Capricious beauty - white azalea. Photos, recommendations for growing

Author: Elena N. https://floristics.info/ru/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=19 Category: Houseplants Published: October 24, 2017Last edits: January 11, 2021

Azalea (lat. Azalea) is the common name for some beautifully flowering species of the genus Rhododendron, which were previously classified as a separate genus of the Heather family. Actually, these are the same rhododendrons, only indoors. In nature, there are about 350 representatives of azaleas, but only two species are grown indoors. Azaleas are native to China and Japan, but today they can be found in Europe and North America. The generic name "rhododendron" consists of two Greek words that are translated as "rose" and "tree", that is, "rose tree". And “azalea” translated means “dried, waterless”: in nature, azalea is a small dry shrub. Azalea appeared in cultivation in the 17th century, and by 1820 the first varieties of the plant were bred, of which there were already more than a thousand by the beginning of the last century.

Planting and caring for azalea

• Flowering: from 2 to 6 months from December to March, sometimes even until April.
• Lighting: diffused light or light partial shade from western or northern window sills.
• Temperature: for normal growth and development, it is desirable to maintain a room temperature of 15-18 ˚C, for successful formation of buds - 10-12 ˚C, and for long and abundant flowering - 20 ˚C.
• Watering: often (daily or every other day, sometimes twice a day) and abundantly. Exactly how much depends on the level of air humidity in the room. It is best to simply place snow or pieces of ice on the surface of the substrate, which, when melted, will saturate the substrate with moisture and refresh the plant on a hot summer day. From time to time, dissolve a teaspoon of lemon juice in 2 liters of water for irrigation. In the fall, watering is reduced, but by the time of flowering, watering should again become frequent and abundant.
• Humidity: high. It is recommended to spray the leaves with a fine spray or keep the flower on a tray with wet pebbles.
• Feeding: in spring and summer - once a week, in winter - once a month. For fertilizing, use the Azalea mineral complex or another composition for flowering plants that does not contain chlorine. During budding and flowering, the plant will need more potassium.
• Pruning: at the beginning of active growth, shorten strongly grown shoots, and during the growing season, pinch the tops so that the plant bushes more strongly and subsequently blooms profusely.
• Dormant period: within two months after flowering.
• Replant: if necessary, when the pot becomes too small for the plant.
• Reproduction: by cuttings.
• Pests: spider mites, rhododendron bugs, azalea moths, greenhouse thrips.
• Diseases: fusarium, verticillium, alternaria, septoria, late blight, cercospora, phyllostictosis, necrosis and mixed chlorosis.

Read more about growing azaleas below.

Fertilizers

Since Azalea

needs an acidic environment, gardeners usually use heather soil when planting.

There is ready-made soil available for sale, which is called - For Azaleas

.

Feed Azalea

necessary in summer and spring once every seven days. The following drugs are suitable for this: ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, superphosphate and potassium sulfate.

When the plant begins to budding, superphosphate must be added to it (15 grams per 10 liters of water).

Botanical description

Azaleas are divided into two groups:

• deciduous plants, including small trees;
• evergreens.

Azalea flowers have five stamens, while rhododendron flowers have 7 or more - this is the main difference between azaleas and rhododendrons. The indoor azalea is one of the most beautiful plants, but it is quite capricious. The azalea plant can bloom for up to six months with simple, double or densely double white, red, pink, dark purple and variegated flowers, but on average the flowering period lasts just over two months. Azalea leaves are small and dark green.

Top dressing

, which have already proven themselves well, are suitable for feeding They are created specifically for azaleas. And they need to be fed with the fertilizers that are needed specifically for a particular species. If these are not at hand, then it is better to postpone this process until later.

Important! You should always check the expiration date of the fertilizer so as not to harm the plant. Otherwise, all this can cause irreparable harm to the indoor flower.

