Garden liana, known as Vichi grapes, is a beautiful deciduous climbing plant with high decorativeness, great growth power, good frost resistance. Girlish grapes are popular all over the world. It is grown in America and Mexico, Canada and Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand.
Description
The attractiveness of the three-leafed liana lies in its beautiful leaves. Blooms Maiden grapes inconspicuous small flowers of pale whitish-yellow tones. Small fruits ripening at the end of the season are inedible. The most optimal climate is temperate. Girlish grape triostreny – a tree-like powerful vine with fluffy foliage covering the surface on which the vine grows with a continuous carpet. An adult liana can reach 10 to 30 meters in length, although in the first two years it grows only three meters.
Young shoots are painted in a reddish hue, growing up they take on a brown-green color. Green leaves by autumn acquire a strikingly beautiful color: from carmine red to lemon yellow or purple hues. The arrangement of petiolate palmate leaves is alternate.
From the nodal part of the vine grows tenacious branching whiskers, with the help of which it attaches to any surface, even if it has a negative angle of inclination.
Girlish grapes have many varieties, with which you can turn any unsightly shed into a mysterious structure, hidden by a green or multi-colored curtain. Its size is enough to decorate a building up to 8 floors (if it is of course a warm climate). With the help of girlish grapes, garden plots can be hidden from prying eyes, noise and dust, a large mass of vines absorb excess moisture. The deciduous liana Parthenocissus Quinquefolia (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) gave birth to 19 species of ornamental ivy, two of which are cultivated in Russia:
- virginian five-leafed;
- triostrenny (3-bladed).
The crown of Vichy grapes forms a dense cover through which it is impossible to see the main surface. After the first couple of years, the vine begins to give a steady increase of up to two meters annually.
The most popular varieties are:
- Don Juan – has a beautiful leaf, in autumn it turns into carmine-scarlet tones;
- Yellow Wall – the length of the lash is up to 14 meters, the foliage is painted in autumn in bright yellow tones;
- STAR SHOWERS – variegated form: in summer the foliage has a white-green color, in the fall – pink-red.
The plant is widely used in urban landscape gardening in Ukraine, the Far East, the Baltic States, the Krasnodar Territory, etc. In mild climates and under ideal conditions, the liana sometimes reaches 40 meters in length. Many European castles are entwined with the Vici decorative vine.
The plant is so unpretentious that it requires almost no special care, especially in adulthood.
Landing
The unpretentiousness of Maiden grapes allows even inexperienced gardeners to grow it. For planting, those areas are chosen that require decorative cover, places for zoning the site, wall space, gazebos, terraces, etc. Vichi loves sunny places, it is there that he will show his real potential – incredible decorativeness and richness of the vegetative mass.
For planting seedlings, holes of 50×50 cm in size are prepared, placing a drainage layer on the bottom (this is a must). To do this, a sand-pebble mixture is poured, it can be replaced with fine gravel. The excavated earth is mixed with organic matter (humus, manure, compost), about 1 liter of wood ash is added, and this is quite enough. The distance between seedlings is from 50–70 cm. A seedling is planted in the same way as any other plants. It is necessary to fill the root with earth, compact the soil, shed well, shade for a week from the scorching sun.
Watering
Vichi is a moisture-loving plant, so abundant watering is required for it, especially in hot weather. This event should be carried out weekly for an adult vine, while young plants need to be watered even more often, except for the rainy period, when there is enough moisture. During irrigation, do not forget about surface irrigation. High vines are simply watered from a hose with a divider – the grapes respond gratefully to such procedures.
Feeding
The plant needs fertilizing infrequently, fertilize it once a year. Organic fertilizers are applied after the vine is covered with foliage. It is not recommended to make synthetic compounds – parthenocissus reacts very poorly to them.
For top dressing, compost, humus, bird droppings, wood ash or an extract from it are used.
Trimming
Sanitary pruning is carried out annually, which means that it is necessary and possible to cut all damaged, diseased and dry shoots. Spend and shaping cut, if the crown needs to be formed, a certain shape is achieved from it, growth is limited in one direction or another. As a rule, such procedures are carried out in early spring or autumn, before the onset of cold weather.
Wintering
An adult liana winters well in Siberia without shelter, but up to two years the plant is not yet too strong, and the temperature sometimes drops to minus 35 and below. Therefore, it is better not to take risks and organize shelter for the winter. The vine must be lowered to the ground and covered with mulch or agrofibre. If the growth force is large enough and it is not possible to remove a 3-meter vine, then it must be cut off.
In the middle lane and to the south, both types grow and develop well – triacicular and five-leaved.
Examples of use in landscape design
Girlish grapes are grown on plots of any size and type. Liana can be grown in a pot if there is no place for it, but I really want to have this miracle in my collection. If you use the possibilities of the vine for its intended purpose, then its use in landscape design is very wide:
- cosmetic disguise – creeper is decorated with unsightly buildings, ugly sections of a hedge or other buildings;
- Vici can plant an empty space, giving him the opportunity to grow like a shaggy ground cover, on which children will play with pleasure, and such a lawn will look great in the fall, at the same time crowding out all the weeds;
- hedge – it is worth letting the vine along the trellis, and the owner is provided with a green fence impenetrable to prying eyes, moreover, over time, lignified shoots will become impassable for physical penetration;
- if you plant a plant along the walls of the house, then in a few years the building will look like beautiful European castlesivy-covered (in this case, you will have to monitor the formation of the vine, clean the window and ventilation spaces);
- Since the roots are close to the surface, Vici feels great in large planters and pots, it can be grown in a city apartment on a balcony.
A few tips before boarding:
- if the walls of the house are plastered, and the owners have a desire to decorate them with girlish grapes, one must keep in mind – it can seriously damage the plaster layer and thermal insulation, so great is the strength of the antennae clinging to the surface;
- a great option for decorating walls with triospiced grapes – wood, stone, concrete;
- for tiles and slate, the plant can also be a threat, so its mass is large enough, especially if many roots are planted — it can just push them through.
Vichy is ideally combined with other types of flowering climbing plants:
- crenate роза;
- clematis – mountain, prince, clematis;
- ornamental honeysuckle (she needs support and Vichy can play her role);
- Chinese Schisandra, climbing species Highlander, Aristolochia, Vineyard short peduncle, etc.
There are a lot of climbing cultivated vines, but not all of them bloom beautifully, so it makes sense to plant ivy and Parthenociss together, it is up to the owner of the site to decide, because they will be distinguishable from each other only in the fall. However, you can think of a combination of several types of vines, for example – Vichy, ivy, climbing rose, Vineyard, etc.
All of them are decorative at different times of the growing season, so you can create an amazing picture of living drawing on the facade of the house throughout the summer period.
