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What type of plants are you interested in growing? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Perennials! |
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142 | 20.91% |
| Annuals! |
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30 | 4.42% |
| Woody plants! |
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62 | 9.13% |
| Succulent plants! |
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171 | 25.18% |
| Tropical plants! |
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60 | 8.84% |
| Non-vascular plants are the best! |
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31 | 4.57% |
| Screw you, I'd rather eat them! |
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183 | 26.95% |
| Total: | 679 votes | ||
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I've recently started collecting cacti and a few other succulents, and am thinking about getting a water meter to reduce the ambiguity of watering. Amazon has a few that are like 8 bucks, then like 12 or 16 bucks, and then 20+ for 3-in-1 pH, moisture, etc. meters. Is it worth it to invest in the more expensive single-taskers vs. the cheap ones? Should I go for the digital all-in-one?Azuth0667 posted:After seeing those carnivorous plants I very much want a few butterworts. They look cool and there are many annoying flying things around they can eat for me. Are they difficult to take care of? I tried a venus flytrap before but it didn't work out to well for me. I picked up a nice Drosera capensis recently and in doing some reading about caring for it I came across GrowSundews.com, which has a lot of great guidelines for sundew maintenance. In fact, it was sufficiently cool that I talked my once-upon-a-time botany major roommate into helping me build a lighting setup. For sundews it seems like the boggy soil is important, but that's pretty easy to do with a tray. The more specialized aspects of care are the light (the more the better), and the feeding. For lighting we bought a 3-bulb T-8 fluorescent shop light and are almost done building the frame for it. For the feeding apparently SundewMan uses ground up beta bites fish food mixed with distilled or RO water (he has a cool video about it). In some of the GrowSundews guy's videos you can see him growing butterwort in the same tray as his sundews, so their light needs must be pretty similar. Not sure about the feeding, but I imagine there are people out there who have figured out the best way to feed butterwort. Also apparently a lot of times Venus flytraps die because people trigger their traps with toothpicks or whatever, which stresses the plant. Carnivorous plants are rad as gently caress.
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Nov 24, 2013 08:50
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Oh man I love Tillandsia. My local cactus nursery also has a huge selection (40+ species) of Tillandsia, and I've been collecting a number of them. I can't see it super clearly, but the plant on the left in that bottom picture sort of looks like T. butzii, which is one of my favorite species. I really need to wrangle up someone's cool camera to document my plants for this thread, cause I'd love to geek out. I still haven't decided on my favorite way to display Tillandsia. I've got a couple displayed in large shells, and your driftwood mounts look pretty nice. I feel like some little nooks in the corners of my house would be good. Kenning fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Dec 18, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 09:57
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Alright plant thread, my roommate and I recently built some shelves for plant display around the house and I used his phone to get some decent pictures. First up is a trio of Mammillaria, none of which came with a species I.D.    The little blooms on that last one are so cute  This is my roommate's Pilosocereus flexibilispinus of which I am a bit jealous.  And his Cleistocactus tupizensis, which he has named Dugtrio. Bonus Tillandsia velutina red on the pot and T. bulbosa on the shelf.  Next we have 2 shots of my Edithcolea grandis, or Persian carpet flower. If I can manage to not kill it (they're a bit finicky), the blooms will be awesome.   Here we've got Trichocereus grandiflorus on the left and Astrophytum ornatum on the right.  Melocactus zehnteri.  A crested Cereus spegazzinii.  Myrtillocactus geometricans, crested.  A little baby Carnegiea gigantea – a giant Saguaro! It seems so cute with the big long spines, like a puppy dog with big feet  Montrose form of Opuntia subulata. These get to be about 2 feet tall and sort of bushy looking. Very rad when full grown.  Next to it is a sort of half-assed airplant display with T. butzii in the back, T. ionantha 'fuego' in the front and one whose species I can't remember in the middle.  I'm much more pleased with this arrangement, which I will be giving my sister for Christmas. The tall one is T. juncea 'Red-green', the fat one is T. seleriana, and the starburst shaped one is T. harrisii. Seleriana is one of my favorite Tillandisa species.   For my dad I made this arrangement of frog moss and "indoor foliage" (no one at the nursery was quite sure what they were, but one of the girls there thought it might be a bamboo palm). I made it well in advance to make sure I could reliably keep the moss alive, since I know it can be hard to keep. Seems to be doing well so far!  