Planting and caring for azaleas at home

Azalea after purchase

The azalea flower appears in stores, as a rule, from December to March, and if you bought a plant or received it as a gift, you need to know how to properly care for it, because a home azalea, if poorly cared for and in inappropriate conditions, sheds its buds and loses leaves and eventually dies.

How to care for an azalea? What conditions does this plant require? Domestic azaleas suffer from high temperatures and dry air: for normal development, 15-18 ºC is enough for them; during budding, the temperature should be even lower - from 10 to 12 ºC, and azaleas bloom at temperatures no higher than 20 ºC. Therefore, the purchased flower should be placed in the coolest place, away from operating heating devices.

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Bright sunlight is also harmful to azaleas, so place the pot with the plant on a western or northern windowsill. In the warm season (from May to October), it is advisable to keep azaleas in the fresh air - on a balcony, loggia, terrace or in the garden.

Soil for azaleas

Azalea develops well only in acidic soil: the pH value should be in the range of 4.0-4.5 pH. Buying a substrate for azaleas is not a problem; it is sold in every flower shop. But you can make the soil yourself: mix sand, moss and rotted pine needles in a ratio of 1:1:2. To disinfect, spill the substrate with a strong solution of potassium permanganate.

Watering

Water the azalea generously, every day or every other day, depending on the air humidity in the room. In extreme heat, you may need to water the plant twice a day, as the soil in the pot should be slightly moist at all times. You need to pour cold, settled water onto the surface of the soil. It is even better to use rain or melt water for moisturizing. Inventive azalea lovers came up with the idea of ​​placing a layer of snow or pieces of ice on the ground: at above-zero temperatures they melt, and cold melt water penetrates into the soil. From time to time, add lemon juice to the water for irrigation (a teaspoon per 2 liters of water) to make the azalea bloom even more abundantly and brightly. Do not forget to drain excess water from the pan, otherwise the azalea roots will begin to rot.

If for some reason you have severely dried out the soil in which the azalea grows, you need to place the pot with the plant in a container of water for 3-4 hours, but so that the water does not overflow into the pot. When the earthen azalea ball is saturated with moisture, remove the pot from the water, allow excess moisture to drain from the drainage holes and place the plant in its usual place. Regular watering is resumed after 3-4 days.

In October, watering is gradually reduced, but in December, when the azalea begins to bloom, it will again need abundant moisture. By the way, azalea blooms for the first time at the age of three or four.

If the air in the apartment is dry, the exotic plant is unlikely to like it: the air in the room needs to be humidified using a fine spray, trying to prevent water from getting on the azalea leaves. You can place the pot with the plant on a tray with wet pebbles, but only so that the roots and pebbles do not come into contact. Or place jars of water around the plant.

• Photo of Radermachera chinensis

Top dressing

Feed azaleas with mineral fertilizers for flowering plants, making sure that they do not contain chlorine. It is best to use Azalea fertilizer for fertilizing: in spring and summer, fertilizing is applied once a week, and in winter - only once a month. During the formation of buds and during flowering, azaleas will need fertilizer with a high potassium content, for example, Kemira-lux or Uniflor-bud.

Trimming

In order for azaleas to bush better and bloom more luxuriantly at home, you need to pinch and trim the overgrown stems in a timely manner. After the blooming azalea has stopped forming new buds and the flowers have begun to fade, you need to remove the browned leaves from the bush, trim off weak and elongated shoots, and then remove all the flowers along with the pedicels. If there is a need to replant an azalea, the best time for this is immediately after flowering has ended.

A month later, at the stage of development of 3-4 pairs of leaves on young shoots, their tops are pinched. You will need to pinch the ends of the shoots a couple more times, and then buds will appear at their ends again. The last pinching is carried out at the end of July or beginning of August, but this time it is not necessary to pinch all the shoots: only those that have become very elongated are shortened. Pruning (pinching) azaleas is a technique that increases the intensity of flowering. By the way, if, simultaneously with the formation of buds, new shoots begin to grow near them, they should be removed.

