Gardening Interview Question:

How do you grow strelitzias indoors?

Submitted by: Administrator

The most commonly grown strelitzia is Strelitzia reginae, commonly called bird-of-paradise. It produces brilliant, birdlike orange and purple flowers on top of long stalks of glossy greenish-blue foliage. These subtropical plants need a rich, well-drained soil containing a lot of organic matter. Place them in a brightly lit spot with temperatures of about 68 to 75 degrees during the day and night temperatures about 10 degrees cooler. During the growing season, allow the soil to dry out slightly and then water them well. Feed them with a dilute liquid fertilizer every two weeks. The plants like their foliage misted daily and year-round humidity levels of about 35 percent.

In the winter, the plants need a resting period. Keep them at about 55 degrees, decrease watering, and stop fertilizing.

Plants need to be potbound before they will flower, so don't transplant them to a larger pot until the roots have filled up more than three-quarters of the soil area. Plants grown from seed take seven to eight years to flower. Those propagated by division take about four years.
Submitted by: Administrator