- Bring the snow heath well through the winter
- With a trick, the winter heather also forms numerous flowers in the following year
- The winter heather as a wintry ornament in the balcony box
Many heather plants are offered in pots in specialist garden shops and, like many other flowering plants, are only used seasonally as a splash of color on graves or in window boxes. The snow heather or winter heather (Erica carnea) in particular is extremely hardy and, with a little care, can also be cultivated as a perennial subshrub in the garden.
The winter heather usually thrives perennial without any problems
Bring the snow heath well through the winter
Although the snow heath can cope well with very frosty temperatures due to its subalpine to alpine origin, dangers can also lurk in winter. The worst of these is usually winter drought caused by frosts. You should therefore make sure when planting the winter heather in spring that the plants are planted in a substrate with good water storage capacity. In addition, the plants should also be watered in winter when there are frost-free days or moving the balcony boxes (€109.00) to a frost-free location allows this. But make sure not to pour water over the winter heather (it doesn't like that even in summer), but to moisten the soil around the roots as evenly as possible. A layer of leaves and fine brushwood can also protect the soil around the winter heath from drying out in winter.
With a trick, the winter heather also forms numerous flowers in the following year
For many garden owners, the winter heath gets through the winter without demanding care, but then causes perplexed faces in the next gardening season. This is because the plant either produces very few flowers or tends to bare. This problem can be easily counteracted with a little care by the plants:
- to cut
- water sufficiently
- provide some fertilizer
The best time to cut back is right after flowering in spring. This stimulates the formation of new blossoms in good time and lays the foundation for magnificent blossoms next winter. The tapering pruning also promotes a compact growth habit and thus prevents the plants from becoming bare.
The winter heather as a wintry ornament in the balcony box
The winter heather is one of the few plants with which the balcony can be embellished with real flowers even in winter. However, even the hardy snow heath does not necessarily do well if it is only transplanted into the window boxes in the dead of winter. It can therefore make sense to have a second set of window boxes in which the winter heather can then move to a sunny or semi-shady spot in the garden when it is replaced in spring.
tips
If you cultivate the winter heather in the balcony box for several years, you should regularly provide fresh soil and sufficient nutrients in the balcony boxes. In addition, plants in the window box dry out more easily than outdoors, which is why the snow heath should not be forgotten to be watered during the visually unspectacular summer months.