For my mom I made this planting of Pachycereus marginatus and another unidentified Mammillaria. Unfortunately the P. marginatus will probably outgrow the pot within a year or two, but it looks pretty cool right now. And that Mammillaria has little fish-hook spines. It's so adorable.  My roommate's aloe. Can't remember the species.  A terrarium I made of Crassula ovata 'Gollum', baby toes, and a split rock. It looks cool enough, but I'm gonna unmake it soon and re-plant the components in proper pots. The watering issue in terraria is too stressful, especially since the Crassula and the others have very different needs (I did not realize this when I put them together).  Mimosa pudica. It's being sensitive in the picture cause I just watered it.  Dioscorea elephantipes. I love the way these look when they have a fat caudex and a delicate little vine trailing up. My current small caudex/big leaves combo is also pretty neat.  Here's some species of Selaginella, a.k.a. Spike Moss. The aerial roots really want to spread!  On the right here is an arrangement of a bigger Crassula ovata 'Gollum', Haworthia cymbiformis, and I can't remember the species of the fan-like guy. In the middle is my Drosera capensis getting some sun (waiting until we finish our grow environment). On the left is some Crassula cuttings I stuck in a pot cause why not.  Here's a Venus flytrap and a couple unidentified Drosera.  Finally, some shots of the shelves inside.    Most of the plants we have displayed can't stay long indoors, so we're gonna be rotating them out into the sun/acquiring more indoor plants. Still pretty cool!
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Dec 11, 2013 22:50
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No. I'm finally assembling a frame for my fluorescent light fixture today, then they're gonna go in a shallow Rubbermaid bin with some distilled water in it under the fluoros. I'll probably also re-pot them into deeper pots so they're closer to the lights and farther from the water. That's also when I'll start to germinate the D. burmanii, D. intermedia, and D. filiformis 'Florida all-red' seeds that I bought.
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Dec 12, 2013 00:43
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Thanks! I'm lucky to have a number of excellent nurseries nearby. We also finished our sundew frame. The light is hosed cause of the time of day when we took the photos:   As you can see, there's room for one more shop light and also another Rubbermaid tub. Next stop: a trip to California Carnivores up in Sebastopol.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:29
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Thanks! We do have great light in the entryway where most of the shelves are located. There's a weird floor-to-ceiling frosted window, it's awesome. I totally want to see pictures of your Tillandsia collection too – airplants are super rad. Also, those grow lights have made a huge improvement on my D. capensis. It's had very spotty dew production for the last couple weeks, but now all the newer leaves are putting out really robust dew drops. Remember: Drosera species need lots of light to produce dew, since they can only make sugars through photosynthesis, and the dew requires lots and lots of sugar. I'm gonna start feeding my D. capensis soon, which should make the seeds nice and strong. As for those little mystery Drosera, they're not producing any dew at all, and haven't since I got them. They were stored sort of funny, and the nursery didn't even have a species I.D., so I'm not really stressing it too much – I got them 2 for 1, and I'll be satisfied if they survive. Leperflesh posted:I have one of these! I love the way it blooms, just kind of in a ring here or there on the trunk. It's a mammillaria matudae, "thumb cactus." Awesome, that looks right! Actually I bought that cactus because I saw this picture of yours and thought it had great personality. I'd been looking for one for a couple weeks when I found it. How cool 
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Dec 14, 2013 09:52
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Mizufusion posted:Those pots are awesome. Lithops are extremely xeric plants. During the winter, to be safe, you can just not water them at all. At most give them a drink once a month. During their growing season you can do it every other week, assuming you're in a reasonably warm climate where the soil will dry out within like, a day. In other news, my Drosera capensis caught a big old housefly today. This is the biggest prey it's ever caught on its own – I've fed it a swatted fly before, but usually it just nabs little fruit flies.  I first noticed the fly around noon. Considering where the leaf is at, it was probably trapped around 11.  By 4:30 or so the leaf had fully enveloped the fly, and was pumping out mucilage to drown/digest it. I was looking closely at this point and noticed that the fly's wing was twitching slightly every 10 or 15 seconds at this point  . Sundews are pretty brutal.Anyway, carnivorous plants are super fun to keep. If you invest just a bit of money into getting a lighting setup they're pretty hassle-free too. I'm currently germinating seeds of D. burmanii, D. capensis 'Alba' and D. intermedia 'Cuba' right now, but they're hard to photograph cause I've got saran wrap over the tray to up the humidity. There are lots of tiny tiny sprouts though! Hopefully within a couple weeks their carnivorous leaves will sprout and I'll be able to start feeding them, which will help them reach photogenic age more quickly. God I love plants.
