The pursuit of moisture by succulents
Plant knowledge series, sharing with you the experience of succulent cultivation. The pursuit of moisture by succulents and the importance of moisture control, in the following, the editor of this site will introduce to everyone.
1. The status of moisture in the three elements of plant growth
The three elements of plant growth, sunlight, air, and water. In theory, water is ranked last, but for the cultivation of succulents at home, I think moisture control is more important than the other two. Everyone should have experience that excessive or insufficient water supply will cause poor plant growth and even rotting and death. Especially in a home environment, due to the smaller transpiration of plants, it is easy to cause the soil to remain wet after watering, and if the watering interval is too long, it will cause the soil to dry out and become difficult to water thoroughly. More often than not, the top of the potting soil is already dry, but the bottom is still wet. One不小心, excessive watering will lead to root rot and leaf rot. Of course, this is also related to the soil structure, but in fact, as long as the supply of moisture is controlled, the proportion of the soil can be more flexible. There is an old saying that goes "three years of watering," and this is indeed the case. Watering skills are an important part of home gardening, and for the special type of succulents, moisture control becomes even more important.
2. The three-year skill of watering
Old ginger summed up this so-called "three-year skill" and felt compelled to share it. The beginning of the "three-year skill" is the entry-level stage. The first thing to understand is "water nature." Some students say, "My water nature is very good, 100 meters in 10 seconds 3, can hold my breath for 8 minutes at a time." Please go apply for a lifeguard, I'm afraid you'll be buried here.
(1) Water nature
Water can be divided into several types, according to its existence form, it can be divided into surface water and rootless water. Surface water refers to all liquid water in rivers, lakes, and seas; rootless water can be rain and snow and other liquid water condensed naturally in the atmosphere, or water vapor existing in gaseous form, which is what we call air humidity.
Theoretically speaking, surface water has a higher hardness due to the dissolution of many surface minerals and trace elements, and a large amount of inorganic salts will be precipitated after H2O evaporation. The scale we usually talk about is this thing. Rootless water is the product of surface water evaporating and condensing again when it is cold. Since it has already discarded a large amount of precipitated salt before evaporation, it is also called soft water. Although it also contains trace impurities (water droplets need dust in the air as a core to condense), compared to surface water, its content can be ignored.
As mentioned earlier, the osmotic pressure of the succulent roots is very low, and excessive salt will cause root cell dehydration. Therefore, we say that compared to surface water, rootless water is more suitable for watering succulents. High-tech people have also analyzed the difference between surface water and rootless water from their molecular chain structure and written articles to prove it. I wanted to quote a few paragraphs, but I was afraid that the students would fall asleep, so I gave up.
In addition, the pH value of water is also an important indicator affecting water nature. Everyone knows about pH value, "Nongfu Spring is a bit sweet" why is it sweet? Because it is weakly alkaline. The cell fluid of animals is weakly alkaline, only the fluid of dying animals will be acidic, so humans should drink weakly alkaline water. However, plants are the opposite, most plants need acidic water, this does not mean that plants like to drink acidic water, but because the waste produced by plant root metabolism accumulates around the roots, affecting the health of the plant, and these waste and the elements in the soil that can be used by plants but must be dissolved first, all of these require acidic water for dissolution. If a flowerpot is watered with alkaline water for a long time, the final result will be that all of these will become cemented together, eventually becoming the cornerstone of the grave of the flower.
Some students said: "I water my flowers with Nongfu Spring and they are fine?" This is because... because this spring is not alkaline enough!
Okay, the previous paragraphs are just a knowledge point, everyone can understand it. In practice, I know you will still use tap water. In fact, tap water in the south is generally acidic, it's just that there are more dissolved substances in the water, it can also be used for watering flowers. Before using, put it in a basin and leave it overnight, on the one hand, let the chlorine dissipate, on the other hand, it can also make the water temperature close to room temperature. When you have time, let the plants get rained on, that's about it.
(2) Watering strategies
Gardening has no set rules, each family has its own way of cultivation, and I guess everyone also does not agree with each other. Old ginger goes to visit flower friends every time, always in a literary way, and comes back cursing. Similarly, there is no set rule for watering, some people like to keep the soil dry - dry soil is conducive to the reproductive growth of plants, can better accumulate dry matter, but the plants may not be so lively. Some people like to keep the soil wet - wet soil is conducive to the vegetative growth of plants, branches and leaves flourish, but the resistance may be relatively weak. How, the advantages and disadvantages are placed in front of you, you can choose how to cultivate on your own.
Of course, no matter you like dry or wet, the timing of watering also needs to be grasped. For the word "timing," I believe all the great masters will agree on its existence. For succulents, it seems that the method of "watering when it is dry" has already become a consensus. Indeed, this method is the safest method, and many students who can keep plants alive for three years rely on this method to support themselves. But everyone, think about it carefully, if everyone knows "watering when it is dry," where does the saying "three years of watering skill" come from? Could it be that the ancients were all of low intelligence and summarized such a simple method of "watering when it is dry" in five thousand years?
The answer is of course negative, "watering when it is dry" is just a cliché of many experts in flower magazines. These experts are afraid that others will master the core technology and take away their jobs in the future, but they are not willing to be a diligent gardener in silence, so they thought of such a panacea-like term to fool everyone. Unfortunately, old ginger has always been envious and has a bad mouth since childhood, and I have never liked people who have lower intelligence than me but have a bigger demeanor, so I want to expose them...
