For land owners who want to set up a beautiful garden with bright flowers, a representative of the Bean family will be an excellent solution. Lupine, which is very simple to plant and care in the open field, is distinguished by a combination of aesthetic beauty and practical benefits: a plant that has the ability to enrich the soil with nitrogen due to its nitrogen-fixing root system with tubers is an excellent green manure.

Types and varieties of plants

Lupine, often used in landscape design, due to its content of protein (50%), iron, fatty acids and bitter alkaloids (up to 2%) is also used in the food industry, agriculture and for the manufacture of medical supplies. Annual lupine varieties such as yellow and white are typically used for industrial purposes. And for the design of flower beds, front gardens from one-year-olds, a hybrid, dwarf, changeable type of flower is used. But the most decorative lupine is perennial.

Lupine leafy

The winter-hardy native of the North American region is a perennial herb, reaching a meter in height. Candle-shaped inflorescences 35 cm high consist of small flowers that bloom in early summer and remain in this state for a month. Timely pruning of faded inflorescences allows the perennial to bloom again at the end of the summer period.

Among the most popular varieties stand out:

  • pink "Schlossfrau";
  • carmine "Edelknabe";
  • white "Burg Freulen";
  • Orange "Apricot";
  • red "Carmineus";
  • white with a pinkish tint grade "Princess Julianne";
  • pink "Roseus";
  • snow-white "Albus";
  • undersized motley grade "Minaret";
  • blue and white sail "Castellan";
  • violet-ruby Rubinkenig.

Narrow-leafed lupine

He is blue lupine - a long-term representative of legumes with a height of one and a half meters. The name does not characterize the color of the flowers, which can be not only blue or purple, but also white and pink.

Lupine White

An annual plant, the height of which also does not exceed one and a half meters, has an erect stem branching in the upper part, covered with palmate-down leafy plates. White, pink or blue flowers form an inflorescence in the form of a brush, arranged in a spiral.

Yellow lupine

An annual herb with a weakly leafy central shoot crowned with a racemose, which consists of yellow flowers with a smell similar to the aroma of Reseda.

When to plant lupins in open ground?

It is interesting: perennial lupins - planting and care

Landing time depends on the method:

  • With the seed method of diluting lupine, sowing directly into the soil can be done after the snow has melted and heat has been established in April.
  • If seedlings are planned to be grown from seeds, then the procedure is carried out in early spring - in early March.

Important! Lupine can be planted in the fall before winter - in September-October. Sowing at this time allows you to get a flowering plant by the end of next summer.

Seed planting

When sowing seeds in open ground with the first flowering, the perennial will delight the owner after a year.

To make this happen:

  1. In autumn, soil is prepared by digging a selected area to the depth of a bayonet shovel, fertilizing (superphosphate, wood ash) and adding sand.
  2. With the advent of spring, grooves up to 2 cm deep and an interval of half a meter are made.
  3. Pre-disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate or fungicide seeds are placed in the grooves and sprinkled with soil.
  4. After half a month shoots appear.
  5. After the formation of the first pair of true leaves, the seedlings dive at a constant place of growth or thin out so that the distance between the specimens is at least 30 cm.

Growing seedlings

Before starting to grow seedlings, a soil mixture is prepared from sand, sheet soil and peat in equal proportions.

Then:

  1. The prepared soil mixture is placed in a tank with a drainage layer.
  2. Seeds are sown to a depth of 2 cm and crushed by peat of 1 cm.
  3. The container is covered with a moistened cloth and moved to a warm room, where after 2 weeks the first sprouts will hatch.
  4. After the appearance of the first pair of true leaves, new plants are planted on the prepared plot of the garden.

Advice! When using the seedling method, one should take into account the duration of seedling for 3 weeks, so that the seedlings do not come before the establishment of warm weather.

Propagation by cuttings

If the cuttings are carried out in the spring, then in the current fall the plant will form the first inflorescences.