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Jan 15, 2014 09:37
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I have a picture of it earlier in the thread but I have 2 four-foot long T-8 fluorescent shop light fixtures, 3 bulbs each. These are hanging from small brass chains on a wood frame my buddy and I built from some fairly inexpensive lumber. I use a mix of warm and cold light bulbs. I paid a bit extra for my fixtures cause they look pretty nice, and we've got this in the living room. My setup ended up costing around $150, in part also cause I wanted to have plenty of room for a bigger collection so I made it significantly bigger than I currently need. If you just wanted to keep like 4 or 5 plants you could probably set yourself up for $50-$80.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:52
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I'm going to the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society meeting tomorrow at the SF Conservatory of Flowers. My roommate is gonna get super high and come with me. I'm excited! I hope I can pick up some cool sundews and get advice on helping along my seedlings. Anybody here gonna be there? I remember someone mentioning BACPS earlier in the thread.
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Jan 25, 2014 03:59
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Sorry you missed it! I picked up a few Drosera and a giant ping. The talk was a pretty cool discussion of Brazilian sundew taxonomy and there was a demonstration of trimming and dividing Sarracenia. It was cool!EagerSleeper posted:At first I got excited, but then I found out that it was the wrong bay area instead of the one I live by. Also, that it was three days too late though. Oh well. Sure highland Nepenthes or tuberous sundews are tricky, but there are plenty of carnivores that are really easy to care for. South African sundews are pretty easy, as are Sarracenia, generally speaking. Low mineral water (distilled or RO, unless your water has really low TDS) and lots of light is the most important thing. Lots of carnivores are pretty cold hardy too, if that matters for you. Carnivorous plants are rad, you should get some. Kenning fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Feb 16, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 08:14
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Flytrap Care is a good resource for all flytrap-related inquiries.
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Feb 3, 2014 06:09
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Okay. This thread is too quiet. We all need to start posting about our plants more. I'll start, with an update on my carnivorous plant collection. All of these photos can be clicked for SUPER ULTRA RESOLUTION. Here's the full collection, to get things started:  There are six 4-foot T8 fluorescent lights there. 16 hour photoperiod. Here's my Drosera capensis! It is just going crazy with all this light, and is sending up its second flower scape since I bought it. I also re-potted it and separated off a few offsets, as you'll see later.  This is Drosera capillaris, one of 4 plants I got at the BACPS meeting in January. It's loving my conditions! I wish I'd taken a picture when I first got it, but it was hugging the ground and had white tentacles and no flower stalks. And now look at it!  I also got this Drosera spiralis at the meeting. It's not doing quite as well as the D. capillaris. It's a Brazilian sundew and is known for being a bit temperamental. One grower told me I need to remember to say goodnight to it, because they have a habit of being suddenly dead. Its dew production hasn't been as robust as I'd like.  This is the last sundew I got at the BACPS meeting. I'm 99% sure it's Drosera admirabilis, but it wasn't labeled so I'm not positive. I recently repotted it. It's been doing fine, but hopefully as it continues to adjust to my conditions it'll settle in and start making more dew. It's already a good-sized plant, which means it should be fairly robust, if it is in fact D. admirabilis.  The one other plant I got at BACPS was this giant ping, Pinguicula gigantea. It's so cute and gooey! I want to re-pot this into a larger circular pot soon.  These little dudes are a bit of a mystery. They were growing in my D. admirabilis pot, and at first I thought they might be offsets, but I'm thinking now that I've separated them off they look sort of like Drosera spatulata, which is a known sundew collection weed, since it blooms prolifically and has long flower stalks. We'll see! I'd be happy to have one in my collection, in any case.  These are the two offsets I got off of my original D. capensis. I've got a few friends who are interested in taking up the hobby, and I may give them away as starter plants once they size up a bit more.  Now for some seedlings! First, Drosera burmanii. I wanted to get some D. burmanii seed cause I've read that they are voracious eaters and fast growers when fed. They're doing okay! The germination success rate wasn't particularly high, but that's fine – there are 13 or 14 plants in there, and if 10 plants make it to maturity that would be awesome for me. I'm feeding them every 10 days or so, so fingers crossed.  