Features of room care

This plant looks very much like a palm tree, it can be called a leader among home and office flowers, and in regions with a hot climate it is widely used in landscape design. A beautiful palm-shaped yucca is unpretentious and easy to care for, a horticulturist humbly tolerates mistakes, if only there would be periodic watering.

The plant belongs to the family of asparagus, or asparagus, a class of agar. The tree is evergreen with long pointed leaves at the ends, grouped into ornamental bunches at the top of the trunk. Yucca is most suitable as a decoration for a hall or living room.

It takes a lot of time to form a large tree, since yucca grows very slowly. From May to September, it is recommended to keep it outdoors in the garden or on the balcony. The plant should be prepared for sunshine gradually, first exposing to a shaded area. The advantages of yucca include its resistance to dry air in residential premises, which is an important factor.

Varieties

Plant species are very different in size and individual details of appearance, but all of them are united by spear-shaped leaves. Due to this shape of the leaf plate, the plant received the names "Spanish dagger" and "Adam's needle."

Aloealistic yucca (Yucca aloifolia) has a dense rosette of xiphoid leaves, the length of which reaches 55 cm, and the width at the base is 15. The ends of the leaves are strongly pointed, and the edge is serrate. The foliage is dark green in color with a bluish tinge, has a light border. The trunk of the tree is pronounced, reluctantly branches, reaches 5 m in the wild.

Yucca Pak Kopstek

Aloe Elista Yucca bred in the following varieties:

• Marginata characterized by a whitish fringing at the edges of the sheet plate;
• Tricolor has yellow and white stripes on the leaves;
• Quadricolor different yellow, white and red lines on a green leaf;
• Atkinsii - the variety is undersized, compact, with purple foliage.

The giant yucca (Yucca gigantea), or elephant (Yucca elephantipes) is similar in appearance to the previous species, but much larger. In the wild, reaches a height of 8 m. The foliage is dark green, bright, has a glossy finish, with a serrated edge. The ends of the leaf plates are not very sharp, gradually tapering. The sheet length is up to 80 cm, and the width at the base is up to 9 cm.

It is able to branch well from the base of the stem. The flowers are white, a long inflorescence up to 1 m. This is the most popular species grown in the home. A giant yucca is commercially available in almost all flower shops, mainly in the form of a tree-shaped rooted stem with several leaf rosettes. Gains height too slowly. Within a few years, it grows by only one and a half meters.

Yucca Ivory Jewel

In the historical homeland has many names. For example, in Guatemala it is called palmer, and Mexicans call it palmita. In fact, elephant yuccas are similar to palm trees, but they have nothing to do with them from the point of view of botany.

There are several varieties of yucca ivory (giant):

• Artola gold - in this variety, a wide longitudinal strip of cream heterogeneous color passes through the leaf, in some places having a light green hue;
• Silver star - the variety is distinguished by a strip running in the center of the leaf plate, gray-green on the outside and white-green on the inside;
• Jewel - attracts with variegated leaves, darker to the edge, with a wide longitudinal gray-lime line, along which sometimes a creamy narrow strip also runs;
• Puck - This is the most common variety, characterized by light green homogeneous leaves without a pattern (supplied from the Netherlands).

Yucca Silver Star

Care rules: temperature and light

As mentioned earlier, the yucca feels great at home and does not require the attention of the owner.

Temperature mode. Yucca in the wild grows in sunny places in subtropics or temperate regions. However, in indoor conditions (in an enclosed space) it does not tolerate extreme heat. The optimum temperature is 24-25 ° C (not higher than +30). In winter, a relative coolness of 18-20 degrees Celsius is desirable, but if there is a shortage of light, it is permissible to lower the temperature to +8. Since it is difficult to find a cool corner for yucca from October to March in the apartment (heating systems work), it is enough to put it in a bright place without drafts. The main thing is to provide the tree with protection from the hot air of heating devices and organize additional artificial lighting when little light penetrates from the windows.

Fringed dracaena

Light mode. Yucca prefers plenty of sunlight, because in the wild it grows in the open sun. Small trees are placed on the windowsill of any window. If it faces south or west, then partial shading is required on very hot, sunny spring days after a long winter.

In the autumn-winter period, the sun is always not enough. If the yucca stands in the back of the room, you need to move it to the window, placing it not on the floor, but on a table or nightstand (otherwise the crown will be below the opening). It is important to take care of protecting the tree from the flow of warm air from the battery. If the yucca even bends by the window to its opening, this means that the deficit of light is not being filled. In this case, it is necessary to include phytolamps.

