How to Care for a Calla Lily
Today, the editor will introduce how to care for a Calla Lily and related content about the planting methods and timing for green plants. Let's continue with the introduction.
The Calla Lily is a monocotyledonous herbaceous plant of the Araceae family, Calla genus, with a corm as its root. The aerial stems and leaves wither every year, but the underground corm can be perennial. Calla Lilies are potted flowers with both ornamental leaves and flowers, supported by long flower stems, with elegant and graceful shapes, colorful and fresh, and are also excellent materials for fresh cut flowers.
How to Care for Calla Lilies?
First, understand the habits of Calla Lilies.
To keep Calla Lilies alive and healthy, it's essential to understand their basic habits first. Only by understanding their likes and dislikes can you know what kind of growing environment and care methods to provide for them. Calla Lilies prefer warm, humid, and sunny environments, dislike cold and extreme heat, and do not like dryness. The most suitable growing temperature is between 15-25°C. When the temperature is below 10°C or above 25°C, the leaves of Calla Lilies will wither, and the corm will enter dormancy. Calla Lilies like water; the soil should remain moist during the growing season, and leaves should be sprayed with water during dry seasons. In the hot summer, when the corm enters a dormant state, watering should be controlled. The soil should be fertile and have good water retention, with a preference for slightly acidic sandy loam.
Second, planting Calla Lilies.
① Planting Time:
Since Calla Lilies wither in high summer temperatures and enter dormancy in winter, it's important to avoid these two seasons for planting. Instead, choose to plant in spring or autumn. In spring, choose between March and April, and in autumn, between August and September. Timing is crucial; it should not be too early or too late. Planting too early may prevent germination, and too late will not allow for flowering.
② Choosing Corms:
The shape of Calla Lily corms is very similar to the horse hooves commonly used for food. When choosing corms, select those that are robust and solid, feeling hard to the touch, glossy on the outside, free of mold and spots, with many bud points. The diameter of the corm should ideally be 3-5 centimeters (since it takes three years for Calla Lilies to bloom from seedlings, if the corm is too small, it may not bloom in the first year).
③ Cultivation Soil:
Calla Lilies prefer slightly fertile, soft-textured, slightly acidic sandy loam. Mix pine needle humus, vegetable garden soil, and river sand in a ratio of 6:4:1, then mix in 1/5 to 1/10 of the total soil volume of decomposed organic fertilizer as a base fertilizer. After preparing the soil, choose a deeper pot, fill half with soil, place the corm in the center of the pot with the bud points facing up, and cover with about 10 centimeters of soil. Remember: Calla Lily corms should be deeply buried, unlike the corms of the Amaryllis, which need to have 1/3 exposed. Calla Lilies need to avoid light, so the corms should be buried 10 centimeters into the soil, but be careful not to compact the soil, or else the buds won't grow.
④ Managing the Sprouting Period:
After planting the Calla Lily corms, spray the soil with water, and place the pot in a location avoiding direct sunlight but with plenty of light. Before the Calla Lilies sprout, determine whether to spray the soil again based on the moisture level of the potting mix. If the soil dries quickly, immediately supplement water after the surface dries to prevent the bud points from withering due to excessive dryness. After about a week, when the Calla Lily buds emerge 1 centimeter and turn green, immediately move the pot to a sunny location to prevent etiolation. When the seedlings grow to about 7 centimeters, you can sprinkle a small amount of slow-release fertilizer on the soil surface.
⑤ Maintenance during the Seedling Stage:
When the Calla Lily's shoot starts to stretch out leaves, it will immediately enter a period of rapid growth. At this stage, ensure plenty of sunlight and also provide appropriate water and fertilizer management to ensure adequate nutrition. When Calla Lilies are growing leaves, they should be fertilized with a nitrogen and potassium-based fertilizer. Nitrogen promotes large, green leaves, while potassium promotes sturdy stems and petioles.
⑥ Maintenance during the Bud Stage:
About a month after the leaves of Calla Lilies have grown, a flower stem will emerge from the center of the base. If there are round flower buds or flower buds, it is the budding stage of Calla Lilies. At this time, fertilization should be changed to a flower-promoting fertilizer with a high phosphorus content. If nitrogen-based fertilizer is continued, it may cause the flower buds not to open and only leaves to grow. Common flower-promoting fertilizers include monopotassium phosphate and Flower Duo No. 2, choose one of the two.
During the budding stage, Calla Lilies also need plenty of light and should not be moved to a shaded area, or else there will be fewer flower buds. Sufficient light is the most important condition for the healthy growth of Calla Lilies and the production of many flower buds. All other fertilization and watering depend on sufficient light. Without good light, all other efforts can be considered useless. Only with sufficient light can the fertilizer achieve the highest utilization rate, otherwise, even with more fertilizer, the plant will still be weak, and there will be few or no flower buds.
⑦ Management during Flowering:
Calla Lily flower buds do not all emerge at once but are drawn out one after another. This means that the first flowers to emerge will wither first, with new flower buds continuing to appear. Therefore, if you find that a flower has passed its prime and entered a withering stage, immediately prune the withered flowers to ensure nutrition is left for the unopened flower buds.
It's worth mentioning that during the budding and flowering stages, the management of fertilization is important. To ensure enough nutrition for the continuously emerging flower buds, you can use monopotassium phosphate diluted with water and water the potting mix every two weeks or so. However, be careful not to pour the fertilizer on the flowers.
⑧ Pest and Disease Control:
Since the sap of Calla Lily stems is toxic, few insects bite their leaves and stems, and there is little pest damage. However, Calla Lilies are often affected by bacterial infections, specifically soft rot. The most common cause of soft rot in Calla Lilies is soil积水 and excessive humidity during the rainy season, leading to weak plants with low resistance to diseases.
Ways to prevent soft rot in Calla Lilies: 1. Soak the corms in a fungicide solution (or use streptomycin 200 times solution or benomyl, thiram, or copper hydroxide liquid to soak the corms) for a few minutes to remove any pathogens on the surface of the corms; 2. Water less during rainy seasons and avoid spraying water on the leaves when the air is humid; 3. Ensure the cultivation soil does not accumulate water; 4. The care environment should be well-ventilated; 5. Do not apply nitrogen fertilizer alone; potassium fertilizer and other trace elements are also important, preferably applying compound fertilizer to promote sturdy stems and prevent soft rot; 6. Corms should be deeply buried but not too deep, about 10 centimeters is sufficient, and the upper layer of soil should not be too compacted.
When Calla Lilies are affected by soft rot, it is difficult to detect in the early stages, and once detected, the disease is usually too advanced to save. When diseased plants are found, they should be removed immediately and kept away from healthy plants to prevent infection. If only a small part of a Calla Lily corm is rotting, you can cut off the rotten part with a sharp knife, let it dry, then soak it in a 1% acetic acid solution for 15 minutes before planting elsewhere.