Winter Care Methods and Precautions for Winter Daphne

The winter daphne flower is strongly fragrant, and both its plant form and leaf color are beautiful, making it deeply loved by households. Legend has it that a monk on Mount Lu took a nap on a flat rock during the day, was awakened by a strong fragrance in his sleep, later found the flower plant, and named it "Sleeping Fragrance." Because it blooms around the severe cold of the Spring Festival, people regarded it as auspicious and renamed it "Auspicious Fragrance" (Rui Xiang). The flowering period of the winter daphne comes just when other flowers have faded, and its scent is of a mixed fragrance type, so in the old days it was called the "fragrance-stealing flower."

Among flowering winter daphne varieties, the golden-edged winter daphne is the best. It likes diffused light and avoids blazing sun, and needs shade in the height of summer. It is now winter, so it must be brought indoors for care. During the day it should be placed at a south-facing window to receive sunlight; at night it should not be placed at the window and must be moved to a place not below 5°C. In addition, attention must be paid to what it avoids: avoid soil that is too wet, avoid concentrated or raw fertilizer, avoid alkaline soil, avoid rain exposure, and avoid worms such as earthworms and ants in the pot. The winter daphne is now near its flowering period, so the above points require special attention to prevent bud drop and flower drop.

At ordinary times, pay attention to observing the golden-edged leaves of the flowering golden-edged winter daphne. If the golden and emerald colors are distinct and glossy and the leaves stand upright and upward, it indicates that fertilizer and water are normal; if the leaves droop, then the fertilizer used was too concentrated, too raw, or too frequent, or the watering was too much or too frequent, and the cause must be identified and measures taken. Too much watering is easy to correct; if the fertilizer use was improper, water thoroughly several times in a row to let the fertilizer flow out of the pot, then place it in a ventilated spot to help the potting soil dry quickly. If the roots have rotted, the pot must be repotted, the rotted roots cut off, washed clean with a fungicide, and planted in sandy soil to let it grow new roots. Some of the upper branches and leaves should accordingly be pruned away as well.

The flowering plant's potting soil should be mainly neutral, slightly acidic sandy soil. If you live near the Yangtze River or a large river, you can take river sand soil from the bank in winter when the water is low. Where there are no rivers, you can use red sand soil or the red molding sand from a factory's foundry workshop. In addition, 40% of leaf mold soil, pine needle soil, peat soil, rice husk ash, or the like must be mixed in.

The flowering plant's potting soil should not use base fertilizer; liquid fertilizer should be applied as a timely top dressing. The liquid fertilizer is best used as a mixture of soybean water (grind soybeans or boil them soft, and ferment for at least more than one year. Soybean fertilizer is mild in nature, while animal-based fertilizers are highly stimulating) and potassium dihydrogen phosphate water (a highly effective quick-acting phosphorus-potassium fertilizer; dilute the crystal granules with one thousand times water).