"Watering when it is dry," what does "dry" mean? Is it a day or a month? Think about it carefully and you will know that this word is a tool for sophistry. Even succulents, root dehydration will cause damage to related cell tissues. The poplar in the desert can resist drought, and it can still grow with teeth and claws even in a place where it hasn't rained for 30 years. But flower friends may not know, based on what old ginger has seen and heard in the years of working and living in (X-J) - no matter how many years it hasn't rained in this place, wherever there are poplar trees, dig down along the roots, within 5 meters, the soil is guaranteed to be wet, and the groundwater may be connected to the oasis hundreds of kilometers away. Do you think plants are stupid? They are very smart~
Wake up! Do you have groundwater in your pots at home? Since there is no groundwater, why do you give them "dry"? They can survive艰难ly, it has already been very grateful to your RMB. After all, home is not a greenhouse, there is earth gas and humidity in the greenhouse, even if it is dry for half a year, the humidity in the air is enough for succulents with low requirements to drink a pot, plus temperature differences, the so-called "watering when it is dry" is completely another concept. Because of this, the watering strategy under home conditions needs to be planned separately.
We have mentioned earlier that Haworthia should be moist, and Mesembryanthemum should be dry. Whether it is moist or dry, maintaining appropriate moisture in the cultivation of succulents at home is necessary. If we can turn the pot and look at the soil to explain, then when the soil in the Haworthia pot is dry and white 3 cm below the soil surface, and the soil particles below are moist but not sticky, it is time to water. And when the soil (excluding the drainage layer) at the bottom 1-2 cm of Mesembryanthemum is still damp, it is also time to water. These two watering timings can ensure that the plant capillary roots are not dried to death due to excessive water, and the plant root hairs do not need to be in a cycle of drying - revival - drying again. The limited nutrition can be accumulated to the greatest extent, and the plants will naturally grow better and better.
When it comes to "timing," we will also talk about how to grasp "timing." We cannot turn the pot and look at the soil every time we water. In addition to the need for basic skills such as practicing touch and eyesight, there are naturally tricks!
Trick 1 - Weighing method, first determine your soil mixture, try to use the same formula every time you pot, and prepare an empty pot, fill it with dry soil, and then weigh it, record the weight, then water thoroughly, weigh it again, and record the two data. Then weigh it every day, in addition to testing the water retention of your soil mixture, the ultimate goal is to see how many days it can return to the weight of the dry soil when it was potted, subtract 1-2 days from this number, and that is your watering cycle. The above is for Haworthia, for Mesembryanthemum, you don't need to subtract the number of days. Of course, this method ignores the water absorption and transpiration of plant roots, generally, the soil with plants will dry faster, so the data obtained above can be compared with the weight of the pots with plants at the same time, and the obtained watering cycle will be more accurate.
Trick 2 - Soil color change method, increase the proportion of Akadama in the soil mixture, because Akadama has good water absorption and water transmission ability, and will change color when it absorbs a little water, and it is very intuitive to judge whether it is dry or wet. Increasing the proportion of Akadama in the soil mixture can strengthen the water transmission in the potting soil, the topsoil dries quickly, and the moisture will always transmit upwards until the moisture content in the lower planting material decreases to a critical point, and this critical point is often the beginning of watering. It is recommended to increase the proportion of Akadama soil in the soil mixture to more than 40%, and use pure Akadama with a particle size of 2-3 for the surface of the pot. When the Akadama on the surface of the pot turns light yellow and white, Haworthia can wait for one more day, and Mesembryanthemum can wait for two more days before watering. Of course, these are the data obtained from my own soil mixture, if you want to use this method to determine the watering cycle, you still need to adjust it according to your own soil mixture. If you are lazy to adjust, you can take a look at my soil mixture formula.
Tricks that should be despised:
1. Toothpick method, many people like to use this method, but it is actually easy to damage the roots growing along the pot wall, and once watered, it will rot without hesitation. Despise index 3 stars.
2. Finger probe method, I saw this method in a translated article before, I don't know if anyone actually does it, I think this method is stupid, don't say that everyone now likes to use granular soil, the finger cannot be inserted, even if inserted, the finger will be dirty, the good soil surface soil will be messy, and some precious capillary roots floating on the soil surface may also be broken by the insertion, it can be said that this is a completely disadvantageous and disadvantageous stupid method, despise index 4 stars.
3. Knocking pot listening method, I don't want to criticize this method anymore, it is too unreliable, unless everyone has the hearing of a musician like Lang Lang, otherwise, this method is not as good as inserting the finger directly. Despise index 5 stars.
(3) Watering methods
Whether it is gardeners in the Japanese horticultural industry or masters in China, they are not willing to reveal much about the way of watering. I think this cannot be blamed on them, it may also be that masters generally have greenhouses, tens of thousands of plants, and cannot deal with one by one carefully. After all, when you are faced with countless plants that are waiting to be fed in a sauna-like greenhouse, you will also reluctantly pick up a water pipe and spray it randomly. So they don't talk, I understand very much.
But for the majority of balcony gardeners, the situation is completely different. Everyone scrimps and saves, takes a considerable amount of money from their own private funds, risks the danger of domestic violence, withstands the strange looks of friends and colleagues, does not want to eat a baked sweet potato in winter, and does not want to drink a bottle of ice soda in summer, and finally buys a few pitiful pots of flowers, of course,