All about common heather

From literary sources, many know about heather honey, which is sung in poetry. Indeed, this plant has long attracted the attention of gardeners and nature lovers for its melliferous qualities, amazing aroma and beauty of flowers.

To cultivate heather on the site does not require much effort, since it is distinguished by its unpretentiousness and rapid reproduction of bushes.

The touching view of the heather blooming in the flower beds finds more and more fans who want to plant it in their garden. A beautiful plant, resistant to drought and severe frosts, in nature can be found everywhere - from the north of the European continent and the United States to the hot climate of Morocco. It has long inhabited the meadows of Scotland and the middle of England, as well as the Azores.

Most often, an ascetic plant chooses not the most favorable areas of land for settlement - peat bogs and mountain slopes. Common heather prefers drained soils with an acidic reaction, and in suitable places forms extensive thickets, called "heaths". You can often see heather glades in a forest with a predominance of conifers, where the perennial grows in well-lit places, and multiplies by dividing the root system.

The numerous Heather family includes about 500 varieties, a significant part of which is distinguished by high decorative qualities and is used for artificial breeding. Their life form looks like a low shrub, from 0.3 to 0.7 meters, with shoots creeping along the ground. Evergreen leaves are located on the shoots in 4 rows, in a step-tiled way, consist of 3 sides and roll up along the length. After the first frost, their green color changes to yellow, with separate burgundy spots. Blooming heather brushes are covered with small lilac-pink or white inflorescences. The flowers are a 4-part bell with the flower formula H (5) L5E5 + 5P (5).

After a period of flowering, fruits appear on the clusters in the form of bolls containing many small seeds. Heather is a unique botanical phenomenon that is widely used to treat many diseases. Heather honey is considered one of the most useful, and infusions, decoctions, teas from dry shoots and plant flowers are used as medicinal in folk medicine. They help with kidney and stomach ailments, colds and rheumatism. Poultices from brewed raw materials are used to treat wounds, burns and allergic rashes.

A wide variety of varieties of common heather can be found in specialized shops and ornamental plant nurseries. Each of them differs from its counterparts in the height of the bushes, the size and color of the petals, as well as the duration of the flowering period. A large assortment of varieties of heather makes it possible for every gardener to choose the one they like best. Among them, you can pay attention to the following varieties.

• "Allegro" - resistant to frost up to -20 degrees, medium-sized variety, about 50 cm high. It blooms in August-September with large flowers with a bright pink color.

• "Boskop" - the bushes grow up to 60 cm, and the name is dedicated to the Dutch city.The plant is distinguished by golden foliage - chartreuse, against which light inflorescences of lilac and pink tones look spectacular. The flowering period lasts from August to October.

• "Dark beauty" - the height of compact bushes of this variety does not exceed 25 cm, and the flowers attract attention with an unusual carmine shade of dark pink petals that adorn flower beds in August-October.

• Melania - medium-sized bushes with rare white flowers.

• "Malin" - low, squat bushes of the variety, bred by German gardeners, reach half a meter in diameter. The dark brown twigs of the plant are covered with unopening buds of a pink-lilac hue.

• "Velvet fashion" - belongs to the winter-hardy varieties of the plant with white buds and a long flowering period, from July to the end of September.

• Spring touch - medium-sized bush, about 50 cm in adulthood. Shoots with light green leaves in August-October are crowned with clusters with pink flowers.

• "Malis" - the pale pink color of double buds is formed on a shrub 40 cm high, with a wide crown. Perennial is better suited for single planting in sunny places.

• "Yana" - short bushes for decorating alpine hills, with double pink flowers and frost resistance up to -23 degrees.

Heather quickly captures the territory in which it is planted and does not let other plants go there. Therefore, in nature, heaths form peculiar communities in the form of dense thickets of shrubs, in the center of which an empty space is often highlighted. This feature is due to the one-sided spread of seeds and the unusual arrangement of flowers on the brushes. In the garden or on flowerbeds, heather shoots creeping on the ground should be limited from arbitrary growth, and excess new plants should be removed or transplanted to other places. For planting in open ground, it is necessary to prepare a hole with a soil mixture, which includes peat, fertile layer and compost. Having filled the finished mixed soil into the dug hole, it must be poured with water with the addition of natural apple cider vinegar, in a proportion of 100 grams per 10 liters.

