Kochia broom: growing seedlings, care, decorative and medicinal properties. Kochia - summer cypress - growing from seeds, when to plant Kochia jade growing

Kochia is a very impressive plant with decorative foliage and an unusual shape that can be easily changed. This feature allows even inexperienced gardeners to try their hand at creating creative green shapes. This original plant will decorate your summer cottage and garden area, turning into a lush ornamental bush. Surprisingly, this wonderful element of landscape design does not require special skills in care and propagation; it is quite unpretentious and undemanding. Kochia is grown from seeds, and how to do this will be discussed in this article.

First, a little about the features of this plant. Kochia originates from China, but is now widely popular in many other countries around the world. The plant got its name in honor of a German professor of botany named Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch.

The scientific name of kochia is basia, although among the people the names “annual cypress” and “summer Cyprus” are firmly attached to it, thanks to the clearly traced shape of the bush, very similar to cypress. Some have nicknamed kochia “broom grass” because it produces beautiful brooms.

Kochia is an annual plant about one meter high. This is a densely branching shrub with small flowers. Due to the narrow, small leaves of a light green color, kochia is often confused with representatives of conifers, however, this misconception disappears as soon as you touch it with your hand.

This shrub has amazing decorative feature, which distinguishes it from other plants - in autumn its leaves acquire a bright red hue, which makes it even more attractive.

Features of cultivation

The growing process is very exciting and not at all complicated. The only drawback of the plant is its instability to temperature changes. Due to short early autumn frosts, kochia may die. However, it can withstand drought and can easily cope with water shortages.

Kochia maybe grown in several ways:

• sowing seeds in open ground;
• growing seedlings in greenhouses;
• self-seeding.

Let's consider growing and propagating cypress from seeds. Seeds are sown directly into the ground from May to mid-July. It is important to remember that kochia seeds should not be stored for more than two years, otherwise they will not sprout. The germination rate of fresher seeds is 100%. For seeds to germinate, they need a lot of light. So you shouldn’t cover the seeds too much with soil, you just need to lightly press them into the ground.

The plant will sprout its first shoots quickly enough. They are necessary water using a watering can with a light coating.

To obtain seedlings, you can sow seeds in a greenhouse as early as April. Light frosts are not harmful to the first shoots, but if it is grown as seedlings, transplanting into open ground is possible only when the frosts have completely passed.

The plant can also reproduce by self-sowing. At the end of summer, as a rule, cypress branches become overgrown with nuts that contain seeds. These seeds must be collected in order to use them for seedlings next year in the spring.

Kokhia - freedom-loving plant, so you shouldn’t plant its seeds too often. The optimal distance between bushes is 25-30 centimeters. If planting is too dense, there is a risk of getting half-withered bushes with ugly foliage instead of gorgeous dense bushes.

Despite the fact that kochia is an unpretentious plant, the optimal place for its cultivation is a sunny area with fertilized garden soil. Frequently flooded and acidic soil is detrimental to it. However, a lack of moisture can negatively affect the appearance of the plant - it will drop its leaves and look extremely unkempt.

Kochias are necessary frequent weeding and loosening of the soil, especially during the growing season. She also needs double feeding. Feed the kochia with mineral fertilizer for the first time ten days after planting, the second time - a month later. Feeding is also needed during intensive growth and in case of trimming bushes. Nitrogen fertilizers are used for this.

In addition to timely feeding, the bush needs to be regularly trimmed. The plant needs to be trimmed 2 times a month, forming a bush of a certain shape: ball, pyramid, cube, column, egg, and so on. Pinch the top of the bush regularly. Use garden shears to trim kochia. With this unique opportunity to practice landscaping, you can create entire hedges from cypress trees planted in a row.

Annual cypress has strong stems, there is no need to tie it up. Its main advantage is that it is resistant to diseases and in most cases is not affected by pests. But there are also exceptions.

The appearance of spider mites is dangerous for the plant - this is the main pest of annual cypress. Therefore, when it appears, urgently treat the bush with a special Neoron solution. A second treatment will be needed two weeks later.