Here are seedlings of Drosera capensis 'Albino'. They will have white or pale pink tentacles when full grown, unlike the striking red of the typical form. The seedlings are a little hard to see, and were the last ones to germinate.  Finally, here's two pictures of Drosera intermedia 'Cuba'. They germinated like crazy! I transferred maybe a third of the original seedlings to a new pot. We'll see if that was a good idea – it may have been better to let them get a bit older first. We'll see! Again, if I can get 10 or 15 of these babies to maturity I would be pumped.   These pictures were all taken on the 15th, btw. The babies are already bigger than pictured. Now you may remember back in December I was posting about my plant collection and I shared this photo of my Venus's fly-trap and some mystery sundews:  Well the sundews died, which was the least surprising thing in the world (they weren't being cared for very well at the nursery), but check out my VFT now:  Doing great! And catching flies! It started sending up a flower stalk a month or so ago but we cut it off after a week or so, since VFTs can be finicky to grow from seed, and now it'll put its energy into vegetative propagation. I'm planning on separating this guy out into separate containers soon to encourage lots of offsets. I've also acquired a Sarracenia purpurea. I got this one a couple months ago, and in the last couple weeks it put out those new pitchers (the pale ones), which I suppose is a good sign! I'm going to set something up outside for Sarracenia in the next month or so, and then I'll move this guy (and maybe a couple of the VFTs) out there. In the mean time though he seems to be doing alright under the lights.  Post about your plants! And if I've infected anyone with the carnivorous plant bug, good! They're really fun to care for. Also those lights only cost $11/month to run, and the full setup (or something like it) could be put together for $50-$80. I've learned a lot just in the 4 or 5 months I've been into it, and there's plenty more to go.
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Feb 20, 2014 22:14
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That Crassula is great, I love the stacking upright species. Your desert rose also looks great. I can't wait for mine to start leafing out again – it's a bit smaller than yours.
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Feb 22, 2014 02:22
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So I don't have pictures (because it's nighttime right now) but I just finished potting up 4 Sarracenia rhizomes that I got from a guy on the internet. I now have S. leucophylla "Titan", S. flava typical, S. alata, and S. minor in addition to the S. purpurea pictured above.. Apparently these are divisions from some pretty mature plants, so they should look great come summer. Right now they're in 6-inch pots with a roughly equal mix of peat and coarse sand, and sitting on a tray. I'm going to have to find some more efficient way to keep them in full sun without losing all my water to evaporation, since they can't afford to dry out. I guess I'm jumping into Sarracenia! I've toyed with the idea of turning this big glazed ceramic pot (it's like 2 feet across) that my parents got me for Christmas into a bog garden. I may plant these guys out there if I get it set up, but for right now I wanted to get them moist.
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Feb 23, 2014 07:46
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I know people in the carnivorous plant hobby have successfully used LEDs, but there are 2 problems, one of which causes the other. First, LEDs emit light on a very, very narrow spectrum. LED technology is such at the moment that you have to get a bunch of lights of different colors to be able to maintain plants with them. That is problem 2, which is that LED setups make your plants look like they are at a really lovely rave. They're pretty efficient in terms of energy use though, so there's that. Though you have to mount them to a heatsink, since they put out a surprising amount of heat, especially compared to T8 fluoros, which I use. Halogens put out lots of heat too though, so that may not be a problem for you.unprofessional posted:An idea for you is to create a false bottom with a few inches of hydroton/leca, a barrier, then your media. This is used in dart frog terrariums all the time, and should allow your plants to have water reservoir that doesn't evaporate so quickly. Capillary action will bring the moisture up to the root system and you won't lose so much out of the top. I've heard people talk about false bottoms and stuff before, but for whatever reason I have a hard time visualizing it. Could you do a little sketch in paint or something for me? I'm 100% down to rig something up, I just can't picture it very well. Sun Dog posted:Glad you made it to a meeting! One of these days I want to drive up there and attend one, too. Sometimes BACPS sends spies down to the LACPS meetings. We deal harshly with these evil spying invaders by dragging them off, kicking and screaming, to Asian restaurants, where we torture them with good food and bad company. Those are cool pictures! How do you take stereograms? It would be fun to do for Facebook or something. Also: how do you grow your pings? I have one P. gigantea that I'm growing in the same conditions as my subtropical 'dews, but I know pings like it a little drier usually? I'm going to be building some new grow spaces soon, so I'd be glad to know what works for you! And I guess I should make my way down to LA sometime. I could use some good food with weird plant people. In other news: I got some D. scorpioides "pink" gemmae from Drosera Gemmae! I planted them in 3.5 inch pots with a layer of LFS at the bottom for wick action, a peat:sand mix for most of the pot, and then like 1/2 inch of silica sand on top to keep down mold. I hope they take off! These are my first pygmies. As always, click for enormous.  