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new thread new thread new thread new thread i have a problematic hobby of trying to grow ridiculous things over winter, so here's a recent seed order:
Heavy Hitter Okra Crespo Squash Chinese Sweet Basil Lettuce Leaf Basil Blue Spice Basil Dwarf Lemon Cilantro Camelia Flowered Mix Balsam Kiwano Rund Jelly Melon Kiwano - African Horned Cucumber Bateekh Samara Melon Great White Tomato White Tomesol Tomato White Horehound Anise Hyssop Japanese Black Sticky Corn Strawberry Popcorn i dunno how many of these will be winter production vs planting in the spring, but we'll find out. also, i went and checked on the citrus in the shed the other day and found a snoozing guest...i didn't have the heart to make him get out, haha. 
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Dec 17, 2020 14:31
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 12:03 |
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ime once you have them going and healthy (i.e., repotted into appropriate media or mostly left growing in an empty pot) you can do things like just letting the whole pot soak in water for an hour then letting it drain and not bothering again until it’s bone dry a week later. definitely never watered them daily. my so is the orchid grower in the family tho. if you have them mostly bare rooted you might also try the soak and then letting drain for a while and keeping them in a cloche or inverted jar or something beneath their light source mediaphage fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 19:07
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B33rChiller posted:Nice to hear. Grandma's treasured houseplants have to be right up there with Grandpa's treasured guns in high sentimental value inheritance. that’s super fun looking. we have at least a couple of dozen of those guys going atm; my so started to breed them and grew a bunch of the resultant seeds. subpar anachronism posted:I'm really interested in hearing how those kiwanos go. I love those little bastards but tropical fruit prices in Canada hurt. i’ll deffo let you know. that’s one of the big reasons for doing it; i’m in ontario. the other of course is that winter is just dreary after a certain point with no greenery.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:54
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for what it's worth the problem is almost assuredly going to be light rather than humidity for orchids. yes, some sensitive orchids will do better with a higher maintained humidity (you could just have a humidifier in a closed off room for the times when they're not in bloom if it's that important), but you're probably going to want a fairly substantial source of supplemental light if you're not going to be using an outdoor greenhouse. like i've mentioned before i'm not the orchid person in our relationship, but my so regularly gets them to bloom and we're in canada. they go outside in a shaded area all summer and live indoors under LEDs when it gets too cool for them outside. no special humidification, though some of the live with the birbs and get a little extra help during the winter. regular soakings, allowed to dry out between waterings, etc. a lot of orchids really aren't that fussy. i don't know all the ones we have but there are for sure phals and oncidiums. edit: here's an old pic of some of the orchids  and here's the weirdest flower we've gotten, on one of the succulents (Stapelia scitula): 
mediaphage fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 01:58
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Ok Comboomer posted:Funny you mention that- the other part of the equation is lighting. I imagine I’d go with the same type of LED grow light I’m currently using on my shelves. i wouldn't say they do nothing, there is such a thing as a microclimate, but the effect isn't huge, i'll grant. what orchids are you trying for that must be held at 70% or higher forever? this isn't something we bother with, for example, and still get regular yearly or whatever blooms. i'm not saying they don't exist, but you may wish to consider varietals that are perhaps a bit less persnickety. 70% is a really high bar and not something you want to actually keep in a room, say - especially in the winter you're going to end up with condensation on windows, probably, if you go above 50% in a cold geographic area. we have our plants under reasonably substantial lights. in the kitchen/dining area we built shelves and bought some bridgelux strips and the appropriate drivers from digikey and installed them into routed grooves on the underside of the shelves (two 4-foot strips per 8-foot shelf, i believe; it might be 3 i can't remember). that's where we have all of the christmas and related cactuses, some other plants and succulents. it's enough that it induces red pigments as a light-protective effect in the succulents, but i wouldn't exactly say they're stressed; they grow extremely well and bloom frequently. the orchids when not in bloom live on a set of steel shelves with varying humidity (usually between 35-55% humidity, generally on the lower end though); each shelf has two 2-foot led strips of the same type / density as the wood shelves. when they bloom they get brought out and sat on a kitchen counter or the bathroom sink or something to enjoy. i'm sure some orchids are more light sensitive but ime they're more heat sensitive than anything else, and that's not an issue with most led lights, especially the sorts that we use. if you're not up for having a big grow tent or cheap indoor greenhouse for general storage, you could do individualized cloches or for a set of them, you could build a small or medium-sized terrarium. you could also get a large aquarium and build it up as an orchid vegetating system.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:58
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we almost never bother with blooming orchids personally and the 50% plants are always worth a look. kind of depends on your goal. do you just want a nice blooming plant for a while and don’t care? get something with mature looking buds if you see it. looking for a long term plant and don’t care if it’s gonna be a while before it blooms? if the roots look good and the leaves seem happy it’s hard to go wrong, so take it home and repot it. and absolutely ignore all that ridiculous ice cube advice. sometimes you can get really cool poo poo on sale at the grocery just from that because normals don’t want to buy a plant with no flowers.