Beautiful bushes of kochia plant

Varieties of kochia

Kochia is a genus that unites annual and perennial plant varieties. The total number of subspecies of this plant is about 80.

Not only brightly flowering crops can help create a pleasant atmosphere in your garden plot. An original and quite successful solution is to plant kochia. The lack of flowers on the plant is more than compensated by the unusual shape and color of the delicate spherical bushes, which can be given the most intricate shapes if desired.

On this page of the website about farming we will look at the only way to breed kochia - growing from seeds(when to plant and how to care). The plant is interesting not only for its high decorative value, but also for its extremely low demands. Even a beginner can cope with growing kochia without much effort.

Many varieties of kochia change color in the fall

Brief information. Kochia comes from China. The culture forms lush bushes about 1 m in height and has about 80 varieties. It was nicknamed “Summer Cypress” because of the peculiarities of its outline. In summer, the balls or ovals of kochia are green, and closer to autumn, many varieties turn yellow, orange or burgundy. This is an annual crop that reproduces by self-sowing.

Kochia seeds can be planted in open ground and in a container for growing seedlings

When to plant kochia seeds?

Kochia seeds are small, but if planted correctly, they sprout beautifully. Gardeners practice two methods of growing crops:

Straight. Kochia seeds are sown directly onto the plot, mainly in the southern regions. They do this at the end of spring - usually in May when the main cold weather passes. The crop tolerates minor frosts calmly, but temperature fluctuations can slow down its development. Small kochia seeds germinate only in the presence of light, so they should not be covered with soil after sowing. You can only press them a little with a board or palm.
Through seedlings. Most land owners want elegant kochia bushes to become a decoration of their property as soon as possible. Growing seedlings helps achieve this goal. In this case, the seeds are planted in early spring ( March, April). In May, already well-developed bushes are transplanted into open ground.

Kochia seedlings are unpretentious in care

Growing “summer cypress” seedlings

Kochia has good germination and, if you follow the specifics of sowing and growing, you can get strong seedlings. After planting, powerful seedlings quickly develop, becoming a full-fledged decoration of the garden plot.

Landing Features:

The planting period is March or April.
For growing kochia seedlings, universal flower soil or garden soil with humus is suitable.
The soil should be moistened before sowing.
After sowing, the seeds do not need to be covered with soil, since they will not germinate without light. It is enough to press them down a little with your hand.
The container is placed in a warm place - 18-23 ° C - with access to diffuse sunlight.

Seeds do not need to be covered with soil

Nuances of caring for seedlings:

As soon as the sprouts appear - on days 7-9 - the kochia should be placed in a sunny place. Lack of light will cause the plant to become tall and thin. If this does happen, it is worth trimming the top so that the bush subsequently acquires a more rounded shape. Such a plant must be moved to a more illuminated place.

Seedlings about 7 cm tall should be transplanted. Digging into wider pots must be done carefully, digging out the bushes along with a lump of earth.
In May, kochia seedlings are planted in the garden. At this point it should reach a height of 15-20 cm.

Picking must be done very carefully

Planting seedlings in the garden:

Before placing seedlings, the holes should be watered thoroughly.
Young kochia seedlings are placed in a hole along with a lump of earth. Ideal in this regard would be to transplant seedlings that were grown in peat cups.

Originally trimmed kochia bushes

Kochia in the garden - growing features

To grow kochia, choose a sunny area without drafts or cold winds. Be sure to take care of the composition of the soil. Make it close to what is in the plant's natural habitat. This means that it should be light and conduct water well.

Where does kochia look best? From a decorative point of view, it is better to plant the crop as a fence or borders. It looks great in different types of flower beds, easily combining with many types of flowering and non-flowering ornamental crops. Kochia can become the accent of a rock garden or a beautiful frame for a classic flower bed. If you have a large free area, you can arrange a composition consisting exclusively of kochia bushes. In this case, it is better to use different plant varieties.