The gemmae are the green specks that are like the exact same size as the rest of the grains of sand. I also took some more pictures of my seedlings! The last set of photos I posted were taken on February 5th. Here they are on March 1st. My D. intermedia 'Cuba' are doing pretty well, especially the centermost seedling in the second pot.   The D. capensis 'Albino' are sort of lagging behind; I think it's mostly because they're harder to see (green versus red) so I've only fed them once so far. Hopefully as they get easier to see (and therefore feed) they'll start to take off.  The real killers though are these D. burmanii! Part of why I wanted some was that I'd heard they have a voracious appetite, and just grow like crazy when well fed. These seedlings certainly bear that out. The guy at Grow Sundews says they can go from seeds to flowering maturity in 4 months. We're at the halfway mark right now.  Speaking of flowers, my D. capensis, D. capillaris "Alabama" and D. aliciae (it's not D. admirabilis) are all in bloom right now! The D. capensis has 2 stalks (one is tiny and hard to see), the D. capillaris has an amazing 4 stalks (I think the crown split into 2 plants) and the D. aliciae just has the one. Group shot!  And the D. aliciae.  On a less exciting note, I think this mystery sundew (people have suggested D. venusta and D. tokaiensis among others) isn't doing so hot. The crown of the plant is brown.  I don't know anything at all, so maybe it'll fine. But we'll see in the next couple weeks. Anyway, this has been Kenning's Sundew Update.
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Mar 2, 2014 10:30
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That's an awesome begonia! I've got one that I think is the cultivar 'Iron Cross', it's got these heavily textured leaves that are unreal, I'll post a picture of it tomorrow. I'm also looking forward to spring. I got interested in succulents and carnivorous plants at the end of autumn, which is the worst. I'm planning on mixing up a big batch of my own cactus/succulent soil in the next month so I can have plenty ready for all the repotting I plan on doing. Got a lot of stuff in tiny plastic nursery pots due for an upgrade.
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Mar 7, 2014 11:46
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Totally haven't taken pictures of my Begonia yet. I will tomorrow, assuming I don't have work. In other news, I've started a blog about my carnivorous plants! It's great, because it gives me something to do even when the plants don't need water or food or pruning or whatever. It's only a few posts in, but there's plenty to talk about, so I expect to keep on keepin' on. Here's a few sample pictures!     
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Mar 13, 2014 08:06
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Just a heads up to you plantheads in this thread, the North American Sarracenia Conservancy is having their annual benefit auction over at Terra Forums right now. Non-forum members can place bids, as long as they leave contact information in their guest post. There are a lot of awesome carnivorous plants (and a few non-carnivores) up for auction, so this is an awesome chance to get cool plants and also support a good cause – the NASC is great.
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Mar 31, 2014 08:25
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SweetKarma posted:I just bought a Venus Flytrap from Home Depot. I had no idea they even sold those there. I was just looking around for a soil pH test kit and I saw them. I have no idea how healthy it is though, they had them inside clear boxes inside the store. It looks like it's kind of a kids educational thing but I bought it because I've always wanted one. I fed it an earwig lol. Venus flytraps are really easy to mass produce, and the Home Depot ones are not well tended. You're going to have to pay close attention to save its life. First, you want to gradually take the humidity cover off so as not to shock the plant. Take it off over the course of a couple days. Once that's done, move your plant outside, again slowly. Start it in shade, then partial sun, then full sun. Get a small tray to set it in and keep it maybe a half inch full of distilled or RO water only, not tap or drinking water. If you do all of that, and don't trigger the traps all the time, you'll probably have a nice plant. If you keep it inside it will probably die. If you use tap water it will definitely die. If it dries out it will die. If you trigger traps all the time they will die one by one until the rhizome dies. Venus flytraps aren't too hard to care for, but they have specific requirements that most people who buy the tissue cultured hardware store plants don't know or don't follow. Good luck.
