Among house flowers, a place of honor is occupied by plants with rich greenery, beautiful large flowers with an extraordinary aroma - all this is a lily. Naturally, in room conditions Not large garden specimens are grown, but small compact species that fit in pots. Although the domestic lily has enough short term flowering, it is readily grown.

After all, it not only serves as part of the interior, but also often turns into a collector's item.

Types and varieties of indoor lilies

Plants are classified according to the structure of their flower:

The flowers are cup-shaped and wide open. The following varieties have such petals: Gilded Lily, Beautiful Lily, and Empress Lily of China. The Grand Commander variety is considered one of the best.
The petals are funnel-shaped, collected in a tube. Similar flowers can be seen in varieties of which there are a larger number: Royal Lily, Long-flowered Lily, Royal Gold and others. Their flowers range in color from pale yellow to bright orange. The house lily also belongs to this species.
Flowers with bent petals. This group is not distinguished by the diversity of varieties, as is observed in other species. The size of the plants is quite small - up to 60 cm, the flowers are also small - the diameter is only about 5 cm. Common varieties are L.Citronella and dwarf lily.

Indoor lily: care at home

When growing garden and indoor culture Air humidity and temperature are also important. Different varieties have their own level of tolerance to high and low temperatures. and photosensitivity.

Asian hybrids are recognized as the most unpretentious in terms of care.

Curly hybrids grow in moist soil enriched leaf humus, shade will suit them. They are also famous for their excellent resistance to cold and disease.
Snow-white hybrids are recognized as the most beautiful varieties of lilies. Any beauty is accompanied by capriciousness, so they are very demanding in care.
Long-flowered hybrids are known by another name - house lily. Since they are often grown as indoor plant. Lily fell in love with many thanks to large flowers and rich aroma. Moreover, the plant requires care and is prone to disease, so growing it in the garden is problematic. On the windowsill, home culture feels much more protected with proper care. It is important to ensure that spider mites do not appear on the flower.

When to buy a home lily?

The indoor plant is purchased in bulb form because it is a bulbous plant. The most best season serves autumn. Pay attention to the condition of the tuber: if you find scales, spots, wrinkles, then it is unsuitable for planting. If such signs are not detected, disinfection is still carried out. Karbofos or a manganese solution can act as an antiseptic.

A houseplant usually has shoots and leaves on sale, sometimes they even sell a flowering one, so in order to prolong the flowering period it is fed with special fertilizers, it is important not to overdo it with watering.

Landing rules

Choose a pot, soil, and don’t forget about good drainage. It is quite easy to grow indoor lilies at home. Planted in substrate, which is formulated specifically for bulbous plants, light soil enriched with nutrients and having good drainage characteristics is also suitable.

The bulb should take the central position of the pot, the distance to the walls should be within 3 cm. Cover with soil up to the middle of the bulb. After this, the health of the plant will depend on the time given for the dormant period and the air temperature.

Indoor lily

At proper cultivation bulbous plant, home culture can delight you with flowering at different times of the year.

The house lily belongs to the genus hippeastrum and amaryllis, so it really needs warmth and light during the flowering period, and during dormancy they prefer darkness and coolness. That's why the most best place there will be a sun-filled window sill. On hot days it is better to keep the windows open, since this home plant, like all amaryllis, needs a flow of fresh air, especially after sunset.

Watering should be reduced after the flowers fall; external conditions change radically: light replaces shadow, moist heat turns into dry coolness. If you follow a similar scheme for growing indoor lilies, you can achieve repeated flowering.

Indoor lily after flowering

The house lily is one of the flowers that do not often and do not delight their owners with their beauty for long. However you can increase the flowering period and add its number. It all depends on the period of storage of the plant, when it is in a state of dormancy.

So, after flowering, the house lily is placed in a dry, cool place. Can be replanted in new soil with the addition of ash. You should occasionally pamper the bulb with fertilizing and watering, then in a state of active growth there will be no problems with flowering.

Diseases and pests

If the plant receives good care, then the likelihood of disease is reduced. Among the most common diseases is red rot of the bulb. This disease develops in wet and cold conditions. To save the bulb, soil that interferes with the pruning procedure of affected areas, including affected roots, should be removed. After the procedure, all bare sides are treated with fungicide and sprinkled with crushed activated carbon. Then the bulbs are dried for 3 days, and the intensity of watering is reduced.