Decorating a flower bed with kochia

Adult kochia also needs regular watering. There is no need to frequently fertilize the crop. It is enough to use complex fertilizers only twice a season to keep the plants strong and disease-free. Regular weeding will improve air access to the roots, which is very beneficial for plants.

Kochia has gained incredible popularity due to the ability to regularly trim bushes. You can give them the most interesting shapes or constantly maintain a certain height. The culture tolerates frequent haircuts - every two weeks. After the procedure, you can add a small amount of fertilizer to the soil to increase plant resistance.

Kochia tolerates frequent haircuts

Important! If you notice that the kochia bush has wilted, most likely it does not have enough watering. If the plant loses its color and decorative qualities, it is necessary to fertilize it. Or the culprit may be a lack of light.

Prutnyak, broom, ruff, bassia - all these are popular names for kochia.

This subshrub from the Chenopodiaceae family, thanks to its thin elongated leaves resembling needles and its highly branched structure, looks like a small Christmas tree.

Therefore, it is also called summer cypress. This plant has gained popularity due to its distinctive qualities:

It is easy to trim (the shapes of the bushes are limited only by the imagination of the “barber”);

Has “chameleon abilities” (closer to autumn, the color of the leaves changes - depending on the variety, it can be purple, burgundy, or remain emerald green until frost)

Variety of colors of kochia

Drought-resistant and unpretentious (planting and caring for kochia is simple and does not require labor-intensive activities).

For these reasons, kochia is often planted not only in summer cottages; landscape designers use it to create “living” labyrinths, borders and hedges. And as a tapeworm in a flowerbed in combination with contrasting flowering plants, it looks great.

Main types of kochia

Summer cypress has approximately 80 species, of which about 10 are cultivated in gardening, distinguished by the greatest decorativeness and bush shape:

Hairy Bassia is an annual plant with a dense, branched crown. The color of the leaves changes from a rich light green hue in summer to red or pink in autumn. Tolerates haircut well;

Child's Kochia is a compact shrub with a dense crown, reaching a height of up to 0.5 m. The color of the foliage (pale green) does not change with the onset of autumn;

Bassia densely flowered is an annual tall species (reaches a height of up to 1.3 m). Its peculiarity is that during flowering, long whitish hairs grow around the base of the flowers, giving the plant an unusual appearance;

Kochia wooliflora is a low-growing variety of summer cypress (0.1-0.6 m) yellow-green in color. The branches of the bush are densely covered with wavy fibers;

Creeping kochia is a low-growing perennial 0.1-0.5 m high with a powerful root system. Its fiber-covered branches spread along the ground, which is why the plant received its name.

Other varieties of perennial bassia have no decorative value, therefore they are not cultivated in horticulture and are used mainly as feed raw materials.

Features of growing and planting kochia

Before planting summer cypress, you need to plan its planting location. Kochia is a light-loving plant and feels best in sunny areas (in nature it grows in rocky and semi-desert open areas).

If there is insufficient lighting, the color of the leaves will be faded, the branching will be weak, and the bush itself will lag behind in development.

Bassia grows well on well-drained soils with a slightly acidic or neutral reaction that easily allow water and air to pass through to the roots.

Lowlands and areas with close groundwater are not suitable for growing kochia. When moisture stagnates, its root system is susceptible to various rots.

Methods for planting kochia (photo)

Green cypress is planted in flower beds as seedlings or seeds.

To obtain seedlings, kochia seeds are sown in the second half of March in bowls with universal soil, to which perlite or coarse sand is added. Dishes for growing seedlings should be treated with an antiseptic, and the prepared soil should be shed with a fungicide (for example, Fundazol, Topaz, Vitaros, Fundazol, Ridomil Gold, Previkur).

To successfully germinate kochia seeds, it is important to follow these rules:

The seed material must be fresh (its germination rate decreases within one year);

Availability of sufficient lighting.

The seeds are laid out on moist soil to a depth of 1 cm. You can only lightly sprinkle them with a thin layer of sand or just barely press them into the soil with a spoon or a small piece of plywood.

Sowing kochia: lightly press the seeds into the soil

After this, the planting boxes are covered with glass or transparent film and placed on a warm windowsill. At room temperature, seedlings appear after 1-1.5 weeks. After this, they do not need shelter.