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Apr 15, 2014 18:43
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This is Drosera allantostigma, a pygmy sundew from Western Australia. It's a handsome plant and one of my favorites.
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Apr 18, 2014 10:50
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Drosera burmanii are extremely fast growing when fed and they can eat a lot. My Drosera intermedia 'Cuba' seedlings are all blooming right now and I started those from seed around Christmas. Really most sundews will grow pretty darn quickly assuming they get lots and lots of light, and are fed fairly regularly (every 2 weeks or so). I feed mine beta fish food. It's also totally possible to ship adult plants. I do trades all the time shipping plants bare root and they do fine after adjusting for a couple weeks. The many sundew species are really pretty easy, but I think a lot of people underestimate their light needs. They need lots and lots of light. I wouldn't try to grow most species indoors without supplemental lighting. They fare well outside in full sun though. Do you wanna get into sundews? You should totally do it. I can totally help.
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Apr 18, 2014 23:42
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 My Pinguicula gigantea is blooming. It's already my most adorable plant. The flower's gonna make it even more so. P. gigantea is a Mexican pinguicula, and one of the few Mexican pings that doesn't go through a non-carnivorous winter dormancy.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:36
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unprofessional posted:Not sure anybody cares, but every single one of my grafts on my adenium took, meaning a tree with much better branching and form in the future. This presents an opportunity for anybody with a desert rose to much more easily control the look of their plant than was previously considered possible, when the only accepted way to induce more branching was to trim the plant. You are a grafting machine. That's pretty cool, really! Looks like your Adenium didn't get too upset by the whole ordeal.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:08
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zeroprime posted:Thanks to your posts I've been bitten by the bug. I think I need to get some carnivorous plants to take care of it. Oh man you should totally do it. Hit me up on PMs if you want any help, or drop me a line at sundews.etc at gmail dot com. In other news, my Drosera intermedia 'Cuba' seedlings are looking great, and are in full flower.  I started these from seed back around Christmas, and had a really high germination rate. I actually wish I had sown the pot a bit less densely, but it's really hard to see the sundew seeds, which are like grains of ground pepper. If I had more room in my trays I'd thin this out into several more pots. Ah well. Kenning fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 05:55
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I was gonna post some stuff for you, but instead just read this: http://www.lithops.info
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May 9, 2014 18:14
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unprofessional posted:Phlox is pretty hardy. I'm sure if you replant, which will probably be easy since it doesn't sound well established, you'll do just fine. That is an awesome Senecio! I didn't realize there were caudiciform species!
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May 10, 2014 22:59
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kid sinister posted:There are other things you can substitute in a gnat trap. The most common I've heard of is beer. Another thing you can try is to also throw in a chunk or 2 of overripe fruit. Remember, it isn't the bait that kills the gnats, it's that they're too dumb to escape once they get inside. Sundews and Pinguicula loving wreck gnats btw.
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May 16, 2014 09:44
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My Drosera burmannii is always a treat. Really fast-growing, big appetite, great dew production – this sundew has it all. I'm going to try to get the large plant in the center to color up for the BACPS show in June.
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May 18, 2014 10:15
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unprofessional posted:Kenning, you keep giving me the the CP itch... Do it man. You're a plant guy, you'll take to CPs easy. They are so fun to grow. It's just barely shy of having really cool pets.
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May 21, 2014 08:54
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Drosera burmannii caught a fly! Click for big big. 
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May 25, 2014 08:26
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Zratha posted:Maybe you can help me. I picked up a Drosera capensis last weekend and he looks great, however he has a lot of bug corpses stuck on him. Do I just leave them there, or do I remove them? I haven't seen him curl around anything and I was worried maybe the dead bugs were messing with his signals or something? I would love some advice. I just let the old leaves die off and get replaced. D. capensis is a pretty vigorous plant. Make sure it gets distilled or RO water and as much light as you can possibly give it. 6 hours of direct sunlight a day is ideal. Old leaves that have already eaten usually don't really curl. New fresh leaves will curl up. I have a post on my blog about feeding sundews, if you're interested. http://www.sundews-etc.com/2014/04/cultivation-guides-feeding-sundews.html Kenning fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 1, 2014 00:10
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Zratha posted:Thank you for this, it is just what I wanted to know! I had read that you shouldn't let more than 2 bugs gather on a leaf, but it didn't say anything about what to do if it happened. Thank you for the link as well. Your D. capensis looks pretty good, and yeah that's definitely a flower stalk forming. If you like, you'll have thousands of seeds to start new plants with in a couple months. My recommendation for water would be to just keep that tray it's sitting on full of distilled or RO water, which will be very easy to maintain. Your light levels look fine, but more light will lead to more upright growth and better dew production. I'm running 12 T8 bulbs in my collection right now, so they get a lot of light. All in all don't worry too much, things look pretty good for you and your plant. If you want more information than you could possibly use (and want to risk getting seriously bitten by the sundew bug) consider checking out Grow Sundews. It's the best resource out there for sundew care and cultivation information.
