Plants and Flowers

It is very easy to get plants from seeds. Choose the ripest fruit with a yellowish peel. Put it to ripen in a warm place (for example, on a spotlit window-sill). After it becomes soft, open it with a knife and get the central part with numerous smallest seeds. Place pulp on a dense fabric and wash out with water. Dry seeds slightly, and then you can start sowing.

On the true surface of the ground put seeds and damp with a pink solution of potassium permanganate. Feijoa seeds require light for germination, therefore they are not covered with the soil. Cover crops with a glass and put in a warm place with ambient light. At a temperature 20 C seeds will come up in 3-4 weeks. All this time air seeds and don’t give the soil to dry up.
When the shoots appear, adapt seedlings to a dry air of your room and to a direct sunlight.

Young plants of feijoa grow very quickly. The feijoa grows better, when it has space for the root system.

Feijoa is propagated not only with seeds, but also with cutting. It is preferable to do it in November - December. As cuttings use the top and middle parts of young shoots.

To speed up formation of roots, treat cuttings with stimulators and use the bottom heating.

This is evergreen tree or a bush with a branchy dense crone and silvery downy leaves, which lives in nature in damp subtropical and moderately warm parts of Southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Northern Argentina. Mature plants can tolerate temperature to -12 °С and are steady against a drought. Numerous dark red stamens are longer, than pulpy petals, and attract birds.

Feijoa’s fruit is a green berry with a reddish shade. Pulp of mature fruits is dense, juicy, sour-sweet with a pleasant taste. Fruits are d in the raw and processed state. Feijoa is cultivated as a fruit and an ornamental plant in many countries.

The room feijoa enjoys big love and demand. Fruits are used in a raw state and also go for cooking of jams and high-quality confitures. Fruits fall down, when ripe.
There are a lot of feijoa varieties, which differ in productivity, form and taste of fruits.
Feijoa has oval leaves, average on size, gray-green, shining from above and densely downy, silvery from below.
A crop from one bush at tub-gardening makes 2-3 kg.

The peach is successfully cultivated in conditions of greenhouses and winter gardens in winter (November - January) at temperatures about 0 С, and also is used for bonsai. Mature plants survive frosts up to -10С. In January - February the temperature should be raised up to +4-8С for two weeks. This time is good for pruning. Then a peach-tree is moved in a warmer room (10-12С), where the plant starts to blossom. After flowering it can be contained in a warm room. The room should be regularly aired. The plant is light demander and in winter it needs additional illumination. The peach-tree does not require often sprayings, unless it is located in a room with very low air humidity. Watering in spring-summer period should be plentiful, and limited in winter.

From the beginning of flowering till August the plant is fed up two times a month with organic or full mineral fertilizer. The peach tree requires regular pruning. Large flowers and fruits develop on last year sprouts. During a winter pruning should be deleted dense crone sprouts and half shorten sprouts of the current year. In summer long branches (20-25 centimeters) are nipped.
The plant is transplanted in the early spring, before flowering.

Peach-tree is propagated from seeds. In nurseries you may get planting stock, which should be pruned after planting. For a pottery-gardening a peach-tree is engrafted on rain (Laburnum) or a blackthorn, for a tub-gardening - on slowly growing sloe stock.

Persica vulgaris. The native land - northern China.
The peach belongs to the same family Рrunus, as a plum, an apricot and a cherry.

Peach is a low straight-stemmed tree with the branches forming a wide crone, in container culture it seldom exceeds 2 m in height.

Slim flexible peach-tree blossoms in February - March before breaking of buds, it is decorative since early spring till the autumn, when fruits ripen. Leaves are simple, petiolar, spear-shaped, length 7-12 centimeters, width 2-3,5, with a serrate edge, green. Flowers are usually pink, single or binate, 5- petalled, 3-4 centimeters in diameter, on a short pedicel. Decorative varieties have white, red or striped, simple, double and semidouble flowers. There are also decorative varieties with red leaves, and also with hanging, weeping sprout.

Fruit are juicy stone-fruit with a thin peel, globular, with a furrow on one side, velvety (true peaches) or naked (nectarine). A stone is wrinkled-furrowed with dot dimples. A stone can be adnate to a pulp or free.

In tub-gardening usually use Bamboo multiplex, with its graceful forms and Bambusa multiplex f. Variegate, which reach 2-4 meters in height; Bamboo multiplex had attractive white-motley leaves. For pot-gardening use brachytic forms which height does not exceed 30-40 centimeters, as Bambusa glaucescens.

Ornamental value of bamboos is in their transparent branchy verdure, due to which they are well combined with many large-leaved plants.

Leaves are on short petioles; they can be linear or spear-shaped and have different width. Flowers are fine, collected in large panicles. Bamboos are - monocarpic plants: they perish after flowering.