Forget-me-nots
Description and varieties. Forget-me-not - a tender plant, very widespread in the middle zone of Russia, from the family of borage plants. Every year, at the very beginning of summer, there appear large blue glades of these flowers on the fringes, meadows, lowlands and streams. In forget-me-nots even in the wild, flowers are not only azure blue and turquoise, but also white and pink.
Hybrid varieties of forget-me-nots that originated from several wild-growing species of these plants are grown in culture. In culture, the forget-me-not is bred as a two-year-old plant, since on the 3rd year of vegetation the stems are strongly stretched, and the flowers are small. Plants are densely rounded or vertically columnar in shape, with a height of 20 to 35 cm. Leaves are regular, oval, pointed, seropushennye, basal - petiolate, cauline - sessile. Inflorescences - brushes, gathered in curls, are located at the ends of truncated flower-bearing shoots. Flowers with a diameter of about 1 cm, blue, blue, rarely pink and white. Especially impressive forget-me-nots in group plantings, selected by colors. They are grown in all sorts of flower beds, lawns in mini-ponds and streams, in the shady wet corners of the garden. These gentle beautiful flowers are combined with early-flowering daisies, daisies and bells.
Sorts
Blauer Corb ( flowers dark blue), Blaus Kugel ( light blue), Blue Bed ( sky blue to blue), Victoria blue ( bright blue), Victoria pink pure-pink), Indigo compact ( blue), Carminguigen ( carmine-pink), Messidor ( dark blue).
Cultivation and care. Best forget-me-nots grow in semi-shady places, on humus, light soils, well and regularly moisturized, as required by their natural origin. When drying out quickly fade.
Soil should be moist but not soaking, so that overmoistening does not cause rotting of the plants or excessive stretching of the stems. So the soil must be well drained.
Responsive to organic and mineral top dressing, in which, based on 1 m2, 10 grams of ammonium nitrate, 15 grams of superphosphate, 5 g of potassium salt or, instead of this mixture, 30 grams of nitrophosphate are added. You can also pour infusion of mullein( 1: 10) and pour a mixture of compost and peat with a layer of 3-5 cm. Multiply the forget-me-not seed, sowing in early July, landing in place - in August at a distance of 15-20 cm from each other. Blossoms in May-June next year. Seeds ripen early and soon crumble. By autumn, under the mother bushes, fairly large young plants grow from the seeds, which can be excavated and planted elsewhere. Forget-me-not change the transplant painlessly. Seeds can be collected and sown in the ridge into small grooves at a distance of 10 cm from one another. At the top, the grooves are lightly sprinkled with shallow sheet earth( 4-5 mm), watered and pritenyayut. Seedlings appear after 14-15 days. With the formation of real leaves, the plants are planted 5-10 cm apart from each other, and planted at the end of August and September in a permanent place - according to the scheme of 20x15 cm. With such planting they form a real carpet of leaves, and then - from blue flowers.
Diseases and pests. The forget-me-not forget the gray and root rot, headache, real and false powdery mildew;is damaged by several species of aphids, cruciferous fleas, scoops and slugs.