Little things picked up for growing flowers are all treasures, and flower growers come out way ahead

Although pothos and spider plants are easy to grow, they do look a bit plain on a balcony. If you want to make your balcony come alive, take a look at the flowers we introduce today, and you will definitely give up the idea of sticking only to pothos and spider plants.

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A flower grower's treasure

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Plant ash

Plant ash is the ash left after burning firewood and grass, and it contains relatively much potassium fertilizer. It mainly contains quick-acting potassium fertilizer (5%-15%), and also contains available nutrients such as phosphorus, calcium, iron, magnesium and sulfur.

The element potassium can promote nitrogen metabolism in plants and the synthesis and transport of carbohydrates, make plants grow robustly, enhance resistance to pests, diseases and natural disasters, and improve drought resistance.

Promote seed germination

When sowing, you can cover the seeds with plant ash 0.5 cm-1 cm thick, which can raise soil temperature, promote germination, make seedlings emerge more evenly, and grow robustly.

Use as base fertilizer

When repotting flowers in spring, you can use plant ash as a base fertilizer, or mix 5%-20% plant ash into the potting soil when preparing it. This can also increase nutrients, promote well-developed roots, and reduce the harm of various pests and diseases.

Quick-acting potassium fertilizer

Use a plant ash extract at 1% concentration to water plants. It is not only a quick-acting potassium fertilizer, but can also improve the plants' drought resistance and disease resistance.

Plant disinfection

If wounds appear when cutting off rotten parts of plants, taking cuttings, or dividing plants, you can apply plant ash to disinfect them, and it can also speed up wound healing.

Precautions

Plant ash must not be applied mixed with organic farmyard manure, ammonium nitrogen fertilizer or phosphate fertilizer, so as to avoid reducing the fertilizer efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus. Plant ash is alkaline, so it cannot be used long-term for some acid-loving flowers.

Flowers not suitable for using plant ash as fertilizer:

Camellia, hydrangea, brake fern, Chloranthus, dayflower, rhododendron, gardenia, Michelia figo, night-blooming jasmine, gloxinia, calceolaria and other acid-loving flowers, as well as flowers that prefer a weakly acidic environment such as canna, Osmanthus fragrans, geranium, Primula obconica, daisy and Asparagus setaceus. These flowers are not suitable for using plant ash as fertilizer.

Flowers suitable for using plant ash as fertilizer:

Using plant ash as fertilizer for flowers such as oleander, tulip, clivia, dianthus, elm-leaved spirea and cactus has no adverse effects. Rose, peony, pansy, cineraria, narcissus, calendula, hyacinth, tuberose, Osmanthus fragrans and stock can use it in appropriate amounts.

Homemade plant ash fertilizer

Let's take a look at the experience of a flower friend on Sina Blog who made homemade plant ash fertilizer to grow vegetables. There are abundant tree resources near the home, and many dead trees and broken branches lie along the road up the mountain.

Most of the dead branches have become brittle under the action of microorganisms, so they are broken by stepping on them and put into bags.

A special iron bucket for burning wood ash (an iron paint bucket), with a relatively deep bottom so it can hold more firewood.

After burning, cover it with prepared soil to smother it until there is no smoke. Under oxygen-free conditions, the charcoal fire all turns into charcoal, and after stirring it becomes a bucket of quite good wood ash soil fertilizer.

Because wood ash is burned once a month, my vegetable garden has a fixed source of potassium fertilizer. Although the roof soil layer is thin, potassium-loving crops mainly grown for underground roots and stems have been very successfully grown on the roof and have therefore been planted in large quantities.

Foam boxes are more suitable for growing underground root crops. At present, most foam boxes are planted with potatoes and garlic, and the growth is gratifying.

The potato branches and leaves are lush and cover the entire foam box.

Pushing aside the potato branches and leaves, you can see a large amount of soil-mixed wood ash piled on the roots.

15 garlic plants filled a whole foam box. If 15 garlic bulbs can be harvested at one time, that is not bad either.

Having made it through the bolting stage, the scallions began to grow again. With wood ash often applied, the scallion supply is always steady and continuous.

In the second half of last year, sweet potatoes, ginger and radishes all had good harvests.

Harvested old ginger and young ginger

The soil was too shallow, so after the radishes grew large they pushed themselves out of the soil roots and all.

To solve the spring vegetable supply gap, lettuce (a potassium-loving crop) was sown and raised as seedlings in December, each plant weighing about 2 jin, and the harvest was quite abundant.

(Sina Blog: My Rooftop Natural Farming Method)

Sand

Clean river sand is a good helper for flower growers. River sand is generally divided by particle size into fine sand and coarse sand. Fine sand is suitable for cuttings, and coarse sand can be used as a drainage layer, top dressing, or mixed into potting soil.

Fine sand cuttings

Fine sand cuttings, taking rose cuttings as an example:

Select healthy rose cuttings from the current year that have bloomed and are at an appropriate stage of maturity, cut the bottom diagonally, leave 2 bud nodes, preferably with a heel, and keep 2-4 leaves. Soak in carbendazim for disinfection, and sun-expose the river sand in advance for disinfection and set aside. Insert the branch about 1 cm into the sand, then place it in a larger water container (the "hit the wall 2.0" method).

(Rose Bar, hanwym)

(Rose Bar, Deyubaba)

Fine sand sowing

Fine sand is also very suitable for sowing.

Use of coarse sand

The coarse sand left after screening can be used as a drainage layer or as top dressing.

(Sina Blog: Old Luo Luo's Spring)

Coarse sand can also be mixed into soil and used as potting soil, but the amount must not be too much. Succulents and cacti are more adapted to a granular environment, so granules can be the main component.

For general foliage plants, the following ratio can be used:

5 parts peat soil, 3 parts garden soil, 2 parts river sand, mixed with a small amount of organic fertilizer.

For cactus-family flowers (mainly including cactus, ball cactus, and Monstrose cactus), the potting soil can use 2 parts humus soil, 3 parts garden soil, 4 parts coarse sand, and 1 part vermiculite.

For succulents, 3 parts peat, 3 parts coarse sand, and 4 parts granules can be used as potting soil.

Sawdust

Sawdust is pure organic matter, very loose, and light in texture. It is very good for growing flowers, and it is generally better to use it after it has decomposed.

Sawdust layering

Sawdust can be used as the wrapping medium for air layering of flowers and trees such as rhododendron, camellia and Osmanthus fragrans. In the plum rain season, choose vigorously growing branches, girdle them about 10-15 cm from the tip, wrap them with a plastic bag filled with wet sawdust and mountain soil, and tie both ends tightly. Roots can form in 2-3 months.

Sawdust cuttings

Sawdust can be used as the rooting medium for cuttings of flowers and trees such as rose, gardenia and pomegranate. After the plants take root and survive, they can be moved into potting soil together with the clumped sawdust, so the roots are not damaged and the process of transplanting seedlings is saved.

There are still many good things

Moss can be used as top dressing for orchids and clivia plants, and many flower friends who make miniature bonsai also use moss as top dressing.

Moss is not hard to find in daily life.

Coal cinders have very good air permeability, and are excellent both as top dressing and as potting soil.

Leaf mold soil under trees.

(Flower Bar, 9890lms)

(Flower Bar, Xingbudeyejiejie)

Seemingly ordinary materials

still have quite wide uses

Dear flower friends

What good materials do you have

Tell everyone below!

After reading, show it to flower friends who need it~