Maranta is a very beautiful and variegated plant. Maranta is from the tropics of America. The leaves are most often oval in shape, painted dark green and decorated with bright light veins and spots. There are varieties with light leaves. Maranta is relatively easy to care for, although for a beginner floriculturist this can be quite difficult.
Maranta: Care and Reproduction
The most important for successful cultivation of this flower is to create conditions that are as close to natural as possible. Here are the basic tips for caring for the arrowroot:
- Watering. You should water the arrowrock only with soft water. In the warm season, the plant needs relatively abundant watering. In winter, moderate watering is necessary. Try not to fill the flower, it can lead to decay of the roots. It is better sometimes not to water, but to spray the plant with water from an atomizer. During the active growth of the plant, try to prevent the drying of the land between watering. And in the winter time, the next watering is carried out a couple of days after the top layer of the earth has dried.
- Temperature. Make sure that the plant is not located in the draft. In winter, do not allow the temperature of the earth to drop below 15 ° C.
- Lighting. Marantha refers to flowers that do not like direct sunlight. For it, the penumbra is optimal. But in the event that the lighting is too scarce, the color of the leaves may turn pale. If it is possible to provide artificial lighting, this will benefit the plant. Lighting fluorescent lamp for 16 hours a day has a beneficial effect on the growth of the flower.
- Transplanting of the arrowroot. This plant prefers light soil. Optimum combination: mix three parts of deciduous land, add one part of peat and humus. You can add some softwood and sand. Maranta needs an annual transplant. Do not allow lime in the soil. Very good, if you just cover the rhizomes with wet moss, while planting the plant better in a shallow pot.
- Reproduction. Marantha needs not only competent care, but also reproduction. Propagate the plant during transplantation by fission. After transplanting pots should be kept in a warm place, covering them with polyethylene.
- Top dressing. To feed the arrowroot follows in the period from spring to autumn. For successful reproduction and care of the arrowroot it is necessary to use mineral and organic fertilizers in the complex. Fertilize enough times in the day of the week, alternately strongly diluted organic and mineral fertilizers.
Diseases of the arrowroot
As already mentioned, this plant is not very difficult to grow, but with care for the arrowrock, you will probably face a number of difficulties. Here are some of them:
- At the plant, the tips of the leaves became brown, often the growth slows down. This indicates too dry air.
Try to spray the plant daily. If this does not solve the problem, perhaps the cause is the red spider mite. Treat the flower with an insecticide. - If the leaves are curled and spotted, you do not water the arrowroot much. Soil must be constantly moist.
- It is possible to fight the red spider mite not only with the help of special preparations. The appearance of the tick contributes too dry air in the room. Try to regularly spray the plant. For these purposes, fit the phytophythm, the actellic.
- If the leaves curled into a tube and lost their color, this indicates too much light.
How does the arrowroot blossom?
At home, the arrowroot blooms very rarely, for a flower grower this is a real event. As a rule, these are small pale flowers. There are yellowish, lilac or pink flowers. On the peduncle are collected in the inflorescence, reminiscent of spikelet.