If the domestic lily gets a good proper care, then it is rarely affected by pests and diseases, and the plant looks healthy and strong. Leaves become sluggish and pale due to excess or lack of moisture., flowers become dark from the cold, and when the sun is too hot, the color becomes pale. Therefore, you should carefully monitor the condition of the indoor lily and take appropriate measures in time, then the beauty of the flowers will decorate your home for a long time.

The indoor lily is a beautiful delicate flower. The lily has long been considered a symbol of superiority and chastity. In painting, the image of this flower was very common, especially during the Renaissance. For example, on some paintings Madonna is depicted with a white lily in her arms. Brief excursion the story is over. Let's move on to how to properly care for a lily.

Land for home lilies.

The earth must have the following components:

Peat,
Sand,
Humus,
Bone flour,

It is best if the soil is loose. You can buy it ready-made at a flower shop.

Watering indoor lilies.

Never water your lily with ice water or tap water. It is better if it is slightly warm and left for a day. Watering is necessary frequently so that the soil does not dry out. During the period of dying flowers, watering should be slightly reduced.

Where to put the house lily.

The room for the lily should be cool and ventilated, but without cold drafts. With the arrival of warmer weather, the indoor lily will feel great on the balcony. The main thing is to avoid the scorching sun.

Planting lily bulbs.

You don't need a big pot. It should be 15-20 cm in diameter. It is necessary to pour drainage at the bottom, about 2-3 cm. Next, pour a little earth on top (from 3 to 5 cm). Then place the onion and gently straighten the roots. Fill in soil until about halfway up the bulb, so that the soil eventually reaches halfway up the pot.

Replanting a house lily.

Replanting a lily is not very advisable. If the lily has grown baby bulbs, they need to be planted.

Feeding domestic lilies.

Feeding is needed 2-3 times a year. It should be fed with liquid fertilizer along with watering. Protect the leaves from getting fertilizer on them.

Lily propagation.

When your lily is 4-5 years old, “babies” form at the main bulb. They will already have their roots. They must be carefully separated from the main bulb, without damaging the roots, and planted in another small pot.

When they bloom indoor lilies.

Lilies very rarely bloom in the first year of their life. If they bloom, it’s “small.” From the second to the fourth year, the lily comes into its prime (blooms magnificently and profusely). By the fifth year vigorous flowering subsides. This is a signal that it’s time to put the “kids” away.

Storing lily bulbs.

In early spring, purchased bulbs are stored in the refrigerator, in a container that allows air to pass through, filled with sawdust. They cannot be stored in the refrigerator for more than 2 months.

We hope that our tips will help you in caring for your indoor lilies. And they will delight yours with their blooms for a long time.

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Indoor lily: features of care at home

Almost everyone is widely familiar with such a plant as the indoor lily, caring for which at home usually does not cause much difficulty. There are many varieties of lilies that you can grow at home. And each plant has its own unique appearance of both leaves and flowers (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Each variety of lily special kind flowers, but they are all very elegant and beautiful.

In order for lilies to bloom as often as possible, you need to learn how to properly care for them. They are usually propagated by bulbs, which causes some fear in some people, because the bulb can quickly rot if there is excess moisture in the soil. But this fear is false.

Indoor lilies in pots can be either bulbous or ordinary rooted plants. There are many more bulbous varieties. And even despite this, caring for all varieties of domestic lilies is approximately the same. You just need to follow some very simple rules.

Choosing a container for a lily

Before planting a lily, it is important to choose the right pot for it.

First of all, you need to choose the right container for the flower. This is especially true for bulbous varieties. They can reach up to 1.5 m in height. And the higher it will be mature plant, the deeper the pot for it should be selected in advance. This will determine how often the lily will bloom.

If it is assumed that the height of the plant will be about 1.5 m, then you need a pot with a depth of about 40 cm. This way the roots will have enough space in it, and the lily itself will be firmly anchored in the soil, which is very important in the first time after replanting.

You also need to correctly determine the width of the pot. So, if you plan to grow one plant in one container, it is recommended to use a fairly narrow pot (about 20 cm in diameter). Otherwise, the plant will constantly produce children, thereby trying to fill free place in the ground.

You can also do very interesting composition from bulbous lilies, planting 3-4 plants in one pot. At the same time, it is important to maintain a distance of approximately 5-7 cm between them. So, there will be no free land for the children to grow, and in the end such a “bouquet” will look quite beautiful. After all, during the flowering period, lilies produce several buds at once.

