How to grow gardenia best? A detailed guide to the latest care methods

Gardenia stays evergreen all year round, blooms around the Dragon Boat Festival every year, has pure white flowers, dense blooms, and overflowing fragrance. It is an excellent plant for city landscaping, highway greening, and courtyard bonsai viewing. That is why gardenia has always been favored by people, but after many people buy it, they do not know how to grow it, so follow the editor below and take a look at how to grow gardenia!

The growing environment for gardenia

Gardenia prefers a warm, humid, well-lit, and well-ventilated environment, but avoids intense sunlight and scorching exposure. It is suitable for living in slightly shaded places, tolerates partial shade, fears waterlogging, and is relatively cold-tolerant. In Northeast China, North China, and Northwest China, it can only be grown as a potted greenhouse flower.

Propagation methods for gardenia

Gardenia can be propagated by many methods, including sexual reproduction and asexual reproduction. Generally, cuttings and layering are mostly used for propagation, and division and sowing can also be used, but they are rarely adopted. Generally, potted plants in the north are not easy to produce seeds.

1. Sexual reproduction

Generally, select plump, dark red mature fruits, dry them in the sun or in the shade with the shells still on to use as seeds. Before sowing, cut open the seed fruit skin with scissors, dig out the seeds, rub them apart in hot water, remove floating seeds or impurities, then scoop out the sunken, plump seeds, spread them on a bamboo mat, and place them in a ventilated place to dry off excess moisture. Generally, choose a sunny hillside or soil plot with deep, loose, fertile sandy loam for sowing. Land at the edges of fields can be used for planting, or it can be intercropped or relay intercropped with legumes. Before planting, plow the land 1-1.5 chi, remove miscellaneous wood stumps, and make beds with a bed surface width of 4-5 chi (the spacing can be larger if the soil quality is good, otherwise smaller), with a bed height of 6 cun. Farmyard manure, green manure, or human and livestock manure water can be applied as base fertilizer, for example, applying 20-30 dan of human feces and urine per mu. After the soil dries, shallowly rake the clods and level the bed surface. On the bed surface, open sowing furrows at a row spacing of 6-7 cun, with a furrow depth of about 1 cun, ready for sowing.

Gardenia can be sown in spring or autumn, generally mostly in spring. Spring sowing is done around Yushui, and autumn sowing is done around Qiufen. When sowing, mix the seeds with fire ash and evenly sow them in the sowing furrows, then cover and level the sowing furrows with fine soil or fire soil, cover with grass, sprinkle water, and often keep the soil moist to facilitate seedling emergence. Use 4-6 jin of seeds per mu. After seedlings emerge, pay attention to removing the covering grass in time. During the seedling stage, weeds should be removed frequently, and care should be taken not to damage the roots of the seedlings. After weeding, dilute human feces and urine water must be applied as a top dressing. After one year of seedling cultivation, they can be transplanted. If transport is relatively far, it is advisable to coat the roots with yellow mud slurry, cover with grass to retain moisture, plant one plant per hole, then cover with soil, press firm, and sprinkle water. After planting, cultivate and weed once and apply top dressing once each in spring and summer every year. Applying human and livestock manure, stable manure, compost, cake fertilizer, and the like is all acceptable. Before flowering in summer, it is better to apply fertilizer with higher phosphorus and potassium content. Fertilization is generally carried out after weeding and loosening the soil.

2. Asexual reproduction

① Cutting method: It can be divided into spring cuttings and autumn cuttings. Spring cuttings are carried out in mid-to-late February; autumn cuttings are carried out from late September to late October. There are slight differences between the north and the south, but in most cases the survival rate is highest between summer and autumn. For cuttings, choose healthy 2-3-year-old branches, cut 10-12 cm, remove the lower leaves, keep the top two leaves and cut each in half, first dip them in vitamin B12 injection, then insert them obliquely into the cutting bed, leaving only one node above. Pay attention to shading and maintaining a certain humidity.

Generally, roots can form in 1 month. Under conditions of 80% relative humidity and a temperature of 20-24°C, it takes about 15 days. If soaked in 20×10^-6-50×10^-6 indolebutyric acid for 24 hours, the effect is even better. When the rooted seedlings begin to grow, transplant them or pot them individually. They can bloom after 2 years. In the south, water cutting propagation is also used, that is, inserting the cuttings into a round disk woven from reed stems, letting it float on the water surface so that the lower part roots in the water, and then transplanting for cultivation.

② Layering method: It is generally carried out around Qingming in April or during the plum rain season. In April, select 1-year-old robust branches 25-30 cm long from 3-year-old mother plants for layering, pull them to the ground, and wound the part of the branch that enters the soil. If the wounded part can be dipped in 200 ppm powdered naphthalene acetic acid and then covered with soil and pressed firm, rooting is even easier. If there is a three-forked branch, then at the fork opening, three seedlings can be obtained at one time. Generally, roots can form after 20-30 days, and after rooting in June they can be separated from the mother plant. By the next spring, they can be planted separately with soil or potted individually. For transplanted seedlings or potted plants, spring is best, carried out during the plum rain season, and a soil ball is required. During the growing period, keep the soil moist. During the flowering period and midsummer, water more. Apply fertilizer once a month, and apply phosphorus and potassium fertilizer once more before flowering. In early spring of the following year, prune and shape, and promptly cut off dead branches and leggy branches.

After reading about the growing environment and propagation methods of gardenia, let us take a look together at exactly how gardenia should be grown!