Many readers have heard or read about gumi. However, most people don't know much about this plant. I want to "introduce" you to gumi, and I think that even those who grow it in the backyard will learn a lot of new and interesting things about this plant.
Economic significance
Gumi (Japanese name) is a promising fruit, ornamental, honey-bearing and medicinal plant. It is characterized by rapid growth, rapid fruitfulness, abundant annual fruiting, resistance to damage by pests, to disease.
Gumi fruits have an original taste, they contain 11-18% sugars, 1.5-2.3% organic acids, 0.18-0.46% pectins, a significant amount of biologically active substances: carotene 13.2-19.6 mg / 100 g of raw matter, P-active compounds (catechins 92-210 mg / 100 g, anthocyanins 12-30, leucoanthocyanins 150-478, flavonols 20-45 mg / 100 g), tannins (0.3-0.5%, ascorbic acid 16-33 mg
. In the leaves, the content of ascorbic acid reaches 245 mg%, so they can be used as a vitamin supplement.
Gumi is a close relative of sea buckthorn, gumi fruits and seeds contain about 25% oil, which contains more essential fatty acids (linoleic and linolenic) than sea buckthorn oil. The fruits are a therapeutic and prophylactic agent, have a tonic and preventive effect, improve blood circulation, are used in oriental medicine for the treatment of various diseases. They are used fresh, dried, frozen.
Origin of the Gumi
Gumi (botanical name - multicolored olive) grows naturally in Japan, China and Korea. During the Second World War, it was brought to the south of Sakhalin Island, where favorable climatic conditions turned out to be and the plant quickly acclimatized there. In Russia, T.G. Voronova was the first to pay attention to this plant 50 years ago. Gumi came to us from the Far East.
Morphological characteristics
What is gumi? This is a deciduous shrub up to 3 m high with a different crown (from erect to spreading). Annual shoots are reddish-brown, covered with spots, perennial - gray-brown, very branched, sometimes with thorns. During one growing season, it forms shoots of the second order, as a result, the crown of the plant is quickly formed.
More interesting: vk.com/dachavsem The leaves are whole-edged, elongated, appear silvery from above due to a fluffy coating, covered with brown veins from below. The fruit is a drupe, rounded, elongated, rarely cylindrical, 1-2 g, on a long stalk, similar to a cherry. Ripe fruits (bright red with silvery-white spots, juicy, sour-sweet or sweet to the taste. Inside there is a spindle-shaped bone with longitudinal grooves.
The multi-flowered olive forms a powerful, well-branched surface root system, which does not have a clearly defined main root and consists of a large number of mochkovat roots located in the soil layer of 5-40 cm. The greatest saturation with roots is within the projection of the crown of the bush. The diameter of the root system exceeds the diameter of the crown by 1.3-2.1 times. A characteristic feature of the root system of olives is the presence of bubbles with nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots. In this regard, plants are less fastidious to soil conditions. Bubble formations occur at the end of the first year of life. In old bushes, they often merge and form cluster-like concentrations, the diameter of which can reach 6 cm (some gardeners believe that this is root cancer).
Choosing a place to land
Olives can be grown on different soils. Nevertheless, the best for it are soils of light mechanical composition, with good aeration, provided with nutrients and moisture. Heavy clay soils are less suitable. Regarding the acidity of the soil, the olive prefers neutral or slightly acidic soils. Acidic soils need to be limed before planting. The lime rate depends on the pH of the soil and averages 300-500 g/m2.
The place for planting olives is selected taking into account the lighting. Gumi needs good lighting, can withstand slight shading. In the shade of the olive, although it bears fruit, but its yield decreases, the fruits are formed smaller, more sour and tart to the taste. In addition, the activity of bees decreases in such plantings. And this is important because the harvest of gumi largely depends on visiting its bushes during flowering by bees and other pollinating insects.
You can plant gumi seedlings in spring and autumn. The spring term is more favorable than the autumn one. In spring, they are planted at the end of March - in early April - before budding. The distance between the bushes should be at least 3 m. Planting pits are dug to a depth of 50-60 cm, with a diameter of 50-70 cm. 10-12 kg of humus mixed with the upper fertile layer of soil is introduced into the pit.