For this:

  1. Cuttings are prepared from basal rosettes formed from growth buds, which are located at the base of the central shoot, by cutting them together with the root neck.
  2. Cuttings are placed in a mixture of soil and sand for a two-week period.
  3. After the formation of the roots, new specimens are transferred to the garden.

Caution! When grafting, you can not divide the bush: the core root in case of damage may not be regenerated.

Proper care of perennial lupins

The plant is undemanding: lupine can independently enrich the soil with nitrogen and cope with pests. However, when cultivating a flower for decorative purposes, it is worth observing certain care requirements.

Soil and lighting requirements

The flower does not need special soil, taking root on neutral, slightly acidic soil types located in well-lit areas. Its root system, which feeds the soil with nitrogen, makes it possible to fully develop even on sandy soils. However, if the acidity level is too high, the flower may turn yellow to prevent the development of such a scenario; the area for sowing lupins is calcu lated based on a 5 kg mixture of peat and dolomite flour per 1 m2.

Watering and loosening

Watering the lupine should be moderate. However, the frequency and volume of hydration often depends on the plant variety, type of soil, and sowing time. After testing, the soil should be loosened.

Soil weeding on site

In a systematic procedure for hilling and removing weeds that stimulate growth and lush flowering, the plant needs the first year of development. Some varieties of weeding are practically not required: alkaloid varieties are capable of releasing substances into the soil that have a detrimental effect on weed seeds.

Top dressing

Lupine is a siderate, so it does not need special nutrition. But to ensure violent flowering per 1 m2 of soil under plantings, 20 g of superphosphate and 10 g of potassium sulfate are introduced. Also, ash or dolomite flour is periodically added to the soil.

Care after flowering

To preserve the decorativeness of lupine before the arrival of winter colds, dried inflorescences and shoots are removed in a timely manner. Carrying out such actions ensures the formation of young shoots and repeated flowering at the end of the summer season.

Support for tall lupins

Tall varieties require additional support, which will maintain the integrity of tall stems during strong gusts of wind and intense rainfall in the form of rain showers in May-June.

When to collect and how to store lupine seeds?

After ripening, the lupine fruits crack and the seeds fly apart. To avoid this, the seeds must be collected when yellowing the beans, which are just starting to dry. The harvesting process is carried out in several approaches in sunny weather: while the beans begin to grow brown on the central shoots, the fruits remain green on the side shoots.

The procedure is as follows:

  1. Seeds are extracted from the pods, distributed on a paper sheet, on which they are dried in a warm and dry room without access to direct sunlight.
  2. Seed is placed in a glass, paper or tissue container, where it will remain until sowing.

How to prepare lupine bushes for winter?

Despite the frost resistance of plants, in latitudes with a temperate continental climate, it is better to prepare perennial lupins for wintering as follows:

  1. In mid-October-early November, the aerial part of the plant is cut off.
  2. The bush swells, which allows you to cover the bare root neck.
  3. Then the plant is sprinkled with a layer of sawdust, under which it spends the whole winter.

Lupine: diseases and pests

Lupine along with other legumes is affected by insects and diseases. Seeds and seedlings are often damaged by wireworms, chafer beetle larvae and caterpillars of a biting scoop. The greatest harmfulness is noted in the spring, which accounts for the slow growth of the plant and the active nutrition of pests. Weevils can also harm weevils. To combat soil-borne pests, which include wireworms, pre-sowing seed dressing is used. A similar event will also protect the culture at the seedling stage.

Adult plants, as a rule, are damaged by sucking pests (thrips, bugs) and leaf-eating moths, to protect against which timely treatment with insecticides is carried out according to the manufacturer's instructions. Excessive watering and disturbance of crop rotation can lead to the development of fungal diseases, from which rust, root rot, mosaic, fusarium stand out.

 

So, the unpretentious lupine looks great in combination with other cultures, located in the center of floral arrangements. The lower plants surrounding it are an excellent protection of the flower from strong winds.

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