Young kochia seedlings are susceptible to a disease called “black leg,” in which the lower part of the stem first turns brown and then rots. Hence the name of the disease. Therefore, to reduce the percentage of damage to seedlings, the boxes with them after germination are kept in a cooler room at an air temperature of +10-15 ° C. Water the seedlings moderately: if there is a lack of moisture, the plants quickly wither; if they are waterlogged, the possibility of being affected by the “black leg” increases. When the seedlings grow 2-3 true leaves, they are planted in separate pots.

Picking kochia seedlings

Although kochia seedlings are just as unpretentious as adult plants, unexpected spring frosts can destroy them. Therefore, it is better to plant it in flower beds when stable warm weather sets in at +18-20°C (last week of May - beginning of June). Before planting, nitrogen-containing fertilizers (for example, ammonium nitrate or superphosphate) are applied to the soil. After a month, fertilizing is repeated.

You can sow bassia directly into the ground. In this case, the seeds are placed in grooves at a distance of 30 cm from each other, so that in the future each plant has enough space for development. Immediately after sowing, water the beds and make sure that the soil is always moist.

There is another cunning way to sow summer cypress: in the fall, cut selected branches from the bush and place them in a bed in a greenhouse. In the spring, young shoots will appear under the dried “brooms”. They can be picked into separate pots or thinned out, left in place, and when the seedlings grow up, transplanted into flower beds.

Kochia can reproduce by self-sowing. If you leave a couple of mature bushes over the winter, shoots will appear in the spring. Thanks to the wind carrying the seeds, kochia can grow in any corner of the garden. Dense seedlings must be thinned out, otherwise the plants themselves will create shade for themselves and develop poorly.

The planting pattern depends on the desired result: for borders and hedges, plants are planted at a distance of 0.3-0.4 m from each other, and in flower arrangements the arrangement is arbitrary.

Caring for kochia (photo)

Summer cypress is an unpretentious crop. This “child of the semi-desert” is drought-resistant and requires minimal care. However, in hot summer weather, kochia still needs to be watered. It is better to do this in the morning and evening hours, otherwise burns of the leaves are inevitable.

Bassia grows actively with regular feeding. In the spring, before planting, nitrogen fertilizers are applied, and a week later they are “treated” again with the same preparations. A month later, foliar feeding is carried out with complex mineral fertilizers. To ensure that the leaves retain their bright color, the plants are watered every two weeks with liquid nutrient formulations (Kemira universal, Agricola, etc.).

Kochia loves aerated soils, so the ground around the bushes needs to be regularly loosened and weeded.

Another point in caring for kochia is its pruning, which it tolerates easily. Thanks to this, the bushes can be given any configuration. After cutting, to maintain the weakened plant, it is fed with liquid mineral fertilizers.

Shaping kochia haircut

Kochia is an unusual ornamental plant with original leaves. Growing kochia is a very interesting process, and its care is minimal. Depending on your imagination, you can easily give this plant different shapes. Its homeland is China, but today the culture is widespread everywhere: in Japan, America, Australia.

Its name is associated with the name of professor of botany Koch. In appearance, the plant is very similar to cypress due to the presence of small narrow leaves. They make excellent brooms from it. Kochia is a dense annual crop that tends to grow very quickly and reach a height of 1 meter. It has small flowers.

From a distance it can be confused with a representative of a coniferous species, but if you look closer and touch the leaves, you can be sure that they have nothing in common. One of the important features of kochia is the appearance of its foliage, which turns a bright red hue when autumn approaches, making it look very impressive.

Growing it is quite a fun activity, and caring for it does not cause problems. But it is not able to tolerate frost and low temperatures. In such conditions, kohia is doomed to death. Its significant advantage is its ability to tolerate drought.

Kinds

Kochia has more than 80 species. The Kochia Venichnaya variety is very popular, which is divided into 2 varieties: Child’s Kochia and Volosolistaya Kochia. Their difference is that with the onset of autumn, the hairy leaves change the shade of the leaves to red, and the leaves of the Childs kochia remain green throughout the season.

