to water the flower is the drying of the top layer of the substrate. Make sure that the water in the pan does not stagnate. After flowering, watering the calceolaria is reduced. Soil moistening occurs occasionally in order to prevent complete drying of the substrate. With the beginning of the growth of new shoots, watering begins to gradually resume. In winter, calceolaria prefers moderate watering.

Calceolaria fertilizer

Feeding calceolaria with fertilizers occurs 1 time in 10 days using a solution of mineral fertilizers. It is advisable to start feeding calceolaria 2 weeks after the plant has been planted in a pot. Fertilizer plants continue until the beginning of its flowering period.

Formation of calceolaria bushes

Calceolaria bushes are formed by pinching, while the side shoots that grow from the axils of the leaves are removed. Before budding, during a period of intensive growth, in some cases the calceolaria is pinched, leaving two or three pairs of leaves, from the axils of which lateral shoots grow. Thanks to this, the plant bushes well and blooms more profusely, however, the diameter of the flower will be smaller than when pinching.

Flowering calceolaria

As already mentioned, calceolaria is often grown as annual plant but you can save it for next year. To do this, at the end of the flowering period, the calceolaria is cut off and left for 1.5-2 months in a cool, dark place, periodically moistening the earthen ball to prevent the soil from completely drying out. As soon as the young shoots begin to grow, the pot with the plant is placed in a lighted room, where the calceolaria blooms again. However, the beginning of flowering occurs 2 months earlier than in those plants that were grown from seeds, and the flowering itself is rather weak. Calceolaria noticeably stretches and is no longer as decoratively attractive as young plants.

Soil for calceolaria

Reproduction of calceolaria

Reproduction of calceolaria occurs through seeds. Externally, the seeds of this plant are quite small and dusty. They need to be sown without sprinkling with earth in sandy, light soil. Sowing is moistened with a spray gun, the container with sowing is covered with glass or film. Until the first shoots appear, it is necessary to keep the crop in shading and constantly keep it moist. However, do not forget about ventilation to prevent rotting.

Shoots will appear in about 2 weeks. The first dive of plants occurs at the age of two weeks. After 1.5 months, the formed seedlings of calceolaria must be transplanted into 7 cm pots and placed in a lighted place. After 2 months, the plants are again transplanted into pots 9-11 cm in size. Before the second transplant, the calceolaria is pinched, leaving two or three pairs of leaves, from the axils of which young shoots then grow.

Unusual calceolaria flower (video)

Reproduction of shrub calceolaria is carried out using cuttings. After the old plants are cut short, they produce a mass of lateral shoots, from which cuttings are then formed.

The optimal time for cuttings is August or February-March. If you want the potted plant to be quite bushy, plant several cuttings in one pot at once. They will take root in 3-4 weeks.

Reading min. Views 674 Published on 07/21/2016

plant care guide

Only after purchase by transshipment method Spring and summer 14-17, winter 8-12 During the flowering period, watering 2-3 times a week, after flowering 1 time in 7-10 days Not recommended Dim ambient lighting poisonous leaves

Lighting

Calceolaria needs dim diffused lighting. Best Option there will be windows facing east or west. You can place the calceolaria on the northwest or northeast windowsill.

On the south side, be sure to shade the plant with paper or a translucent curtain. Shading is especially necessary during flowering: in the bright sun, the flowers will quickly wither.

In autumn and winter, when the daylight hours are short, it is necessary to use: fluorescent or phytolamps. In the warm season, the flower can be taken out into the open air in a place shaded and protected from the wind.

Temperature

"Flower-slipper" prefers cool conditions. In the spring-summer period, the optimum temperature will be 14-17 degrees, in winter it should be lowered to 8-12 degrees. An increase in temperature above 20 degrees is fraught with rapid aging of calceolaria, pests and diseases.

In addition, long and abundant flowering is possible only when kept in a cool room. Due to the heat and dry air, calceolaria can drop buds, flowers, and even leaves.

It is important to know that for normal growth and flowering it is important to ensure the complete absence of drafts.

Watering

Calceolaria needs regular moderate watering. The soil should be moistened abundantly - 2-3 times a week, as soon as the top layer of soil begins to dry out.

After flowering, watering is reduced to 1 time in 7-10 days. After 20-30 minutes after watering, the water from the pan should be poured out. Waterlogging, as well as drying out of an earthen coma, leads to the death of the plant.