Transplantation and propagation of azaleas

When replanting an azalea after flowering, do not immerse the root collar in the soil, otherwise the plant will die. Also try not to damage the roots of the azalea: do not touch its earthen lump unless absolutely necessary. How to replant an azalea without harming it? If the pot becomes too small for the plant, simply transfer it along with the lump into a new container, the diameter of which should be 2 cm larger than the previous container. You already know what kind of soil azaleas need.

At home, azalea propagates mainly by cuttings. However, this is a long and troublesome task, so it is much easier to buy a plant in a store. But if you still want to start propagation, use a sharp blade or knife to cut 10-15 cm long pieces from young, not yet lignified shoots of the plant. The lower cut should pass under the bud. Leaves from the bottom of the cuttings must be removed. The cuttings are planted in moist peat to a depth of 5 cm, the substrate around them is squeezed well and each cutting is covered with a glass jar. You can plant the cuttings in a mini-greenhouse and cover them with a transparent lid. The rooting procedure should take place at a temperature of 25 ºC. The covering is removed two to three times a day to ventilate and, if necessary, moisten the substrate. Rooting lasts about six months, after which the seedlings with developed roots are planted in a permanent container and conditions are created for them as for adult plants.

You can try to root azalea cuttings. Make a small cut on the side shoot under the bud (there must be one pair of leaves above the bud), place the layer on the soil in the pot, fix it in this position and sprinkle it with soil. When the cuttings take root, they are separated very carefully so as not to damage the mother plant and transplanted into a pot.

Diseases and pests

Diseases of azaleas are most often associated with violation of the rules of care and maintenance: too high a temperature in the room, poor lighting, insufficient or excessive watering, planting in soil of inappropriate composition. There may, of course, be other reasons.

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A lack of moisture in the soil and air can be indicated by limp, wrinkled or falling leaves and buds of the azalea. Correct your mistakes and keep in mind for the future that when the air temperature rises, watering should be more abundant and more frequent, and when the temperature drops, the amount of moisture should be reduced. Watering with hard water also harms the plant: tap water needs to sit for at least two days, otherwise the leaves begin to turn yellow and fall off, and the flowering of the azalea becomes sparse.

Poor light and direct sunlight also harm the plant, so try to find a suitable place for your azalea. The health of the flower is affected by the composition of the soil that does not meet its needs: the substrate for azaleas should be acidic, not neutral, and certainly not alkaline.

Azalea is very resistant to pests, but in conditions of insufficient watering and dry air it can be occupied by spider mites, which make small punctures on the leaves of the plant and suck out cell sap. If you find discolored spots and fine cobwebs on the foliage, immediately wash the azalea leaves on all sides with a weak tobacco solution with the addition of liquid detergent. Remember to protect the soil in the pot from alkali. 2-3 hours after treatment, azalea leaves should be washed well with clean cold water.

Effective against mites pollinating azaleas with sulfur powder or treatment with acaricidal preparations - Actellik, Aktara, Karbofos. Both pollination and spraying should be carried out outside the apartment, preferably in the open air, and as many times as needed to destroy pests. The interval between treatments is from 7 to 10 days.

Problems during cultivation

If you do not care for the azalea flower, there is a high probability of the following negative consequences:

• Withering of the leaf mass, its yellowing and falling . The source of the problem is a lack of moisture in the soil and sunlight. It can be solved by properly organizing irrigation and placing it on a windowsill with sufficient illumination during the day.
• The appearance of rust and gray rot on a flower . Control methods: pruning the affected parts of the plant, maintaining a comfortable air temperature in the room.
• Yellowing and falling of flowers. The cause of this disease is the use of poor quality water. It is possible to restore the plant by using boiled water with the addition of a nutrient composition.
• Development of late blight. This dangerous disease appears in excessively wet soil. It is extremely difficult to treat a flower, but most often it dies.

