Features of tladiana and its cultivation

Tladianta is an exotic liana plant that is a vegetable but has a sweet fruity taste. The fruit is similar in shape to a cucumber of a bright scarlet color, therefore the second name for the plant is red cucumber. Despite the mass of useful nutritional and medicinal properties, tladianthus is more often used as an ornamental vine, since it can cause tangible allergic reactions.

Tladianta is a native of East Asia; in the natural environment of our country, it grows in the Far East. The relation to the pumpkin family is noticeable in the shape of the leaves and long creeping lashes.

Perennial liana propagates by seeds and tubers. It grows very quickly, over the summer the lashes can reach 5-6 m. All parts of the liana - stems, leaves, fruits, contain pleasant pubescence.

The plant has yellow dioecious flowers: male - in the form of a brush or umbrella, female - single. The fruits are small, similar in shape to tiny cucumbers, no more than 6 centimeters in size.

Botanists know about 25 species of Thladiantha. For general acquaintance, here are a few of them.

A large climbing herb that resembles a vine. Under natural conditions, it grows in southeast China at an altitude of 800 to 2600 m above sea level. Cordifolia can be found in forests and on roadsides. The stems have active branching, the leaves are pubescent, bristly, heart-shaped. The plant contains a strong male peduncle (5-15 cm) in the form of a brush and female flowers growing one at a time. The tladianta cordifolia has an oblong, rough fruit with 10 grooves. The plant blooms and bears fruit from May to November.

Grows wild in forests and mountains in Yunnan province of China (altitude 2200-2400 m above sea level). Tladiant of grandisepala has long thin stems-whip, clinging to the mountain slopes. The plant is endowed with pubescent ovate-heart-shaped leaves, elliptical fruits, single female flowers. Male inflorescences form clusters on flaky bracts with 6-9 flowers. The plant blooms from June to August, then bears fruit until October.

Of the 25 species of tladiant, only dubious grows in our country in the most eastern territories and is grown by gardeners in Siberia, in the south and in central Russia. Therefore, the article will focus on this particular type of plant, the name "red cucumber" also refers to it. In nature, Thladiantha dubia is found in China, but over time it was introduced to the territory of Europe, Canada and the United States, where it actively settled.

In its natural environment, the tladiant is unpretentious, grows like a weed and, fighting for a place in the sun, always wins over the surrounding vegetation. Therefore, it is not difficult to grow a liana on your site, it is more difficult to protect other crops from its aggression.

Tladianta quickly grows over with beautiful fresh greenery, it can be used as a living screen.

Having chosen a suitable place, you need to limit it with slate or other obstacles, digging them in half a meter deep. The slate will not allow the tubers to spread to the rest of the garden, otherwise it will be very difficult to get rid of the tladiant.

You can choose a site with the poorest soils, the plant will still develop, the main thing for it is watering and hilling. With artificial cultivation, it is better to plant the liana not with seeds, but with tubers. Male and female specimens are planted separately, from different sides.

If the seed method is chosen, you should first grow the seedlings, and then, on the 55th day, transplant the shoots into open ground. Planting works are carried out from April to May, depending on the climatic region.

The plant does not require special care, it will survive in all situations, even if it is not asked for. There is no need to dig or cover in winter, the ground part dies off anyway, and next year new growth grows. Watering, fertilizing, pollination will create comfortable conditions for the vines, to which it will respond with lush greenery and a good harvest.

Pests do not like the plant, so the vine does not complain about its health. In too damp weather, fungal manifestations are occasionally observed, which can be dealt with with the help of Bordeaux liquid.

Tladianta loves moisture, if a good harvest is important, it needs to be watered several times a week. In humid climates, the time to water is chosen according to the circumstances.

In terms of fertilization, the first spring fertilization should be organic. Before budding begins, ash, superphosphates and humus are introduced into the soil. Potassium will help to increase the number of ovaries, and magnesium will give the fruit a delicate spicy taste.

Tladianta is a herbaceous vine that dies off in winter and comes to life in spring, therefore, before frost, the entire plant above the ground is cut off completely. And during the growing season, you can remove the lower branches to control the growth of greenery.

Creating a hedge, the liana is formed by cutting off the top and side branches, trying to fit into the given shapes.

It is enough to plant a perennial vine once, then self-propagation occurs. Each seed that has fallen into the ground and each tuber formed is capable of giving new growth. In just a few years, the tladiant will occupy the vast territory of the garden.

Seeds are obtained from the overripe fruit. They are well washed, dried and stored until spring in a refrigerator or basement at temperatures from +1 to +5 degrees. Seedlings can be grown from seeds in a greenhouse or at home on a windowsill, and planted in the soil at the end of April.

As for the tubers, the maternal specimen is depleted during the season and dies, giving nutrients to the plant. But there are many other "potatoes" with which you can get young vines for the next year. To grow a tladian in a new place, tubers are dug from an adult plant and transplanted, burying them 8-10 cm into the soil.

On one liana there are male and female inflorescences at once, but in order to wait for the fruits and seeds, it is necessary to pollinate. Insects do not favor this plant, the gardener needs to take the brush himself and manually pollinate the flowers, only in this way can you wait for the harvest. Otherwise, the tladiant will delight with green leaves, but not with bright, beautiful fruits.

Liana bears fruit from mid-summer until frost. When the fruits are ripe, they are carefully cut and used for food. The taste of red cucumbers is for everybody, sweet and slightly sugary, they have something of melon and persimmon. The fruits can be eaten fresh, or canned in the form of jams, preserves or compotes. Unripe, not yet reddened cucumbers are used for salads and exotic snacks. It should be remembered that only fruits are eaten, the tubers of the creeper cannot be eaten.

The inhabitants of our country are not accustomed to the specific taste of tladiant, so gardeners grow it for beauty, to decorate their gardens. Due to its lightning-fast growth, the vine quickly covers with beautiful greenery a mesh-netting fence, a compost pit, the walls of an old barn and other unsightly buildings. It is used not only as a screen hiding the flaws in the garden, but also for braiding arches, gazebos, and terraces. For decoration, it is enough to organize the supports and direct the vine along them.

All its parts look great in tladiany - leaves in the form of hearts, delicate flowers of a lemon shade, scarlet unusual fruits. She pleases the eye from spring to late autumn. But some gardeners do not want to bother with the fruits, timely remove overripe specimens that have lost their aesthetic appearance, or that have fallen to the ground. They remove female flowers or plant male species that produce beautiful inflorescences until autumn, but do not bear fruit.

As already noted, growing a tladian is not at all difficult. The laziest gardeners can plant a vine and forget about it. But this is where the first difficulty appears. If you let things take their course, the plant will not only take care of itself, it will destroy neighboring crops, and it will be as difficult to fight it as with a malicious weed.

The second difficulty is that you can wait for the fruit if you work on pollination yourself. The tiny Chinese bee that pollinates the liana does not live in our area, and local insects ignore the overseas plant.

In conclusion, we can say that tladiant is a beautiful edible and medicinal plant that helps to hide the imperfections of the yard and garden., surprising friends and neighbors with its exoticism. But it is not suitable for every gardener, only energetic, not looking for easy ways. After all, the difficulties lie not in growing a plant, but in efforts to contain it within the allotted framework.