How to care for a Sophora Prostrata shrub

So I bought this pretty little shrub from my local dealer thinking it would be easy to find some information on the plant. Well, I can't really find information on how to take care of this plant as an indoor plant, so I hope very much some of you guys can help me. I live in Denmark, so we have dark and cold days ahead.

I usually make my own soil by adding barkchips and perlite to the bagged soil you buy in stores.

Thanks in advance

A dear friend sent me one of these unique little plants last summer. I live on the divide between z5b-6a, so wasn't worried about this plant, hardy to z8 or possibly 7, over-wintering in an attached garage. Unfortunately, we had a brutally cold winter and "someone" left one of the overhead garage doors open and it succumbed to the killing low temps.

It was an easy plant for me - nothing unusual about it in it's cultural wants. Full sun, a very open soil that drains exceptionally well, and a quality synthetic fertilizer that contains all the essential nutrients in a 3:1:2 or 2:1:2 ratio. I prefer Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 as my 'go to' fertilizer. I don't know what you have available there, but there should be something close.

Keep in mind that when you make your soil, you can't really amend a a peat-based potting soil by simply adding pine bark. There is a 'threshold' % of coarse particles that needs to be met, or the addition of the bark doesn't chance the soil's physical properties much. Illustration: Start with a half liter of peat based soil. Add a handful of bark. Are the spaces between the pieces of bark filled with the peat-based soil? Yes, they are; so bark in that volume isn't enough to change much. The same is true of mixing the bark 50/50 with the peat soil. The spaces between bark particles are STILL full of peat. It's only when you get into the range where bark represents somewhere near 80% of the total soil volume that the soil starts to open up - there won't be enough peat to clog all the valuable large pores between bark particles.

If you DO decide to build your soils around this concept, there won't be enough lime (dolomite) in the soil, so you'll need to add to what little is provided in the peat soil you're using - about 2.5 CCs/L would be about right.

It's a really neat plant. I think the best thing for it, over winter, would be to keep it in a very cool, dim room and let it stay very (but not completely) dry.

Al

Thank you for a great answer.

I'll try your recipe by adding 80% of bark to the peatsoil, use a good fertilizer and adding dolomite. I've got a few questions, though.

1) I'll see if I can find some dolomite but I do not quite understand how to find out how much of it to add. I do not understand the sentence "about 2.5 CCs/L". Could you please elaborate.

2) Also, with so many barkchips the water will just run straight through, right? How do I water the plant? Do I just submerge the plant for half an hour like I do my orchids?

3) You haven't made any youtube videoes on how to mix soil and other plantrelated stuff, have you?

Thanks

CCs/L

means cubic centimeters per liter.

cc/l is probably a better way of writing it.

A very small amount.