Watering and humidity

Yucca needs more than moderate soil moisture. If the air temperature is equal to or higher than 25 ° C, then after the topsoil has dried, you need to wait 2-4 days (based on how hot or cool) before starting watering. With adequate watering, the soil manages to dry by two-thirds. This rule is valid year round. If the tree is surrounded by coolness (below 25 degrees), moisture is still reduced. When kept in a cold room (15-16 ° C), for example, on an insulated loggia, the rarest watering is required.

The time when it is cool outside and the heating has not yet been given or has already been switched off is most dangerous for yucca. During these periods, the tree is surrounded by cold and moist air, the soil dries up slowly. You need to carefully monitor the condition of the leaves and soil. If you water too often, fluid stagnation forms, and the roots are likely to rot, and in a damp, cold climate there is a high risk of stem rot. Drying the soil for yucca is more beneficial than excess moisture.

Tip
If after 3-4 days the soil has not dried out, do not wait for the effects of waterlogging to occur - loosen the earth, wring it out with chopsticks, moving it away from the walls of the pot. A sign that you are over-watering the yucca is the appearance of mushroom flies flying off the ground. The larvae of these insects develop only with prolonged dampness.

You do not need to spray yucca leaves, but from time to time the plant needs a warm shower to remove dust. In winter, when the central heating is on, you need to focus on the level of relative humidity of the surrounding air. If the indicator is below 40%, then you still have to spray it, and twice a day, if the parameter is higher, then spraying is not necessary.

How to transplant

For planting a yucca, the most suitable soil is slightly acidic (pH 5.5-6.5), loose, porous and nutritious, containing draining particles. To prepare the soil mixture yourself, use one of two recipes:

• 2 parts of leafy soil, 2 parts of turf, 1 part of humus and 2 parts of drainage (medium-sized gravel or zeolite);
• 2 parts of universal soil purchased in a store, 1 part of small pebbles, 1 part of coconut substrate, 1 part of fresh compost.

A Yucca transplant is usually performed in the spring, once every 2 years. Choose a large pot or tub to give the tree stability. The drainage layer should be thick - from 5 cm to a third of the height of the pot. It is recommended to add some charcoal to the soil.

Top dressing

From April to September, once every 2-3 weeks, fertilizers are applied for decorative and deciduous houseplants. First of all, it is necessary to feed plants planted in store soil (about 2 months after planting), since useful substances are consumed faster from it. If the soil mixture is made independently according to the recipe, then fertilizers may not be useful for a year.

Breeding

Usually, a yucca is planted by rooting the top of the trunk or pieces of stem about 10 cm long. The operation is performed in the spring. Two more methods of reproduction are known: offspring and seeds.

Cut a small top of the stem, remove excess leaves from it. A smaller cut portion is rooted more easily. If the stalk is large, then leave up to 5 leaves on it. Put in cool boiled water with the addition of a piece of charcoal. Change the water once every 3 days. The stem takes root at a constant temperature of 24-25 degrees.

Not every tree gives children. With a sharp knife or blade, the daughter outlet is cut from the main trunk. The damaged place on the stem is covered with garden varieties, sprinkled with crushed coal or sulfur. The outlet is placed in raw vermiculite. When the roots appear, the seedling is dived into a pot with soil containing pieces of coal of birch. Reproduction by offspring is usually carried out in the spring-summer period, since at other times of the year, sockets are rooted badly and for a long time, in addition, there is a high risk of harming the mother tree.

Seeds for breeding yucca take only fresh. They should be soaked for 24 hours in warm water, then sown in a mixture of peat and leafy soil. The container is covered with a film or glass and placed in a warm place, ventilating 2 times a day. The germination period is usually one month.

Diseases

The appearance of brown spots on the leaves is usually caused by a number of reasons:

• hypothermia or excessive moistening of the roots leads to the appearance of a fungal infection;
• too dense sticky soil dries poorly and contributes to the occurrence of hypoxia of the root system;
• poor absorption of nutrients due to inappropriate soil acidity.

Tip
Infected leaves should be removed, the plant treated with a fungicide, watering adjusted, and spraying temporarily stopped. Move the tree to a lighted place.

Damage to rot caused by fungi or bacteria develops rapidly. Symptoms are: softening of the stem and leaves, blanching of the color. In the affected area, the trunk cracks when touched, inside it there is a cavity, sometimes with the remains of decay. With an advanced disease, the leaves turn yellow and hang, the plant gradually dies. The decay of the trunk is always associated with excessive soil moisture. Sometimes this disease occurs when hypothermia of raw soil with roots.

In order to prevent rot, loosening components (sand, zeolite, gravel, etc.) should be added to the ground, the soil must often be loosened, watering rules and temperature conditions must be observed.

Folding yucca leaves into a tube means that the soil is too dry or the air is too dry.

Leaves at the base become yellow or white, and the tree stretches strongly up - the reason is the lack of light in the autumn-winter period.

Following our simple guidelines, you can easily grow an exotic yucca at home.