Camellias are Asiatic, evergreen shrubs that are cherished for their waxy, long-lasting flowers. Their alternate, toothed leaves are of leathery texture, attractive, and decorative around the year.
By proper choice of varieties, six or seven potted or tubbed camellias will provide a season of bloom from mid-September through March.
Though they are often thought of as shrubs for Southern gardens, an impressive number of outstanding camellias grow into compact, bushy specimens that, with a little pruning in the spring, can be kept to a practical size for an indoor garden—ideally, a cool, sunny plant room or greenhouse.
How To Take Care Of Camellias
Temperature
Camellias in flowers are best kept at 40° to 50° degrees Fahrenheit. However, after the flowers are gone, they like to be warmer, about 55° to 65° degrees Fahrenheit.
Light
Full to the partial sun during the fall, winter, and spring in the window garden; filtered morning or afternoon sun outdoors in the summer.
Soil
CCamellias need an acid soil that tests between pH 4.0 and 5.5.
Since they like moist soil, the soil must be well-drained not to become waterlogged, even though it is always moist.
Here is a good soil mixture for camellias: equal parts loam, peat moss, leaf mold, and sand.
Since their relatively small root system, mature plants can sometimes go for three years without repotting.
Repotting is done just before growth starts in the spring.
Camellias should be pressed firmly into their pots — this means tamping down the soil with some potting stick.
Moisture
Camellias should never be allowed to dry out completely. Dry conditions in the soil and the air around them will invite bud drops and red spiders.
Strive to maintain a relative humidity of 50% percent, or more, in your plant room or greenhouse.
Fertilizer
Once camellias have flowered, it is important to push them into new growth. A solution of ammonium sulfate is excellent for this purpose.
Use it at the rate of one level teaspoon dissolved in one gallon of water, applied as you water the plants.
Fertilizing is done only during the summer growing months. This may be started as early as March but not continued past August.
A cottonseed-meal fertilizer, mixed especially for camellias, is desirable.
It is applied three times during the growing season, the first of April, June, and August. Follow package directions.
If you have a weakness for deviating from such rules, be sure to UNDER and not OVER fertilize!
Summer-Time Care
If possible, move tubbed camellias outdoors in warm weather to a place protected from hot, drying winds.
They should receive the early morning or late afternoon sun. Sprinkle frequently with water from the hose to increase moisture in the air around them.
Watch all summer carefully for insects. Then, in September, when you return the plants to the window garden, be sure that you do not bring insects in with them.
If your camellias form clusters of buds, you will get larger, more perfect individual flowers if you disbud. Allow the one tip bud of each cluster to mature.
Disbudding should be done as soon as the buds are large enough for you to tell one from another.
Camellia Propagation
Camellias are not difficult to root from cuttings made of mature wood of the current season’s growth.
Cuttings may be taken from August 15 through early February. They may be 3″ to 6″ inches long and have one to six leaf nodes.
A cutting with only one node should have a live bud at the top and 1 and 1/2″ inches of stem below the leaf.
Camellia cuttings may be rooted in a 50/50 mixture of peat moss and sand so that the rooting medium will be warm (around 72° degrees Fahrenheit).
The cuttings should be covered with glass or polyethylene so that they will be in high humidity.
Rooting takes 2 or 3 months. After roots have formed, the cuttings may be transplanted into regular camellia soil in 2″ and 1/2″ inch pots, then to four-inch ones after the roots crowd in the smaller containers.
It is not difficult to grow camellias from seeds. It takes 4 to 7 years for a seedling to reach blooming size.
Some seedlings may have average blooms, and some will be inferior. If the seed parents were outstanding, your chances for a top-quality seedling are better.
Sow the seeds in the spring in sandy soil with enough peat moss to give a pH of 4.0 to 5.5. Soak the seeds overnight in water (to begin with, it should be warm but not boiling); cover with a half inch of soil.
Germination occurs in two or more weeks.
How To Diagnose Camellia Troubles
See the accompanying chart for descriptions, identifications, and treatments of insects and diseases that attack camellias.
| If your plant looks like this… | The cause may be this… | And you can do this… |
| New Foliage growth is yellow | Lack of acidity | Water plant with a solution of one ounce of iron sulfate in two gallons of water. Repeat at bi-weekly intervals until growth is the proper color |
| Notches are eaten from leaf margins (usually noticed in the morning) | Fuller rose beetle, a gray-brown weevil that works at night | Dust stems with lindane or chlordane |
| Upper surfaces of leaves mottled yellow; white filaments with dark oyster shells on undersides of leaves | Tea scale | Summer oil spray (Florida Valck) right after blooming; malathion when the scale is in the crawling stage. |
| Yellowish brown, sometimes silvery spots on the leaves | Leaf spot | Usually occurs when plants are outdoors in the summer and receive too much sunlight, and too much hot, dry wind is striking them. Provide more shade and a windbreak |
| Older leaves take on a mottling of yellow; undersides appear eddish with tiny webs sometimes visible at leaf axils | Red spider mite, | Spray with Aramite or Kelthane |
| Fuzzy white balls and gray-white insects underneath the leaves and in the axils | Mealybug | Clean with cotton dipped in alcohol; repeat at one-week intervals until no more mealybugs appear. Or, use a house plant insect bomb according to directions on the container. |
| Flower bud drops | Bud blast | Avoid high or fluctuating temperatures. Be certain the plant is not in a draft. Provide at least 40% to 50% percent humidity in the air and syringe the foliage and flower buds twice daily to help provide more moisture in the air |
| Flowers open but turn brown or mushy and fall from the plant | Camellia flower blight | Gather and burn all affected flowers; remove upper two or three inches of soil and replace with new or treat old solid with terraclor. |
| The growth of the plant is slow. No flower buds form.Do not use DDT on camellia-it is injuries to them. | Improper growing conditions | Study the environment of your camellia carefully; check the condition of soil, light, light, moisture, feeding, humidity, temperature |
Choosing Your Camellias
There are hundreds of different camellias, each of which has certain desirable, or sometimes undesirable, characteristics.
For growing in the window garden, one should consider the length of the blooming season and the variety’s growth habit (some are tall, even leggy, becoming straggly.
Others are compact, easily kept pruned to a symmetrical bush that doesn’t grow out of bounds of indoor usefulness) and whether or not it is a profuse bloomer, even while young.
All-America Camellia Selections
Annually All-America Camellia Selections names a camellia of the year.
However, before a variety attains this distinction, it is grown in trial gardens, usually outdoors, throughout the United States, where camellias are hardy as garden plants.
Sometimes these selections are outstanding even as potted or tubbed plants.
Unless the A-AC selection is specifically not recommended for pot use, this is one dependable standard for the selection of camellias.
Visit Commercial And Public Camellia Displays
The most enjoyable method of assembling a camellia collection is to visit commercial and public displays of camellias in full bloom.
A visit from mid-September to November would acquaint you with early-blooming varieties: December to February, the midseason ones: March and April those that are late-blooming.
Study catalog listings of camellias before you make final choices.
Camellias may be shipped either as potted or bare-root plants. Most nurseries will ship bare-soot camellias only from October 15 to April 1.
44659 by Elvin Mcdonald