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Dec 18, 2020 04:51
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:My mom can keep orchids alive and re-flowering for years and years, and has brought several back to life that I've seen. She keeps them next to the window, where they get lots of indirect light, and has them planted in bark chips. She waters them very sparingly, maybe about a quarter cup every three days. That's it! I don't know if she is just very lucky or has an amazing green thumb, but her orchids are always nice. honestly i bet it’s mostly that she doesn’t overwater them imo. regular watering but not too much is basically key. people tend to overwater them and don’t bother putting them in good pots or soil so the roots just rot. no ice cubes, no sprays. Nosre posted:RIP my plan thanks, that was a vanda my so had. it’s a cool orchid. i like the brassias a lot because we have one that smells like chocolate.
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Dec 18, 2020 13:26
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Nosre posted:So when you say "no sprays", do you mean on the roots? Sounds like it. yeah, mostly out of a sense of fussiness. basically never spray at all unless something is obviously suffering. RickRogers posted:Yes I get that, what I mean is our (closed) cold window is a collection point for water droplets at night so in theory the air directly by the window should be moister, as they evaporate over the day? you’re just not going to get much of a difference. in fact the colder air by the window is less capable of holding onto moisture and it may in fact be slightly drier. regardless airflow is going to equalize all this before you ever see a difference. the only time it might matter, and i’m skeptical, is if you have them sitting directly on or in something very wet. i took a couple of pics this morning of the two orchids we have in bloom. they’re in the bathroom just so they’re at eye level while blooming and we get to enjoy them:   here’s a shot of the christmas (et al) cactuses we’ve bred:  these are a bunch of african violets that were a casualty of lockdown and not going into an office for six+ months. but all were (somehow) still alive!! very exciting, not only did we get leaf cuttings but the crowns themselves were saved, too:  and if y’all’ll ignore the extreme mess here’s a shot of the shelves we built that most of the succulents live on:  there’s a bit of paper at the top because i still need to cut out a shade so we don’t get blinded at the dinner table, lol mediaphage fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 15:01
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Ok Comboomer posted:all of these booze bottles under such bright light lmao, they're fine. there's been no real flavour change in the past several years so i'm not concerned.
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Dec 18, 2020 16:18
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well, for one, terrarium does not necessarily mean you can't have moving air. modern terraria often have misters and fans to maintain a moving, breathing environment. but yeah, it's also easy to never let the orchid breathe and it can fail to thrive or even grow mold because the humidity is really high with lighting and abundant growth media. i had one rot out that way once. if i'm nursing a small one, i'll often water it, let it drain and dry out for a day and then enclose it.
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Dec 18, 2020 17:26
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Hirayuki posted:These aren't that kind of heirloom--just a potted plant she received on her last Christmas (from her daughter across the country) about a month before she passed away. She had a crazy green thumb, though, and it skipped right over my mom and showed up in me. I'm glad to be doing her memory proud with all the little beauties I'm tending. all the shelving systems were too expensive so i said gently caress it, got some reasonably true 2x8 or 2x10 (can’t remember and don’t feel like going downstairs lol) big box dimensional lumber, sanded it, routed out a channel in the bottom, and stained it. brackets are cheapo $5 commodity shelf brackets, and the led strips were bridgelux strips from digikey with a couple of meanwell drivers. not counting our labour, the whole project miiiight have been approx $500cad.
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Dec 18, 2020 22:06
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sure, imo you’re probably better off putting your bonsai in a jar/box/etc then though unless you want to just have a giant high humidity chamber taking up a bunch of room in your house. which might be an answer, we just all have to find what it is we’re willing to put up with
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Dec 19, 2020 15:23
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i don’t think tanks are unattractive or hard to regulate or light, to be honest, but we keep nice fish tanks. with that said you should really look and see what terrarium and vivarium builders are doing these days. many of them are reptile-centric but you can easily take advantage of something with a mister, light source, venting, etc. this is obviously personal but for me i don’t see the point in keeping a bunch of plants if they aren’t out in the open to look at in some fashion or another.