Improper care can also lead to azalea infection with spider mites, strawberry mites and scale insects. To get rid of harmful insects, you should first treat with a soap solution, and then spray with Actellik or other effective means.

White azalea is a truly unique and luxurious plant. To maintain its high decorative qualities, it is enough to adhere to basic care recommendations.

Types and varieties

Numerous varieties and varieties of the following types of azaleas are grown indoors:

• Simps's rhododendron, or Simps's azalea, or Indian azalea, is a hybrid plant with a rich history;
• rhododendron obtuse, or Japanese azalea.

Both of these species are dwarf shrubs with a height of 30 to 50 cm. Varieties and hybrids of azaleas according to flowering periods are divided into early flowering, the flowering of which continues from late October to early January, mid-flowering (from January to March) and late flowering (from January to early May ).

The most popular early flowering azaleas are:

• Adventglockchen - a variety with bell-shaped simple or slightly double crimson-red flowers up to 6 cm in diameter;
• Dresden 1936 - shiny medium-double flowers of a salmon-pink hue;
• Doberlug - double dark pink flowers up to 7 cm in diameter with a white border of irregular outline;
• Weiss Shame - wide funnel-shaped double flowers with a diameter of 6.5 cm, white with a cream or soft pink tint;
• Eri - semi-double carmine-pink flowers with a diameter of about 7 cm with a white border of irregular shape;
• Orange Bowen - semi-double raspberry-red flowers with a diameter of 5 to 6.5 cm;
• Enzette Dagmar - shiny double flowers up to 7 cm in diameter, intense pink;
• Helmut Vogel is a very early variety of azalea with double purple-red flowers with a diameter of 7 cm.

Medium-flowering azaleas are represented by the following popular varieties:

• Albert-Elizabeth - white or soft pink double flowers up to 8.5 cm in diameter with a red border along the edges of the petals;
• Apollo - simple and slightly double flowers, slightly wavy along the edges of the petals, brick-red flowers with a diameter of 7 cm;
• Avenir - semi-double, bright salmon-carmine flowers up to 8 cm in diameter with an intense carmine tint in the folds of the petals;
• Florida - simple dark red flowers up to 6 cm in diameter;
• Leopold Astrid - double flowers of soft pink color with a diameter of 7 cm with a red border and petals corrugated at the edges;
• Max Shame - double, salmon-colored flowers with heavily corrugated petals, up to 6.5 cm in diameter, with a white border along the edge.

Of the azaleas that bloom later than other varieties, the following are popular:

• Niobe - double white flowers up to 7.5 cm in diameter with a greenish throat and red specks on the petals;
• Concinna is a vigorous variety with simple funnel-shaped light lilac flowers up to 7 cm in diameter with bright crimson specks;
• Ernest Tirs - semi-double raspberry-pink flowers with a diameter of about 8 cm;
• Coelestinum - simple intense carmine flowers with a diameter of 6 cm;
• Hexe is a vigorous variety with double flowers of a bright wine color;
• Professor Walters - simple funnel-shaped flowers of a bright light salmon hue, up to 7.5 cm in diameter with almost white edges, the three upper petals are decorated in the throat with crimson-red specks;
• Sakuntala - white double flowers up to 7.5 cm in diameter with green specks in the throat.

You can divide azalea varieties by color. For example, varieties with white flowers, in addition to those that we have already described, include Mary, Heidi, Watercolor, Snezhinka, Shneg, Rose Belton. Azaleas with red flowers: Simon, Holland, Knut Even, Eclair, Ilona, ​​Frau Elsa Kärgeri. Raspberry flowers are found in the Cosmos variety, lilac flowers in the Flamenco, Violyacea multiflora, Ostalette and Temperance varieties, and pink flowers in the Terra Nova, Pink Pearl, Oslo, Scarlet Flower, Rays, St. Valentine and Rosalie azaleas.