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How to plant a plant

Before planting, it is useful to keep lily bulbs in a solution of potassium permanganate.

You should also take planting bulbs and transplanting mature lilies into new pots no less seriously. These flowers love a mixture of light nutritious soil with Not big amount sand. It is quite possible to buy the substrate in a ready-made form in the store.

If you plan to plant bulbs, you should first keep them for 2 weeks in the refrigerator at a temperature of about +5°C, and then 2 hours in a solution of potassium permanganate to kill all pathogenic bacteria. This is a kind of prevention for the plant.

If an adult plant is being replanted, then first you need to cut off the dried flowers (it is strictly not recommended to touch lilies during the period of active flowering), separate the children if desired, and inspect the bulb for diseases. If everything is fine, you can replant the flower into a new substrate. Experts advise replanting adult lilies no more than once every three years.

To grow lilies in pots, you need to make a good drainage layer of about 3 cm. This will protect the soil from oversaturation with water, which can have a detrimental effect on the bulb. You need to pour about 5 cm of base soil on top of the drainage, and then plant the bulb. Then sprinkle everything with soil again, lightly compacting it, all the way to the very edge of the pot. This method of planting applies to both young bulbs that have not yet sprouted, and adult lilies that already have stems.

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Watering, temperature and fertilizing

Lilies love Fresh air, so it is recommended to ventilate the room with the flower.

Proper watering and temperature regime- basic conditions to grow healthy plant. Indoor lilies tolerate temperature fluctuations well. But it is important not to allow the temperature in the room to change below 16°C and above 30°C.

The house lily simply loves fresh air. For this reason, it is useful to take indoor lilies to the balcony or loggia in the warm season. And best of all - into the yard, if this a private house. But if there are no such opportunities, it is recommended to open windows and vents more often. Just place the plant further away so that it does not catch a cold from the draft.

Lily responds well to bright, diffused light. But you cannot keep the plant in direct sun, as this can lead to burns of the leaves. This is especially true for southern windows, where it is always very hot and there is a lot of sun. But even complete shade will not do anything good for the growth and flowering of lilies.

In hot summers, lilies in pots love moisture. Therefore, they need to be watered often - at least once every 3 days. It is very important not to allow the earthen feed to dry out completely. This may cause the bulb to deteriorate. In winter, the plant needs to be watered more moderately. It is best to check the soil in the pot before adding more water.

Successfully growing lilies at home includes timely feeding.

And the plant should be fertilized already in the first days after germination of the bulb. It is recommended to start with preparations with a high content of organic substances. After two weeks, feed the lily with potassium-phosphorus fertilizer.

As soon as the lily blooms, you will need to apply special liquid fertilizers for flowering indoor plants. At the same time, it is also recommended to do foliar feeding by spraying unopened buds nutrient diluted in the required proportions from a spray bottle.

So, when growing indoor lilies, caring for them at home is not difficult if you follow the recommendations described above, it is very important to cut off the first buds. This will further contribute to the formation of a strong plant, which will certainly delight you with numerous beautiful flowers next year. But this only applies to young lilies. In all other cases, during the flowering period, you just need to provide the plant with rest so that it does not drop its buds, try not to move it to other places in the apartment or house.

Lily - extraordinary beautiful flower, famous for its diversity color range, exquisite shape and sweet pleasant aroma. At all times, there was a special attitude towards this plant, because it was not for nothing that it was even called royal. Being an open ground plant, the lily shows all its beauty and grace in the garden. Indoor lily - the name is not entirely correct. However, it is quite possible to grow this wonderful flower at home. So let's get started.

Variety selection

Among the numerous varieties of lilies, of which, thanks to the hard work of breeders, there are several thousand, the most popular for growing in pots is the white indoor lily, the flowers of which emit a very strong, unusually pleasant aroma and reach 15 cm in size.

Varieties such as “long-flowered lily”, “beautiful lily”, “royal lily”, and “golden lily” are also suitable for growing indoors. A significant part of all lilies grown in flower pots are hybrids, which most often have tubular or goblet-shaped flowers with snow-white, red, interspersed with other shades, petals. You can also grow double lilies at home, among which the “tiger lily” is especially popular. This indoor flower attracts with its incredibly beautiful, incomparable color.