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Dec 19, 2020 15:34
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i’m seriously considering building a sunken tilapia tank in a hoop house for next year. no permit required for a temporary structure if i take the plastic off every spring :v if i lived in a rural area i’d already have a giant geodesic greenhouse built lol
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Dec 19, 2020 16:48
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yeah unfortunately with the job my so has it isn't really an option. but we have a big yard (for living in the city), and i want to maximize what i can. tilapia for a protein source, yeah. they're easy to grow, they're primary consumers, and they're more resilient to damage vs something like catfish which doesn't have scales. cannabalism doesn't seem to be much of an issue outside of the fry/hatchling stage. theoretically you could stack this with an aquaponics project but that wouldn't be a primary goal.
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Dec 19, 2020 17:28
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me: i should try to use less electricity this year also me: HAHA gently caress YOU CANADIAN WINTER YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE 
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Jan 3, 2021 16:15
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i guess i could understand with raspberries but i've never found strawberries to be much of an issue in terms of texture. this container of plants are from the seeds i saved from a storebought strawberry (we get greenhouse strawberries here in ontario in around february) because this specific strawberry tasted noticeably better than any of the rest in the clamshell package. like it was a huge difference. and i think that much bred true at least, because this thing smells absurdly fragrant. it's like a strong flower mixed with a super ripe strawberry.
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Jan 5, 2021 00:40
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not bad for ontario winter.    didn't quite nail the pollination so it grew a bit askew, but it's still kind of amazing. not very sweet and acidic, in a good way, as it wasn't at all bland. suuuuuper perfumey, very very floral. really excited to see where it'll go from here.
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Jan 9, 2021 04:01
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D-Pad posted:I was more bitching and laughing at the dumbness of my dog that is determined to poison herself. we laugh but it sounds like basically dog whiskey
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Jan 10, 2021 00:42
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doesn’t really matter imo if it drains really well. we’ve even just had them naked inside of terracotta before. also a good option is to have one kind of pot simply hiding inside of something pretty
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Jan 20, 2021 05:05
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went out to water some of the overwintering plants in the shed and found this guy all confused definitely the first time it’s flowered in several years. this thing has almost died (mostly via neglect) so many times; at one point the entire root system bit it and i took some wilted cuttings without much hope and stuck them back in the pot but three of them took!
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Feb 7, 2021 19:24
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i was also thinking about h2o2 when i saw it
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Feb 9, 2021 15:23
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Wallet posted:Now that I finished my shelves and I have somewhere to put them with appropriate light I've finally been picking up some of the succulents I've been wanting for a while. I always take pictures when I get in a new plant so I can keep track of how it's doing and this thread is light on pictures in the winter so here's some new arrivals. Some of them are looking a little disheveled from living in a dark box for longer than expected—USPS is really poo poo lately. those are great! succulents always amaze me. in a similar vein my so went back to their office late last year after having been gone for 8+ months. the cactus and all the african violets looked super dead, but every one of them came back, both cuttings and the original crown. 
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Feb 11, 2021 18:26
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it’s lime time 
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Feb 12, 2021 14:03
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Wallet posted:Yeah, I avoid buying plants that small in general because shipping seems to be particularly hard on them, and I definitely wouldn't do it blind. I usually just wait it out until I can find an exact or find it in stock at a seller I have enough experience with to know they won't send me dogshit. There aren't a lot of places to get succulents around here in person unless you're after the common stuff every nursery has. if you're talking about the pigments that form in ridiculo light, you can pretty easily do that with a simple led strip that's placed close to your plants. pretty much all of our succulents have colouring on them to one degree or another for that reason.
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Feb 16, 2021 04:27
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Wallet posted:Eh, sort of. Getting good sun stress coloration isn't always that easy. perhaps i am misunderstanding the term. for example here’s what i’m talking about :  these are both normally green with little to no red (the Schlumbergera sp. sometimes have red tints on new leaves) we just have them under an led strip. in fairness, it’s relatively powerful but imo the key thing is that they’re only a few inches away.
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Feb 16, 2021 15:11
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tildes posted:Could someone recommend a grow light for me? I don't need anything crazy, I just want something to put on my little desk where my succulents live to stop them from stretching out so much looking for light. what’s your price range? also, how bright are you willing to put up with?
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Feb 16, 2021 21:41
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yes; we’re on the same page then. this doesn’t happen only in succulents; it’s a pretty wide-ranging effect. i don’t think you’re going to get much redder colours than that first succulent i posted, at least in that species. and it’s not a function of only how much light a light source puts out, it’s also about how close you can put the plant to the light source. those plants are in our dining room and we’re hardly blinded. you can definitely achieve this sort of thing with artificial light, you just need to have a strong source that is also very close to the plants (like less than six inches, if possible). if you also then put the lights and plants well below your average sight line it becomes much less of an eye strain.