Here are a few more types of kochia.

• Creeping is a squat variety of shrub.
• Woolly-flowered- an annual plant 80 centimeters high with red or yellow-green stems covered with small hairs.
• Densely flowered - a highly branched annual plant 130 centimeters high. Its flowers are covered with white hairs.

Reproduction

Reproduction is carried out quite often. Sowing in the ground is carried out from late spring to mid-July. It can be sown in a greenhouse for seedlings as early as April. Kochia reproduces well by self-sowing.

Good lighting is important for seeds to germinate. When sowing, they do not need to be pressed deep into the soil; simply sprinkle them with soil. Before germination, the ground is covered with a white cloth for about a week. It can not be removed until stable spring temperatures are established. Care for sprouts should be regular. They need to be thinned out periodically and the distance between them should be no more than 20 centimeters. As soon as the seedlings grow to 15 centimeters, they are planted in a permanent place. The sprouts will tolerate short-term cold weather, but in open ground the seedlings will take root when there is no threat of frost.

Possible winter planting. To do this, the bushes are placed in a greenhouse or greenhouse and wait until the ripened seeds begin to fall off. It is they who will produce spring shoots next year. You can collect these seeds to sow in cold soil when the temperature is consistently low. Planting is carried out during the onset of frost. Make furrows and pour seeds into them, and sprinkle a little soil on top.

Advice
When purchasing seeds, even from a trusted manufacturer, you should pay attention to the expiration date.

Landing conditions

Kochia is a freedom-loving crop, which is why plants need to be planted at a distance of 30 centimeters from each other. If you plant them too often, then instead of a dense bush, a frail broom with stunted leaves will grow, which will not be helped by any care.

Kochia is unpretentious, but loves sunny areas and fertile soil. Acidic swampy soil is not suitable for it.

On free steppes and deserts, the plant chooses sunny, open places for its growth. Therefore, it must be taken into account that its planting should be done in areas similar to natural ones. Then the flower will feel good in open ground, as it tolerates only light shading.

Care

During active growth, kochia needs care, which consists of weeding, fertilizing and loosening. You need to apply fertilizer 10 days after planting, and then after a month. Don’t forget to apply nitrogen fertilizers after trimming its bushes. The plant loves liquid fertilizers. No staking of bushes is required.

Kochia easily tolerates a lack of moisture; it can only be watered during a prolonged drought, since in this case it will begin to bloom early and lose its decorative effect. In swampy areas, rotting may begin.

Caring for the plant also involves cutting, which should be done once every 2 weeks. You can shape bushes within the limits of your own imagination. The spherical, oval, cubic shape looks good. You can form a column or a pyramid, or create a heart-shaped design.

Don’t forget to inspect the plant for pests and insects. Spider mites are especially dangerous. If it is detected, the plant should be treated with Neoron in the proportions of 1 ml of the drug per 1 liter of water. After 2 weeks it is worth repeating the procedure.

How to plant kochia through seedlings

Planting of seeds is carried out in March-April in a greenhouse or in pots with loose soil, which is pre-moistened. They are placed in a well-lit place and covered with covering material. Cultivation is carried out at a temperature of about 20 degrees. For emerging seedlings, the optimal temperature will be up to 15 degrees. Caring for seedlings involves pricking them when 3 leaves appear. They are planted in separate containers - up to 3 seedlings are placed in each container. Full cultivation is possible with proper watering, loosening, weeding and fertilizing with liquid mineral fertilizer, which is best done every week.

Planting in the ground is done at the end of spring, when the weather is pleasant with warm days. When grouping seedlings, an interval of up to 50 centimeters is maintained between them. If cultivation is planned in the form of a hedge or in a border, then a sufficient distance between seedlings will be 20 centimeters.

This bright green, elegant plant creates an unusual landscape design. Lively figures and even labyrinths decorate the parks and streets of many capitals around the world. Planting and growing seedlings requires minimal effort, and care does not take much time.