Besides growing cut flowers, we also grow eucalyptus, as greenery is essential for bouquets. We start our eucalyptus from seeds every year, part goes into our bouquets, and the other part travels to you as young plants. To help your eucalyptus thrive, we decided to write a short and as honest as possible guide.

Eucalyptus

The most reliable way to grow eucalyptus is outdoors, on a terrace or balcony, and as soon as there is a risk of frost, bring it indoors (to a conservatory or a cool hallway).

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

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

How many times have you grown eucalyptus?

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

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

Life cycle

From May until September/October, it will grow like crazy. It grows incredibly fast outdoors during the summer, and the eucalyptus will double in size within a few months. As soon as autumn comes, with shorter days, less light, and lower temperatures, the eucalyptus stops growing.

Be prepared that it will not grow in winter, not even a bit. It might survive, but you will more likely find yourself diagnosing one problem after another — an edema from high humidity might appear, or something might dry up. It's a depressing period, but don't worry; as soon as the days start getting longer and there is more light, the eucalyptus will come back to life, and you will see new shoots. At that moment, you are an advanced grower because you have succeeded in overwintering eucalyptus.

Even though we overwinter eucalyptus on our farm, we prefer to say it is an advanced skill, so prepare yourself for a scenario where you might not succeed in overwintering it. It can just dry up overnight. You will barely notice it, and you won't even know exactly why — whether you under-watered or over-watered it. It simply becomes like a biscuit.

Step by step

Location

Sunny, full sun, as much sun as possible. On our farm, we have eucalyptus in a field that gets full sun all day, and we also use black landscape fabric underneath to amplify the heat. So, choose the sunniest spot in your garden for your eucalyptus.

Substrate

For the substrate in the pot, you can use ordinary peat-based potting soil or regular garden soil. Mix the substrate with sand in a 1:4 ratio, i.e., one part sand to four parts soil. The sand ensures that the substrate is well-drained and prevents the eucalyptus from rotting.

Pot

We recommend gradually repotting the eucalyptus into a larger pot. 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 giant containers immediately.

Reach for a pot one size larger, i.e., 9×9 (or 12×12 and similar). If you were to repot the eucalyptus into a giant pot right away, there is a risk you might drown it during watering. To give you a better idea — on the farm, we start eucalyptus in seed trays (ø 3 cm), then we repot them into 7×7 pots, then we move them to 12×12, and only then do they reach the largest pot, 25×25. Whenever we skipped a pot size, we paid for it.

Support

Until your eucalyptus gets strong, we recommend providing support. We use a bamboo stick to which we simply tie the eucalyptus.

Watering

Water the pot only when the substrate has completely dried out. But be careful; eucalyptus can survive in dry conditions for only 4-8 days, then it will not recover. You need to balance watering carefully; the eucalyptus cannot stand in water, but it also cannot withstand completely dry substrate.

The best way is bottom-up watering — place the pot in a saucer. The plant will soak up only what it needs, and you can pour off the excess water from the saucer.

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

Fertilizing

You can fertilize the eucalyptus from April to August, ideally once every week.

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

Composition of fertilizers

Fertilizers always show their composition and the NPK ratio: N is nitrogen, P is phosphorus, K is potassium. The composition of a fertilizer might be stated 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 2× larger than the remaining two (N and P). The mentioned Kristalon Fruit and Flower has 2× more potassium (K).