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Feb 17, 2021 00:14
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Wallet posted:I'm not sure I get your point. You can either put it closer or get a stronger grow light, those accomplish the same thing. your point was that it's functionally impossible to do this sort of thing at all at home without blinding yourself. i don't think that's true. i grow a lot of tropical plants, some succulents among them (they're mostly my SO's bag). it's not quite the same thing. a lot of people don't put their lights very close to their plants because they're used to old-style HIDs which would burn the poo poo out of your plants if they got remotely close. and frankly if you can do math, i don't recommend either of those options. especially the latter. you want to get some of the modern high-efficiency strips from a company like samsung or bridgelux, grab a meanwell driver of the correct specs, and go to town. actually good plant growth LEDs are pretty expensive to get pre-made, and you can roll your own pretty easily. plus you can get substantially higher light density. i'm aware that my examples weren't exactly difficult plants, but they're under about an 8-inch section of a single strip. Ok Comboomer posted:Worth noting that stress doesn’t just have to come from sun. The tirucalli apparently are known for turning red in winter, but also in midsummer, with dryness, with wetness, and some indoor keepers report having it turn red indoors for them no sweat without them really knowing what they did. these all look so good.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:44
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Wallet posted:My point was that you can't match the intensity of full sun without putting the lights very close or using intense lights, not that it's impossible to do so. i never said that, you took umbrage at my suggestion that you can sun stress plants indoors. but whatever.
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Feb 17, 2021 14:50
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for actual content, i finally got around to making a spreadsheet of all the new and old seeds we've got kicking around so it's easier to plan:
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Feb 17, 2021 14:56
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Wallet posted:My original point was just that people growing succulents outdoors and getting perfect sun stress coloration in California or Florida are clearly cheating and using those pictures as the standard against which to measure succulents being grown indoors in the Northeast is silly. I'm not sure we're arguing about anything here—you can sun stress plants indoors, it's not always easy for all plants. maybe i can graduate to fully tracking plants like yours someday! half the reason i did it was so that i wouldn't buy seeds again when we had a sealed package from last year :V really want to go gangbusters on herbs this year. i have an unhealthy fascination with basil species and varietals because they can be soooo different from each other. thinking of doing a whole big section of them. mostly indoors because i won't remember to go out in the garden to collect them when i need them.
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Feb 17, 2021 15:26
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Jestery posted:Organised a part of my garden yesterday that's fun! excited to see how that goes for you. feeling real jelly of a verdant, snow-free setup right now, haha.
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Feb 21, 2021 17:19
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speaking of pothos and water culturing this was supposed to be temporary but it likes it so much it just became a thing
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Feb 27, 2021 13:49
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Babby Satan posted:Oooh, it looks lovely! How long did they take to root in the water? i don't remember, but not very long. Nosre posted:That looks great. How many cuttings is it? I've got some that are at least a year old in a jar, but the tops never grow much so they look thin (unless you add a bunch, I imagine) i don't know off hand, but a few. we have a pothos on a high shelf in the bathroom and over a couple of years it descended several vines that got to be probably eight feet long or so. for a long time we had them arranged around the top of the shower, which was pretty baller, not gonna lie. eventually thought that section lost its leaves because it didn't get much light so we trimmed them off. recently-ish we cut all the rest off (they were getting kinda raggedy and dusty anyway) and plopped a few in the jar. edit: so says 5-ish cuttings probably in a 1L jar? mediaphage fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 15:38
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Nosre posted:^^ cool, thanks! yeah we change the water every week or two and occasionally add a few drops of nutes
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Feb 27, 2021 16:29
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kinda surprised at cutting 4 tbh
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Mar 6, 2021 19:26
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help (not really) it’s taking over  please ignore the uh “thrifty” light diffuser that was supposed to be temporary and the bag of pork rinds i’m not sure why is on the shelf
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Apr 5, 2021 17:37
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Do you make those little burned plant picture things? That is very neat. yeah i did that thanks! in fairness i did not create the original botanical drawing, some old dead guy did that
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Apr 5, 2021 17:50
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subpar anachronism posted:I love spring propagating. My lucerna is my favourite even if she's not rare and she's gonna be popping this summer after these guys get added back to the huge pot and take off. love me some variegations
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Apr 5, 2021 21:20
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