Italian stone pines are neither houseplants nor hardy outdoors | Home & Back garden

Following 33 decades crafting a gardening column for the Write-up-Dispatch, Chip Tynan is retiring from the Missouri Botanical Garden. We are rerunning some favourite columns for a couple of months, but the garden will resume the column soon. You should proceed to send out inquiries to the address underneath.

Q • I been given an Italian Stone Pine as a residing Christmas tree gift. I have been holding it indoors, but I marvel if it can be planted outdoors?

A • The Italian Stone Pine (Pinus pinea) is not hardy in the St. Louis location and ought to not be perplexed with the Swiss Stone Pine (Pinus cembra), which will endure in our local climate. Italian stone pines are native to northern Mediterranean locations in Europe. In this place, they are principally grown in California and locations of the western states that are not subject to freezing climate. Nevertheless they will not survive our winters if planted outdoors, neither can we contemplate Italian stone pines to be houseplants. If held indoors in average warm problems, they will at some point shed their vigor and decline.

Present your plant with interesting evening temperatures in the 40s and a shiny sunny window. A amazing greenhouse or a sunporch would be great. For the remainder of the wintertime, permit the soil to dry rather in between waterings. Put your plant exterior for summer time, with some defense from the most popular afternoon sunlight. Keep the soil evenly moist and fertilize about the moment a thirty day period right up until fall. Deliver it back indoors in slide when evening temperatures drop into the decrease 40s.