Pentas, an impressive plant with star flowers for your yard, pot and garden

Pentas is a low-growing plant that stands out for its strikingly numerous flowers that look like starfish. Originally from South Africa and Madagascar, pentas has a rich and prolonged flowering, with intense vibrant colors such as pink, red and purple. It blooms from mid-spring to late autumn.

In the tropical parts of its origin as well as in the southern regions of our country, the pentas is a perennial plant while in more northern areas with intense frost in winter, pentas is planted as an annual. Penta is a special flower with a special ornamental value that is planted both in flower beds in the garden and in pots on our balcony.

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Under what conditions does pentas grow best?

Pentas thrives in sunny warm places to have good growth and rich flowering. It can be grown in semi-shady places, but in no case can it be kept indoors. Pentas is sensitive to low temperatures as well as strong winds, so we must ensure a relatively safe position.

To plant penta in a pot, we prefer a balcony or a yard with a south exposure. Regarding its soil requirements, penta can be planted in almost all soil types as long as they have good drainage. Use simple outdoor soil for general use and place a thin layer of gravel or pebbles at the base of the pot to remove excess water.

What watering and fertilizing needs does penta plant needs?

Pentas needs watering 2 times a week during the spring and autumn period, and every 2 days during the warm summer period. We make sure to water when we find that the soil dries on the ground or in the pot that we have planted and in hot weather we take care that it does not remain waterlogged.

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Regarding the nutritional needs of pentas, we apply mild fertilization from spring to the end of autumn. We prefer a complete liquid fertilizer for flowering plants that we apply every 2 weeks and we avoid nitrogenous (ammonia) or granular fertilizers that can create problems in the growth and flowering of the plant.

How is pentas pruned and how is it multiplied?

Pentas does not have significant pruning requirements to give us rich vegetation and flowering. In late spring, when the pentas develops its vibrant vegetation, we can lightly cut the edges of the shoots in order to obtain a more compact form. During the summer, we remove the ripe and dried flowers to enhance the growth of more flowers and to ensure prolonged flowering.

If we want to create new pentas plants, we must know that it is propagated by needy but also by cuttings. The seeds of the pentas are planted in the spring and can give us many plants, however their flowering will be quite late. For this reason, we prefer the method of propagation by cuttings. In the spring, we select cuttings 15 cm long from the top vegetation of the pentas, which we plant in nursery pots using rooting hormone to get better results.

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And a secret for pentas plant

Penta is durable and is not easily affected by diseases and insects, except for the nightshade that afflicts it every summer. To treat blackheads, we can use a homemade recipe that we make at home by dissolving 1 tablespoon of ammonia pastry, 1 tablespoon of grated green soap and 5 drops of citronella essential oil in 1 liter of water.