Published: 10/5/2020 · Updated: 10/5/2020

Alongside growing cut flowers, we also dedicate ourselves to growing eucalyptus, as greenery is important for bouquets. We start our eucalyptus from seeds every year, part goes into our bouquets and the other part heads to you in the form of young plants. To ensure your eucalyptus thrives, we decided to write a short and as honest as possible guide.

Eucalyptus

The most reliable way to grow it is to keep your eucalyptus outdoors on a terrace or balcony, and move it inside (to a winter garden or a cool hallway) as soon as there is a risk of frost.

We don't really recommend it as a houseplant. Only if you have a sunny flat. It definitely won't thrive next to a television where there is barely any daylight, or next to a fireplace or other heat source.

Eucalyptus will form a lush bush and brighten up a summer terrace, for example, but don't expect it to replace a walnut tree in the yard. The eucalyptus plants we grow don't have a trained root system and won't grow into massive trees. If you buy a small eucalyptus from us in May, it will look similar to the large one by August.

Which eucalyptus is this for you?

We'd like to set expectations right from the start — eucalyptus is for advanced growers. If you are starting with eucalyptus, follow this guide; it will go smoothly over the summer, the eucalyptus will grow like crazy, and at the beginning of autumn, everything will suddenly start to go wrong... But even so, it will bring you joy throughout the summer, it will smell wonderful, and every now and then you can snip off a sprig for a vase or dry it.

The eucalyptus you can buy in our shop comes as a young plant. The small one is in a 7×7 (cm) pot, and the large eucalyptus is in a giant 25×25 (cm) pot. The small eucalyptus is 6+ months old and the large one 9+ months, some even 14+ months. At the farm, we grow eucalyptus as small bushes from which we harvest stems that we then use in arrangements; the bushes are ~ 1.8 m tall.

Life cycle

From May to September/October, it will grow like crazy. It grows incredibly well outside over the summer; your eucalyptus will double in size in just a few months. As soon as autumn arrives, bringing shorter days, less light, and lower temperatures, the eucalyptus will stop.

Be prepared that it will not grow at all over the winter, not even a bit. It might survive, but you will more likely be diagnosing one problem after another — a bit of edema from higher air humidity, then something dries out; it's a depressing period, but don't worry, as soon as the days start to get longer and there is more light, the eucalyptus will come back to life, and you will see it putting out new shoots. At that point, you are an advanced grower because you have succeeded in overwintering a eucalyptus.

Even though we overwinter eucalyptus at the farm, we prefer to say it's for the experts, and you should rather prepare for a scenario where you fail to overwinter the eucalyptus. It will simply dry out overnight. You almost won't notice it, and you won't even know what caused it, whether you under-watered or over-watered it. It will just turn into a biscuit.

Step by step

Sunny, full sun, as much sun as possible. At our farm, we have the eucalyptus on a plot that gets baked by the sun all day, and we also have black fabric underneath them to intensify it. So, choose the sunniest place you have in your garden for the eucalyptus.

You can use ordinary potting soil made of peat or standard soil from your garden as a substrate for the pot. Mix the substrate with sand in a 1:4 ratio, i.e., one part sand to four parts soil. The sand ensures the substrate is well-drained so your eucalyptus doesn't rot.

We recommend gradually repotting the eucalyptus into larger pots. If you order a small eucalyptus from us, it will arrive in a 7×7 (cm) pot. The first thing you should do is repot it into a slightly larger pot. Do not repot it into huge containers immediately.

Go for one size larger, i.e., 9×9 (or 12×12 and similar). If you were to repot the eucalyptus into a giant pot immediately, there is a risk of drowning it during watering. To give you a better idea — at the farm, we start the eucalyptus in seed trays (ø 3 cm), then we repot it into 7×7 pots, then move it into 12×12, and only after that does it get the largest pot, which is 25×25. Every time we skipped a pot size, it came back to bite us.

Before your eucalyptus gets really sturdy, we recommend providing it with support. We use a bamboo stick that we simply tie the eucalyptus to.

Only water the pot when the substrate has completely dried out. But be careful; eucalyptus can barely survive in dry soil for 4 - 8 days, then it won't recover. You need to balance watering well; the eucalyptus cannot stand in water, but it also cannot survive in completely dry substrate.

The best way is bottom watering — placing the pot in a saucer. The plant will absorb only what it needs, and you can pour out any excess water from the saucer.

During the summer, we water our eucalyptus once a week with drip irrigation, where the water drips directly to the roots for 1 - 2 hours. In the winter, when we overwinter the eucalyptus in our heated greenhouse, we reduce the frequency of watering and water approximately once every 2 - 4 weeks. It is always necessary to check that it is not standing in water.

You can fertilize the eucalyptus from April to August, once a week is ideal.

Do not fertilize eucalyptus with nitrogen, but reach for a fertilizer with a potassium (K) predominance. From ecological fertilizers, you can use, for example, ProKton or Free PK. From synthetic fertilizers, choose Kristalon Plod a květ (Fruit and Flower), or any other fertilizer where K predominates in the composition. Kristalon Plod a květ has an NPK composition of 15-5-30, meaning there is 2x more potassium (K) in it.

Fertilizer composition

Fertilizers always state the composition and ratio of NPK elements; N is nitrogen, P is phosphorus, K is potassium. The fertilizer composition can be listed as — "19-6-20", which means it contains 19 parts N, 6 parts P, 20 parts K. If you are looking for a fertilizer with an increased potassium content, the third number (K) should be 2x larger than the remaining two (N and P). The mentioned Kristalon Plod a květ has 2x more potassium (K).