Most ornamental plants delight us with the beauty only in the warm time of the year. Some of them keep their spectacular decoration in the autumn months. But few plants can boast such a remarkable resistance to cold as snowberry.
Plant description
The snowberry (Symphoricarpos), also called the snow or wolfsbane, belongs to the family Caprifoliaceae and is a deciduous shrub with a height from 0.2 m to 3 m. This is spectacular of North America, in the vastness which grows 15 types of this culture.
Depending on the type of snow berries can have a different height and different color of berries, which is the main decoration of the plant. They are white, pink and purple-red.
In addition, each of the snowfields has a different degree of winter hardiness, and therefore in our latitudes were able to settle only a few of them. Symphoricarpos albus showed a special resistance to a difficult climate – that’s what I want to talk about.
This densely leafy shrub reaches a height of 1.5 m. It has small elliptical leaves of dark green color and flexible shoots that easily withstand the onslaught of the heaviest snow cover.
Small bell-shaped flowers of the Snowbird do not Shine with special beauty. They are painted white or pale pink and are collected in groups in the axils of the leaves and at the ends of the shoots of the shrub. Flowering of snow-berry falls on the second half of summer and lasts about a month.
But when in early autumn on the site of flowers begin to ripen snow-white fruit, shrub immediately transformed. Berries can reach a diameter of 1 cm and as flowers are collected in dense brush. Since it is rare that a culture can boast of such an unusual color of the fruit, snowberry stands out in the garden among the General landscape and attracts attention.
This plant has long been appreciated by landscape designers and is widely used for landscaping parks and gardens. The snowberry endures fumes in the crowded megalopolis and, with just atmospheric precipitation and poor diet of the urban soil, continues to delight passers-by with its beauty.
And if the snowberry gets in the caring hands of the gardener, who will plant it on the plot and give a little of your attention, he will be transformed beyond recognition. With good care, the shrub annually gives a powerful increase, pleases with dense foliage of saturated color and endows with an incredibly abundant “harvest” of snow-white fruits. This handsome man will act as an ideal plant to create a hedge, and will also look great in a group planting with other decorative cultures.
Going to have such a green pet in his country, it is worth remembering that this plant is poisonous. Therefore, if your family has small children, the attention of which can attract the beautiful appetizing fruits of snow, I advise you to wait until the planting of this shrub until the children enter the conscious age.
Cultivation
In addition to the high decoration, snowberry will delight you with simplicity of maintenance. This shrub is absolutely picky to the composition of the soil on the site, but, like many plants, it will develop better on loose fertile soil. Therefore, at the stage of planting it makes sense to work a little and properly prepare the soil on the selected site. But the place for planting snowfields you can select absolutely any-both Sunny and shaded.
Landing
Seedlings of this culture are now sold in almost every garden center. They can be planted in the open ground both in spring and autumn, for this purpose it is better to choose bushes not younger than two years. In spring planting, the pit should be prepared in the autumn, and if you plan an autumn planting, the procedure is carried out at least a month before planting.
If you want to create a hedge of snow, throughout the planned area you need to dig a trench width of 0.4 m and a depth of 0.5-0.6 m. for each linear meter will need to plant 4-5 seedlings. When a single planting pit under the Bush prepared size 0, 6×0, 6 m and have no closer than 1.2-1.4 m from other plantations.
In the trench or pit must first lay a layer of broken brick or expanded clay for drainage, if the soil on the site is heavy clay. Then fill up the mix made of equal parts of humus, peat and coarse sand. In addition, you need to add 200 g of superphosphate, 100 g of potassium sulfate and 0.5-0.6 kg of wood ash (with trench planting such fertilizers are applied to each seedling).
The snowberry should be planted after the content of the landing pit will settle. This will avoid the root neck of the plant. The new green guest is placed on the same level at which he grew up before, and then abundantly watered and mulched.
Maintenance
Just planted plants should be watered daily during the first week. And rooted and mastered in the new conditions of the bushes will not require such a reverent care. If the summer is hot, they need to give 1.5-2 buckets of water 1-2 times a week. If it rains regularly, you can forget about watering at all.
The snowberry is grateful to treat additional fertilizing. To do this in the spring in the stem circle of the Bush it makes sense to make half a bucket of humus, in the summer months 1 time to feed it with a solution of any complex mineral preparation, and closer to autumn to seal in the soil 100 g of superphosphate and 50-70 g of potassium sulfate. With this approach, the shrub will actively develop and annually give a large number of beautiful fruits.
To improve the comfort of the existence of plants in your garden, you need to regularly loosen the soil, tree trunks in his lap, remove weeds, and in autumn dig the soil under the bushes to a depth of 8-10 cm Protection against pests and diseases, this culture is not required. Very rarely it is affected by powdery mildew or gray rot of the fruit — they are easy to cure permitted fungicides.
Symphoricarpos albus endures harsh winters and no problems experiencing temperatures down to -35°C, and therefore will not require construction of any additional cover. But even if the plant is damaged by frost, in the spring it is easy to recover and will give a good increase in young twigs.
The snowberry is incredibly easy to tolerate formative pruning, so no fear of hold the shears and obligate unnecessary shoots. This procedure is best done in early spring before Bud break. At this time, it is necessary not only to form a beautiful crown, but also to cut out all the frozen, dried and thickening shoots.
After the age of eight the snowberry may need rejuvenating pruning old shrubs less actively increasing annual shoots and therefore more often than not losing their crown density. The plant needs to be stimulated by drastic measures, that is, to cut its entire ground part to a height of 0.5-0.6 m, leaving several well-developed shoots.
After the procedure, all sections with a diameter of more than 0.6-0.7 cm are covered with garden brew. This pruning helps to Wake up the dormant buds on the left stumps, which will soon give powerful shoots and will form a new lush crown of the Bush.
Leave a Reply