Due to the strong spread of cuttings for heather bushes, allocate landing areas with a margin. Seedlings are planted at a distance of at least 60 cm from other plants, and no closer than 40 cm from each other. A supply of free soil will provide sufficient air circulation in the root zone. If there is heavy soil on the site, then a layer of drainage stones, pebbles or crushed brick should be placed on the bottom of the heather holes.

Heather belongs to unpretentious plants, but you need to know the features of care so as not to create harmful conditions for his life. After planting seedlings in the spring, when heather has much more chances to survive in a new place, it must be watered at least 1 time a week, in the hot season - up to 2-3 times. Too much water should not be poured over young heather, since it still belongs to drought-resistant shrubs, and from the next year of life it will fully acquire these qualities. Feeding heather is done as needed, if it looks frail and blooms poorly. You can apply fertilizers for conifers or room hydrangeas, and this must be done no later than May.

From the age of 4, shrubs need a pruning procedure. If this is not done, then soon the plant will begin to hurt and may die as early as 6-7 years. Shoots are cut to half, in the middle of spring, when the threat of late frosts passes through most of the middle zone and in the Urals.For decorative purposes, the branches are cut in different ways to make the bush look more natural.

Regardless of which method of heather propagation is more attractive to the gardener, the timing of planting or sowing seeds is best left until spring. You can propagate heather with seeds at home, but this will take a long time, since even after a year it will be too early to plant it in open ground. It grows well at home, and the shoots acquired in the fall are kept on the windowsill until warm days.

Heather quickly spreads throughout the territory due to its ability to put down roots from shoots adjacent to the ground. This feature can be used to propagate shrubs and make the required number of layers, sprinkling them with a small layer of earth. The next year, young bushes will appear, ready to be separated from the mother plant and transplanted.

A longer way to reproduce heather is to cut cuttings from the tallest shoots and plant them in peat pots. Cuttings should be at least 4 cm long, and they should be cut from early summer to early autumn, depending on the type of plant and the time of its flowering. The earlier a variety of decorative heather begins to bloom, the sooner you should take care of getting cuttings.

Before planting the cutting, it is necessary to make a depression in the pot for half its length and remove the lower leaves. It is useful to spill the soil with a solution of "Topaz" or another fungicide. When planting several cuttings in one container, the distance between them should be at least 2 cm.

The easiest way to get several new ones from one grown, adult bush can be considered division. To do this, at the beginning of September, the plant must be dug out of the ground and the adult bush must be divided into several parts, while each new rhizome must have young shoots. Old branches are cut as low as possible and the bushes are planted in new places.

Generally cultivated heather varieties are not susceptible to diseases caused by harmful small insects, but they can be affected from fungal gray mold... White bloom can appear as a result of stagnant water in the soil, after heavy rains or spring floods.

For prevention, it is necessary to arrange drainage in the root system, and fungicidal preparations should be used to treat the disease of the bush. In cases of deep damage to plants, a 1% solution of copper sulfate helps well, with which heather is treated every 7-10 days.

In the classical arrangement of flower beds, heather until recently remained an undesirable participant. Its habitat was considered to be mountainous areas, peat bogs and picturesque meadows filled with heathers.

• True recognition of its decorative qualities a low shrub with flowers of romantic, delicate shades received in fashionable alpine slides and rock gardens.

• Due to the fact that heather does not like neighbors and tries to survive them from the flower bed, coniferous shrubs or grasses related to soil requirements can be planted next to it... Among them are rhododendron, erica, thuja, juniper, hydrangea and others.

• For spring support of a flower bed with heather, you can plant spring flowers such as anemonastrum and erika. Until late autumn, there will be a flower garden in which miscanthus, Siberica white turf and white late Erica grow next to the heather.