Buying bulbs

In order to plant a lily, you must first purchase planting material, which is the bulbs of this flower. You should select bulbs very carefully, paying close attention to their condition. Thus, a healthy and lushly flowering indoor lily plant can only grow from healthy, intact, large fleshy bulbs, the scales of which should in no case be overdried.

Preparing garden bulbs

For those who fear for the quality of planting material purchased from strangers and have their own personal plot healthy lilies pleasing the eye with excellent blooms, there is a very tempting alternative. You can take the bulbs garden plants and put them in flower pot, thereby turning them into indoor flowers. Lily will soon delight you with an unusually pleasant aroma spreading throughout the house. However, for this to happen, a number of conditions must be met.

First of all, experienced gardeners recommend digging lily bulbs from open ground between the end of September and the beginning of October. Next, they must be placed in a specially prepared box, which will contain moss or wet peat, and sent to a cool place. For two months, you should moisten the soil from time to time, and do this very carefully, since waterlogging or stagnation of water can have the most detrimental effect on the condition of the bulbs. Thus, the plant is provided with a kind of rest period, without which further flowering of the lily is impossible.

Only by strictly following these conditions can we expect with full confidence that the lily in the near future will delight all household members with its fabulous beautiful flowers. So, it's time to plant the bulbs in the soil mixture.

Landing

In order for an indoor lily to feel comfortable, it is necessary to prepare a large and deep container for it. For successful germination bulbs will also require an unusual soil consisting of pebbles and a mixture of sand. In order to ensure good drainage, pebbles should be placed at the bottom of the flower pot, and coarse sand should be placed on top of them. The next layer is fine, well-sifted sand, into which you need to carefully place the lily bulb without damaging its roots. However, this mixture should not fill the pot completely; there should still be some space left in it.

As soon as stem roots appear from the bulb, it is necessary to add soil to the flower pot, and do this so that the surface of the soil from the top of the bulb is no more than 5 cm. It is recommended to choose turf soil enriched with leaf humus as soil.

Now the indoor lily should temporarily be in a cool place, the temperature in which does not exceed +10 degrees. It is important to provide the plant with abundant watering, but at the same time it is important to ensure that water does not linger in the soil, causing it to become waterlogged, but is promptly removed from the pan.

After sprouts appear on the bulbs, the length of which is at least 10 cm in height, the lily can be moved to a warmer place (temperature up to +16 degrees is acceptable) with good lighting. As the plant grows, you can increase the temperature regime of its content. On average, 18-22 weeks pass from the planting date to the appearance of the first lily flower. Now it’s time to find out what kind of care these indoor flowers need. Lily is a rather demanding plant, and therefore you will have to pay a lot of attention to it.

General conditions of detention

The most optimal temperature for lilies is considered to be +25 degrees. Since from this plant we first of all expect beautiful flowers, then it is very important to him sunny color and good lighting. Lily is one of the few domestic crops that can safely tolerate direct Sun rays. For this reason, southern windows will be a favorable place to place the plant.

According to experienced flower growers, in ideal lilies should be placed on the windowsills of south-eastern windows, where they will receive the required amount of sun, and direct sunlight can be observed only in the morning, and then for a short time.

It is worth keeping in mind that the higher the level of illumination in the room and the higher the temperature regime of the plant, the sooner the indoor lily will delight everyone with its flowers.

Watering

Lilies love moisture very much, and if there is insufficient supply of it, the long-awaited period of flowering of plants may never occur. It is very important to prevent the soil from for a long time water stagnated, and this requires good drainage. Watering should be done with settled water room temperature. A little dryness will indicate the need for moisture. upper layer soil. If in the room where the plant is kept there is enough heat, then the lily can sometimes be sprayed, while avoiding moisture on the flowers.

Fertilizer

The indoor lily needs additional feeding, and it is necessary to apply fertilizers from the period of formation of the stem. It is recommended to use a special fertilizer designed for flowering plants, or alternately add minerals and then organic fertilizers and do this first three times a month until the buds appear. Then you need to fertilize less often - no more than once a month.

For example, these indoor flowers will respond well to nitrogen and potassium-phosphorus fertilizers. Periodically adding wood ash to the potted flower will help improve plant growth.

What to do when the lily fades?

After the indoor lily has faded, you should minimize watering the plant, waiting until its leaves dry completely. Next, the above-ground part of the lily must be removed, for which appropriate pruning must be done. There are two options for further actions: transplant the plant into open ground or save the bulbs until next year by placing them in the refrigerator.

