Spruce "Super Blue": description, planting and care

"Super Blue Seedling" is a North American spruce with an amazing blue crown color, which becomes more vivid and pronounced with age. The tree grows quickly, looks aesthetically pleasing due to its conical shape. This beauty is fabulously good both in winter and summer, but its cultivation has some subtleties.

Spruce "Super Blue" is an elegant tree with dense and evenly distributed green crown in the form of a cone. It has its own characteristics.

• It is a fast-growing coniferous tree that can grow 30 cm in height and 15 cm in width in a year.
• The height of an adult tree is from 10 to 15 m.
• The needles of the plant are tough and thorny, reaching 1.5–3 cm in length, the shape of the sharp needles is rhomboid.
• Strong branches are located horizontally, they focus on the tiered structure of the aboveground part. Growing and rising up, the crown exposes part of the trunk.
• Cones are resinous, have a cylindrical shape, during ripening they have a yellowish-green or reddish tint. As they ripen, they turn brown, growing in length up to 5-10 cm, and in width - up to 2-3 cm. They contain black seeds 3-4 mm long with light beige winglets. Sometimes they remain on the branches until the spring and autumn of the next year.

Experts advise to plant "Super Blue" in open places, because in the shade the twigs lose their unusual blue and turn green. In its beauty, the tree overshadows the famous Siberian spruce, but it cannot compete with it in winter hardiness. In North America, it lives up to 600 years, but in the middle zone, including Russia, it barely reaches 70 years.

To grow North American spruce, you will need fertile, loose, drained soil, moist, but without waterlogging.

Container plants can be planted throughout the season, but until the soil freezes.

The easiest way is to buy a small young tree up to 70 cm high with packed roots. It is worth paying attention to the color of the needles: there should be no darkening on it. If the aboveground part of the plant is not too proportional and has irregularities, this is not a problem: the spruce will level out as it grows. Such seedlings can be immediately placed in the ground. When landing a group, a distance of 2-4 meters must be observed between them. The pit is dug to a depth of no more than 70 cm; a drainage layer of gravel and sand 20 cm thick must be laid on its bottom.

And you can also use the seeds of young cones, but you need to know that half of them will not germinate, and only 20% of the seedlings will have a beautiful blue color of the needles. The cones are first dried, wait for them to open, and then rinse them with water and a weak solution of potassium permanganate. The seeds can be stored until spring or planted immediately. Before sowing, they are kept for 10-12 hours in a solution of an antifungal agent. Then you can plant them in pots or directly into the ground, after adding "Ammofoska" (25 g per 1 sq. M.) To it. From above, the earth is mulched with a mixture of sawdust, peat with a layer of 2 cm.

Germination occurs after 10 days, after which blue Christmas trees are selected, which must be sprayed 2 times a day to avoid drying out.Up to 3 years old, they should be regularly taken out into the air, and then they can be planted in open soil.

Cuttings are another breeding method for blue spruce. Cuttings should be taken from mature plants aged 5–10 years. They do this in April-May. A young shoot should be up to 12 cm long and with a heel - a piece of bark.

It is better to plant branches in a greenhouse. A sand-peat mixture or perlite is used as a substrate, gravel is laid out on the bottom of the hole, then deciduous humus, on top - quartz sand and peat. The seedlings are lowered to a depth of 2 cm at a slight angle (20-30 °). Under such conditions, the tree will grow for about 12 months, after which it is regularly hardened on the street, and by the age of 3 it is planted in a permanent place.

Caring for American spruce seedlings includes several aspects.

• To prevent the plants from wilting, let alone perishing, regular loosening is necessary. In order not to damage the delicate roots, do not loosen too deep (no more than 6-7 cm).
• It is required to water the Christmas trees every 7 days; 12 liters of water is enough for one tree.
• It is necessary to mulch the soil, since this way it will not dry out. Do not forget to spray the spruce crown.
• For the winter, young Christmas trees have branches tied to the trunk so that they do not break from the weight of the snow. Until the age of 3-4 years, it is better to cover them with a cotton cloth or agrofibre to protect them from sunburn.

The tree requires sanitary pruning and removal of dry and damaged branches. Basically, these works are carried out in the spring, when broken, crooked and dead shoots are cut out. The plant tolerates the procedure well if it is healthy. And you can also carry out a shaping haircut of a decorative crown. It is better to do this in summer, when the growth of shoots stops, but not in late autumn or winter: the tree may not withstand frost.

For treatment, spraying with systemic fungicidal agents is used. In some cases, insecticide treatment may be necessary, since young shoots are susceptible to pests such as spruce false shield, hermes, spider mites, aphids and bark beetles.

In landscape design, individual spruces and whole group plantings are used. Often "Super Blue" is used to decorate city parks, squares, areas of public buildings. Trees can form a hedge for protection from the wind, they are often subjected to curly pruning, and spruces become an original decoration in the form of unusual geometric shapes.

Blue spruce is able to fit into any landscape in large and small areas. Since the plant is not very susceptible to dust and gas pollution, it can be planted along the fence, but the best use of this beauty is various compositions with flowers and other plants of a contrasting color. In addition, Super Blue Seedling can become a family Christmas tree on the territory of a country house.

For information on the varieties of prickly spruce, see the next video.