Lupine flowers - bright and original representativesfamily of legumes, used in group plantings with other one-and perennials for the decoration of flower beds and lawns. Quite often, lupine is underestimated by amateur gardeners, since most of them are known only for varieties with blue, blue-white and pink inflorescences, close to the wild. In fact, there are a lot of garden lupine hybrids with a wide variety of colors: white, yellow, blue, pink, carmine, red, cream, purple, etc.
Lupine is a grassland plant from meadows.Mediterranean and North America. Its leaves, resembling a palm splayed, are attached to the trunk alternately on long thin petioles. Racemes, after ripening forming fruit - bean. Lupine flowers - plants are unpretentious and surprisingly fruitful: for the emergence of the most real thickets of lupine is enough that only one seed was picked up by the wind, fell and sprouted in the ground. Like many other plants of the legume family, lupins can feel comfortably and successfully grow even on poor, depleted soils, since its root system can extract nutrients from the deepest layers of the soil. And if experienced flower growers appreciate lupine flowers for the lush shape of its bush and bright shades of inflorescences, then agronomists appreciate the ability to enrich the soil with nitrogen accumulating in the nodule bacteria on its roots.
Features of care
Lupine - an unpretentious plant in the care. All he needs for a comfortable existence in your backyard is timely watering, pruning and transplanting every few years.
Garden flower lupine does not require specialirrigation system organizations. Provided that in the summer time it will rain at least once a week, the lupine does not require additional watering at all. In addition, its leaves are capable of collecting dew. If the day is particularly hot, in the evening the lupine will not give up spraying with cool water.
Shrub formation
Externally, the lupine bush looks like a curvy curlyovergrown, but over time the plant grows old, the neck of the bush rises above the ground, the middle one dies, and the side sockets move away from each other - as a result the plant no longer looks so attractive. To avoid this, lupine bushes are spud to stimulate the formation of lateral roots, helping to preserve the decorativeness of the bush.
Flowering period
As a rule, lupins bloom in mid-May. If the fading "candle" is cut off in time, you can achieve repeated flowering in August.
Leaving during rest and wintering
Lupine flowers are cold-resistant plants: they withstand cold temperatures up to - 8 degrees, therefore, it is not necessary to prepare thoroughly for wintering. It will be enough to shortly cut the stems of the plant.
Transplantation and reproduction
Куст люпина может расти на одном и том же месте without transplant 4-6 years. The reproduction of this garden plant is carried out with the help of seeds or division of an adult bush. If you want to preserve the collection hybrid that you love for the original coloring, it is better to choose reproduction by cuttings from an adult plant, because with the help of seeds it is impossible to achieve the same coloring in the next generation.
As you can see, everything is quite simple.Trust your imagination and fantasy, you will see how your lupins will transform your garden plot. The photo shows how original the flowerbed decorated with these garden flowers can be.