It should be borne in mind that lilies can be grown indoors for no more than two years in a row, since otherwise the depleted bulb will not bloom.

Purchasing planting material is very important - the success of growing lilies depends on timeliness. Before buying bulbs, or ordering through an online store, you need to find out which group of hybrids the selected flower belongs to, perhaps it’s even a species lily, they require special care.

If you are offered lily bulbs of unknown origin, it is better to refuse the purchase - you simply may make a mistake with the choice of location, planting depth and further agricultural technology, but even worse if the lily turns out to be unsuitable for your region in terms of frost resistance.

For example, varieties of LA hybrids or Oriental lilies (Orientals) require shelter if winters are harsh, while American hybrids are generally very thermophilic and can only be grown in southern regions or containers (overwinter in the basement).

For residents middle zone In Russia, the Urals and Siberia, when buying lilies, it is important to know the flowering time, so for Eastern hybrids the flowering period is very extended, some varieties bloom earlier, others later, but late-flowering lilies may not have time to ripen by winter (store up nutrients), and by spring they will be depleted and will die.

If you have the opportunity to examine and touch the bulbs, choose those that are dense, hard, without spots of rotten scales, especially mold, always with living roots at least 5 cm long, and the bulbs of snow-white lily hybrids are viable only if they have good long roots . You should be wary if the bulbs are very dry - good gardener won't allow this to happen, soaking in water or wrapping with a damp cloth may not help, don't risk it.

Problems with purchasing lilies arise for gardeners if you buy imported bulbs from Holland out of season. The fact is that in the fall, imported bulbs go on sale only from last year's unsold stocks. In October-November, the Dutch only begin to prepare the bulbs for sale: they dig them up, wash them, dry them, put them in cold storage, and they arrive in Russia only in the middle of winter.

Our domestic gardeners, on the contrary, only dig up planting material in the fall. Therefore, in the fall you need to buy bulbs from friends in the garden, through clubs and forums of lily lovers, and at the end of winter and spring - lilies from Europe. However, it is very important to buy bulbs that are in the dormant stage. Sometimes the desire to acquire beautiful variety so great that gardeners, without hesitation, purchase bulbs with sprouts, while others are ready to sell lilies immediately after flowering! It is a very common occurrence when at the market you are offered a dug up lily, with a flower that has not yet faded - to prove the authenticity of the variety. You are asked to cut off the peduncle and plant the bulb immediately.

If you are an experienced florist, then you most likely understand how risky it is to buy lilies with sprouts, and even more so, dug up during flowering. The recommendation to break out the sprouts and simply plant them in the ground is especially frightening. It is a huge stress for a plant to survive after its growth is broken, to rebuild its biological rhythms from vegetation to suspended animation. When dug up, lilies that are fragile after flowering take a very long time to recover and take root, and very often die! The survivors bloom weakly and grow bulbs slowly.

Planting lilies

We have already written about this stage of cultivation - read: .

Let's repeat it more briefly:

If you bought the bulbs at the end of winter or very early spring, before planting them in open ground you need to store them in the refrigerator, in the vegetable compartment or where the temperature ranges from 0 to + 4 ° C, no higher, the longer the storage is expected, the closer the temperature should approach zero - optimally 0+1°C. The bulbs should be placed in damp sphagnum moss and plastic bag with holes.

Important: ethylene gas is emitted by almost all fruits and vegetables, and it has a detrimental effect on lily bulbs, so it is necessary to isolate them from fruits and vegetables. Moreover, it is the fruit that needs to be sealed tightly in the bag, not the lilies.

You can keep lily bulbs in the refrigerator until the sprout reaches 5-6 cm. If the sprout has formed ahead of time and it is too early to plant in open ground, do not wait until the bulbs are depleted in the absence of ultraviolet light on chlorotic sprouts - plant them in containers and place them on glass balcony, in a film greenhouse until frost has passed. Then simply transfer (reserving the entire contents of the pot) into the prepared holes in the flower beds.

If you missed the moment when sprouts began to appear on the bulbs in storage, and they grew too large, then when planting, place the bulb in the hole at an angle.

