2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
If you want to have a beautiful flower bed or charming alpine slides, while not making an effort to control weeds, then your best bet is to turn your attention to ground cover plants. Basically, they are unpretentious, grow quickly, spread thickly on the ground, not letting in weeds
And also, with the right selection of plants, ground covers look very beautiful, you get a real living flower rug.
A little about ground cover plants
They are called groundcover because they grow in breadth over the soil surface, and not in height, most often these plants are rather low. There are ground cover plants of various types: lianas, perennials, annuals, bulbs, ornamental grass, undersized shrubs. Therefore, the decor of the site with ground cover is not limited by anything except your imagination.
By the way, these plants perform not only a decorative function, ground cover plants are also a good substitute for mulch. Of course, they do not retain moisture in the soil, since they themselves use it for "nutrition", but they perfectly protect the soil from the sun, wind and weeds.
If you decide to plant your plot or flower beds with such plants, then be sure to limit the growing area for them, otherwise they will fill the entire plot or mix with each other, in case you have different types and varieties of plants! You can limit it by planting in a container or using a special plastic border-limiter.
There is no consensus on what ground cover people like more: shade or sun, moisture or dry place, acidic or alkaline soils, and there cannot be, because all these parameters for choosing a site depend on a specific ground cover plant. Now let's look at the types and some varieties of ground cover plants. Let's start with perennials.
Phlox subulate
One of the most beautiful is the subulate phlox. Currently, the variety of its varieties allows you to plant a carpet of white, white-pink, lilac, purple flowers. Phlox is undemanding to the soil, takes root well and grows on dry, poor and light soil. Please note that you do not need to prepare the soil for this plant and specially fertilize it, since in the end you will not get the result you wanted: unlike most plants, subulate phlox on well-fertilized soil most often does not give that abundant flowering, for the sake of which it is planted, and increases the green mass with a small number of buds. If the soil is heavy, then it is "diluted" with ordinary sand. A neutral acidity level is desirable. With increased acidity, add lime or dolomite flour to the soil.
Another advantage of the styloid phlox is that it does not have a clear planting date, the seeds, like the bushes themselves, can be planted in the ground at any time of the year, except for winter. The best month for sowing this plant in spring is April, but this does not limit planting in any other month when it is warm outside and frosts are excluded. The deadline for planting is October, but in warm regions phlox can also be planted in November, the main thing is that it has time to take root before the onset of frost.
When planting on a flower bed, be sure to take into account the height of the phlox that will grow from the seeds you purchased, because the distance between future plants depends on this. If the selected variety is undersized, then 25-30 centimeters is enough, if it is medium-sized, then increase the distance to half a meter, for tall flowers at least 80-90 centimeters between them. After about 2-3 years, the entire flower bed, regardless of the variety, will turn into a living carpet. After planting phloxes, they need moisture, therefore, in case of heat, water it daily for a couple of weeks, then you will need to water it as needed.
Phlox reproduce in any known way: the simplest is planting with seeds, which require a little time and effort - this is grafting and dividing the bush. The main condition for reproduction by dividing the bush is that the plant must completely bloom. That is, we can start dividing the bush in the fall.
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