Seedlings are planted in a permanent place at the age of two. The height of standard seedlings is 100-120 cm, they have 3-5 skeletal branches with a diameter of at least 10-12 mm. The best precursors for olives are dogwood, peach, cherry. Re-growing it in the same place is undesirable.
Care of plantings
After planting, the aboveground part of the seedlings is cut at a height of 50-70 cm to balance the aboveground part and the root system, to get a branched bush. The root neck is deepened by 5-6 cm during planting . The soil around the seedling is compacted. The plant is well watered (15-20 liters of water per bush) in autumn 1-2 times, in spring 3-4. The soil surface around the bush is mulched with peat or compost - this helps to preserve moisture.
The care of the olive consists in pruning, removing weeds, loosening the soil, fertilizing, watering.
At a young age, olive plants are sensitive to a lack of moisture, especially if they grow in open places. In general, gumi is quite a drought-resistant plant. Even in summer, due to the prolonged absence of rains (more than a month), we noted only a slight decrease in turgor in the leaves.
Since olives have regular fruiting, it is advisable to feed adult plants annually during fruit growth (II-III decades of June) with a full mineral fertilizer at the rate of 80-100 g per bush. In autumn, they are limited to feeding with phosphorus-potassium fertilizers (30-35 g / m2). These fertilizers provide the plant with nutrients and increase its winter hardiness.
The system of cultivation of the soil should be aimed at preserving moisture and destroying weeds. Loosening of the soil is necessarily carried out in the spring and 3-5 times as necessary during the growing season. The depth of cultivation of the soil should not exceed 10-15 cm in the aisles and 4-5 cm in the trunk circle.
Pruning is carried out in spring (the second half of March - the beginning of April). The main task in the formation and pruning of olive bushes in the first years after planting is to stimulate the growth of the lower branches, which in the future will be dominant and will form the basis of the bush. It is necessary to make sure that the crown is not lopsided and very thickened, remove the competitor shoots. The central conductors of the skeletal branches should be approximately the same height, but higher than the lateral branches by 10-15 cm.
Further pruning of bushes is reduced to the removal of dry and frozen branches, thinning of the crown. It should be borne in mind that the multi-flowered olive is characterized by a high shoot-forming ability, therefore, the crown of the vast majority of bushes is too thickened, which leads to a decrease in yield. In such bushes, weak and superfluous growth shoots should be cut out, if necessary, 2-3-year-old branches should be removed. More interesting: vk.com/dachavsem It should be remembered that with thinning pruning, the branches of the olive are cut out at the base or transferred to the side branches, and not shortened, the shortened branches will thicken the crowns even more. To change the direction of growth of branches, pruning is used for "translation" - cut to a conveniently placed side branch.
Starting from 8-10 years of age, 1-2 weakly productive branches are removed from plants in the spring to replace them with young ones. Further pruning is aimed at supporting good growth of branches, improving crown lighting, removing dry, frozen and broken branches. It is advisable to limit the height of bushes to 2.0-2.5 m for convenient harvesting. When the bush reaches the desired height, the central
the conductors of skeletal branches are cut into lateral branches. On the side branches, in turn, all strong branches that grow vertically upwards are removed.
In 15-20-year-old plants, the main task is to ensure an optimal level of growth processes, the intensity of which decreases with age in plants. To do this, use thinning pruning. Remove dry and damaged branches, and those that intersect, as well as those directed to the middle of the crown. In fruit-bearing plants with weakened growth, 3-4-year-old branches are shortened.
Reproduction
Olives can be propagated by seeds and vegetatively. To obtain olive seedlings, you should use the newly collected seeds and stratification should be carried out in two stages: five months at a temperature of 18-22 ° C and four months at a temperature of 1-4 ° C. The substrate is a mixture of sand + sawdust (1:1) or sand + peat (1:1). Dry seeds of the multicolored olive need to be stratified in the same substrates for five months (in the basement or refrigerator) at a temperature of 1-4 ° C. It should be known that the germination of dry gumi seeds decreases sharply and is about 10%. In addition, during seed propagation, splitting is observed, i.e. seedlings do not inherit the properties of the parent plant.
To preserve valuable biological and economic characteristics of the best breeding forms and varieties, it is better to use vegetative reproduction. Semi-woody, woody and combined cuttings can be used. Cuttings should be carried out in the second half of June in closed ground conditions. Since the olive belongs to hard-rooting plants, it is mandatory to use root formation stimulants.