If you bought lily bulbs in the fall, plant them immediately or at most they can wait 3-4 days, wrapped in damp moss. If you plant your own lilies, then take into account two important factors:

Lilies can be divided and replanted only 1.5 months after the end of flowering; this time is necessary for the bulbs to gain mass, store nutrients, they will grow, and look strong and elastic in appearance.
It is better to divide and plant lilies when the mother bush reaches four and five years of age. By this time, it will have grown enough for the daughter bulbs to easily separate on their own.

Tubular and other large lilies can be planted less frequently - once every 6-7 years. An earlier transplant of lilies may be associated with damage to the flower garden by gray rot, an attack by mice that gnaw the entire flowerbed, or when serious damage was caused by thrips (gnawed on the bulbs) or infected with a virus.

Before planting, the bulbs need to be soaked in the fungicide-protectant Maxim. If the Lily (lily) red beetle has been noticed on your site, it is better to additionally treat the bulbs in the preparation Prestige or Prestigator - it is intended for treating potatoes against the Colorado potato beetle, but it also works well against the lily beetle. Treatment is especially helpful when spring planting lilies, since the maximum effect of the drug is observed in the first month (in the fall the bulbs will sleep), but completely active substance These insecticides take more than a year to decompose.

We plant lily bulbs in prepared soil to a depth three times greater than the size of the bulbs (excluding Candidum hybrids and immature children - lightly sprinkle them with soil).

After planting, make a small side around the hole, like trunk circle so that water after watering does not spread into the rows. Now they need to be watered, especially if the soil is dry.

How to care for lilies

To grow and bloom, lilies, like all plants, need light, warmth, regular moisture, protection from diseases and pests, fertilizing, mulching, and tying to supports for tall varieties.

Need in sunlight we take into account when choosing a location.

Many species of lilies available commercially: Lilium leichtlinii, Lilium speciosum, Tiger lily (Lilium tigrinum), as well as Orientals and Tiger hybrids prefer very light partial shade or bright places where there is sun. at least 4-6 hours in the morning or evening.

Asiatic lilies and LA hybrids prefer sunny areas, but also grow normally in light partial shade.

LO hybrids, Trumpet lilies, OT hybrids prefer full sun. But even they sometimes require shading on particularly hot days in the summer. You can organize it by pulling mosquito net or by installing a beach umbrella next to the plantings.

Lilies with a height of more than 50 cm must be tied to a support so that they are not broken by the wind.

Mulching

After planting lilies, the soil must be mulched - straw, peat, pine or leaf litter, pine sawdust. Of all types of mulch, the best is forest litter. If you have enough acidic soils, use leaf litter (from under birches, aspens, lindens), if it is close to neutral, you can use coniferous litter, from under pine trees. But the needles strongly acidify the soil and are not suitable for mulching Tubular hybrids, Lilies regale and others who need slightly alkaline soil.

By the way, OT hybrids that form supra-bulb roots especially need mulching. As soon as they begin to appear above the surface, add soil.

Mulching is necessary so that the soil does not dry out quickly, the surface roots do not overheat in the heat and do not freeze in winter. In addition, the mulch gradually decomposes and creates a new humus layer. Also, mulching allows you not to loosen the rows - with mulch the soil is not compacted and remains porous.

If you have the opportunity to get horse bedding - sawdust mixed with horse manure, then you can use such mulch only after six months - so that the composition has time to rot well and decompose.

If you grow lilies framed by ground cover or low growing plants, mulching is not necessary. Variegated bulbous ryegrass looks very good next to lilies - its variegated leaves are an excellent frame for lilies and protect the soil. By the way, tall lilies look and grow great surrounded by shorter daylilies.

How to water lilies

Lilies prefer the soil to be constantly in moderate wet. This is how they grow in nature - in the undergrowth, where a large layer of fallen leaves protects the soil from drying out, but does not create excessive dampness - the soil is very porous. Lilies do not tolerate excess dampness - for them, stagnation of water in the roots is destructive.

Therefore, we carry out watering as needed - in the absence of rain, about once a week, and water should be poured at the root in the inter-row spaces. Best time for watering: morning or before 14-15 hours of the day - the soil should have time to dry from above by night.

Experienced gardeners advise being especially careful with watering in the spring, when recurrent frosts or sudden cold snaps at night are possible. In such cases, many use watering in conjunction with growth regulators and anti-stress drugs - Epin, Zircon, Previscur Energy. This is especially necessary during the budding period.

