Cultivation techniques of Aesculus chinensis

The seven-leaf tree, also known as clover, clover, Tianshi chestnut, pistachio, monkey chestnut, etc., is a deciduous tree of the family Aesculaceae. The seeds are edible, but they taste bitter and astringent and need to be boiled in alkaline water before eating, such as chestnut, starch can also be extracted, fine wood can be used to make a variety of utensils, seeds can be used as medicine, oil can be pressed to make soap, let's take a look at the cultivation techniques of the seven-leaf tree!

Growth habit of Aesculus chinensis

The seven-leaf tree is cultivated in the Yellow River basin and the eastern provinces of China, only wild in the Qinling Mountains, naturally distributed in the mountains below 700 meters above sea level, and is an excellent street tree and garden tree in the Yellow River basin. Like light, slightly resistant to shade, like warm climate, can also withstand cold, like deep, fertile, moist and well-drained soil. It has deep roots, strong sprouting power, moderate and slow growth rate, long life span, and leaves are prone to sunburn in hot summer.

Sowing and propagation of seven-leaf tree

1. Seed collection: the outer skin of the fruit of the seven-leaf tree changes from green to brown in mid-autumn, and individual fruits can be collected when they are cracked. The fruit was dried in the shade after collection, peeled off after natural cracking, and finally selected a large, full, bright color, no diseases and insect pests, no mechanical damage seed, the selected pure seeds were mixed with wet sand according to the proportion of 1 ∶ 3, and then stored in the soil pit with good wet drainage by wet reservoir stratification method, and left ventilation holes.

2. Nursery site preparation: select neutral or slightly acidic sandy loam with deep and fertile soil layer and good drainage as seedling creeping ground, turn deeply two or three months before sowing, remove impurities and air moisture, and carefully prepare the ground before sowing to make the ground flat and uniform in thickness. The rotting fermented cow and horse manure was applied as base fertilizer at the dosage of 2500 kg / mu, and then the soil was disinfected with pentachloronitrobenzene.

3. Sowing method: generally use spring sowing, carried out in late March, strip-on-demand sowing, plant row spacing is 20 cm × 25 cm, depth is 3 cm to 4 cm, seed navel is down when sowing, soil cover is 4 cm, cover soil and border surface are flat, tread gently with foot, sowing rate is 150 kg / mu.

4. Post-sowing management: the soil should be kept moist before germination and unearthed a month later. Weeding should be done in time to ensure that there are no weeds in the seedling field. When the seedling height is 25 cm, loosen the soil, weed, and grow seedlings in cloudy and rainy days. Seedling growth period, but also often keep the nursery moist, from the seedlings unearthed to the first ten days of June is the high growth period of the seven-leaf tree, it is necessary to increase the amount of water. The period from July to August is the Lignification period of seven-leaf seedlings, so the amount of water should be reduced to promote the growth and Lignification of seedlings.

Cultivation techniques of Aesculus chinensis

1. Planting pit: the main root of the seven-leaf tree is deep, but the lateral root is few, so it is a tree species that is not tolerant to transplant, so it must take soil ball when transplanting, and the diameter of the soil ball is 6 to 8 times of the DBH of the tree. When planting a seven-leaf tree, its leaves should fall behind before it sprouts in early spring or at the end of autumn. In order to improve the survival rate of planting, the planting pit should be dug as large as possible before planting, which is beneficial to the growth of plants. When planting, should be careful not to be too deep, too deep can easily lead to stuffy buds, generally speaking, the planting depth can be slightly higher than 3 cm to 5 cm of the upper epidermis of the soil ball, and the backfill should be layered and solid when planting.

2. Watering: immediately after planting, water should be watered twice after a week, and then watered three times in about 10 days. After the three water can be watered according to soil moisture, generally can be watered once a month, July and August is a period of abundant precipitation, can be less watering or no watering, September and October can each be watered once, and fully watered at the end of November or early December. In the early spring of the following year, thawing water should be fully watered. April and May are the dry period in spring, the spring monsoon lasts for a long time, and the wind is strong, and the transpiration of the plant is larger, so the watering frequency can be increased, which can be watered once every 15 days, and then watered once a month.

3. Fertilization: seven-leaf trees like fertilizer, so sufficient base fertilizer should be applied before planting, and it is appropriate to use farm manure such as cow and horse manure and rotten leaf fertilizer. Although these fertilizers are small, they are soft and good for improving the looseness of the soil. The base fertilizer should be fully mixed with the planted soil. Sufficient fertilizer can accelerate its growth rate and improve the plant's resistance to diseases and insect pests. In addition to applying base fertilizer during planting, fertilizers should also be applied throughout the growing period, including some large street trees.

4. Pruning: the reshaping and pruning of the seven-leaf tree should be carried out every year after falling leaves in winter or before germination in the following spring. Because the crown of the seven-leaf tree is a natural round head shape, it is better to maintain the original crown shape. Shaping and pruning is mainly based on the principle of keeping the crown beautiful, ventilated and transparent, thinning the overdense branches and truncating the overlong branches to make the branches distribute evenly and grow healthily. It is also necessary to cut off dry and withered branches, disease and insect branches, inner bore branches, slender branches and poor growth branches, which is conducive to the concentrated supply of nutrients and form a good crown.