The greatest need for soil moisture occurs in June, when temperatures are equal day and night, it is very hot during the day, and also after flowering, when the formation of lily bulbs begins and the accumulation of nutrients before the dormant period.

However, waterlogging of the soil is detrimental for lilies, especially when the plantings are dense; if lilies are planted in a flower garden next to plants that need to be watered and fed frequently (for example, roses), diseases develop from constant moisture. Most often this gray rot and botrytis - a fungal disease typical of bulbous plants (the lower leaves become covered with small spots, turn brown, dry out, flowering is weak, the disease spreads from the bottom up).

The frequency of watering also depends on the type of soil - on light sandy loam soils it is necessary to water more often, on loams (even taking into account their improvement, adding sand and peat) - less often.

After flowering, you must completely stop watering the lilies. The exception is abnormally hot weather in the fall, when the earth dries up into dust, you can water the lily 1-2 times after flowering, until the foliage has completely turned yellow.

Feeding lilies

The first thing to remember is that lilies cannot tolerate any organic matter! Add humus to poor soil to improve its composition before planting (planting a flower bed), it is possible, but it must be well-rotted compost - that is, if you bought a car of fresh manure, you can use it for flowers no earlier than four years later.

By the way, lilies also do not favor green fertilizer - freshly infused mown leaves and weeds, which with love and gratitude accept vegetables - tomatoes, cucumbers - as fertilizer.

All organic lilies tolerate well-rotted leaf litter.

In total, it is enough to feed these flowers three times a season:

in spring, you can use calcium nitrate, twice with an interval of 2 weeks (6 g per 1 liter of water)
during the period of budding and flowering - full mineral fertilizer, for example, Fertika Lux, Fertika Universal, or feed with potassium magnesia (1.5 tablespoons per 10 l), feeding every 2 weeks
after flowering - phosphorus and potassium fertilizers once

In autumn, you cannot replant and fertilize plants at the same time.

Combine all root feedings with watering, do not apply fertilizers on dry soil, only with plenty of water.

In addition to root feeding, lilies sometimes need leaf feeding; if chlorosis appears on young leaves, perhaps there is not enough iron, then you need to spray with iron chelate (just not on a sunny day). Iron deficiency manifests itself in soils with an alkaline and neutral reaction, so lilies that are grown on such soils, OT-hybrids, Tubular lilies, Candidum hybrids, are primarily affected. Iron is well absorbed at an acidity pH of 6 and below.

But besides iron on neutral and alkaline soils may lack boron and zinc, so these minerals can also be used for foliar feeding, boron is especially useful, as for vegetables, it is diluted at the rate of 5 g per 5 liters of water, for spraying during budding. To compensate for the lack of zinc, add zinc sulfate 2.5 g per 5 liters of water to the solution.

If your soil is slightly acidic, then chlorosis can be caused not by iron deficiency, but by molybdenum deficiency; use a complex fertilizer that contains this element.

Lilies for cutting

Sometimes, when gardeners cannot be in the garden often, they tend to cut blooming lilies in order to take this beauty home with them in a bouquet. But you need to cut lilies correctly:

Do not cut the peduncle too low, leave as much of it as possible in the flowerbed, otherwise the bulbs will not be able to ripen properly.
Powder the cut area of the stem remaining in the flowerbed wood ash, then add a drop of medical glue to prevent the wound from rotting.

Lilies after flowering

When lilies fade, remove fading flowers to prevent the formation of seed pods; there is no need to cut the stem itself!

In the fall, when all the leaves turn yellow, you need to cut the stems at a height of 10-15 cm from the ground and leave them like that until spring. In the spring you just need to pull them out of the ground (they practically fall out on their own).

Shelter for the winter

After transplanting lilies in the fall or after final pruning, the flower beds need to be insulated if winters in your region are harsh.

Usually the shelter is multi-layered: rake up leaf litter, for example, from under apple and pear trees, cover with spruce branches or peat. You can lay it on top plastic film and press with stones.

Oriental hybrids (Orientals) especially need shelter for the winter; in the northwestern regions of Russia they should be covered not with foliage, but with a layer of peat of at least 10 cm, then spruce branches.

In the spring you need to remove the film and spruce branches, and leave the peat or mulch, but it’s a good idea to water it with special drugs to increase fertility, for example, Baikal-EM1.

It is important to remove the covers in a timely manner, before the lilies begin to grow, so as not to damage the sprouts or to prevent the young shoots from rotting away.