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Jun 4, 2014 07:21
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So my competition pot of Drosera burmannii is coloring up really well in advance of the BACPS Annual Show and Sale on the 21st. Sundews turn red as a protection against excess sunlight – the anthocyanin (a type of pigment) reflects red-spectrum light and gives the plant a bit of a break. Anthocyanin builds up over time, so if the plant is growing very rapidly it will often stay greenish pale without ever developing the red color. Therefore, to get the reddest plants possible you need to stop feeding, and give them as much light as possible. I moved my plant to within 3 inches of my lights, and last fed them on May 19th. Compare the colors with this post – excellent progress. Now that the middle plant is blooming it will get a bit more complicated. I may just move my two light fixtures close together and then let the stalk go up between them. I want to collect seed from these still, but for the next 10 days I just want them to stay pretty.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:47
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EagerSleeper posted:Thank you for the write up on your process, Kenning! I admit that I know little about about plant show competition, but from what you said, it seems that the competition is a chance for plants to not only look pretty, but also demonstrate technique. All plant showing is a demonstration of horticultural technique – you want to grow the most perfect plant possible. But different plant shows have different criteria. Orchids are like 95% flower, 5% foliage, and nobody cares about pot or media or anything. Cacti and succulents are all about fancy pots, and nice staging, and a cool rock you have in there or whatever. Carnivorous plants are pretty niche, and a little weird, because depending on the genus it's either a flower thing or a foliage thing, or a trap thing (which can be flower, foliage, or neither), and it's also about keeping your traps clean and bug-free, and it's also about getting the best possible coloration. Who knows! We'll see how I do. I'm proud of my efforts at least – I'll post a picture right before the show and let you all know how it went! Tremors posted:I got two new plants recently. D. binata is a great plant, extremely robust and vigorous in my experience. If that is in fact dichotoma Giant then it will get big. To get it to its full potential you're going to want it in like a 12 inch pot. Also, same as other sundews – as much light as you can possibly give it, pure water, and regular feeding once it dews up again. Good luck! Also, unless you really want to see some flowers, cut the stalk before it blooms – most clones are not self fertile.
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Jun 13, 2014 07:25
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If you have the right sort of soil (peat moss and washed sand), I would just size it up right away. D. binata roots get significant.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:43
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Note that the whole "no water at all" thing only applies in climates where it rains sometimes during the summer. If you did that here in California your succulents would definitely shrivel up after receiving no water whatsoever for months and months in the full heat of summer.
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Jun 16, 2014 02:30
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Mizufusion posted:I managed to kill all my lithops, too. I wasn't watering much, but apparently "at all" was still too much for that little plant. Are these in the ground? In-ground plants can survive a dry summer (with maybe the odd watering if it's been a punishing drought like we're having) because there's usually at least some moisture once you get down a foot or so, but pots, especially terra cotta, get absolutely dessicated. You lose roots, which slows growth to a crawl and makes the plants susceptible to rot once they get water again (unless you're very careful).
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Jun 17, 2014 08:52
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People should note that sub-optimal light conditions makes plants much more susceptible to all sorts of stress. Over-watering, pests, even the natural stress of dormancy can much more easily kill a plant that's not getting the right amount of light. Lithops are adapted to extremely high light intensity. If they are being kept indoors they're probably not getting near as much light as they'd be getting in their naturally extreme habitat.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:43
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kid sinister posted:Also, ax ex of mine affectionately called my lithops "butt plants". In fact, that same plant is still alive today, 8 years later and it flowers every winter. What are you guys doing with yours that makes 'em keel over like that? Based on this post of yours, you do not have a Lithops, but a Pleiospilos. They are a bit easier than Lithops, and are slightly less stringent about their water tolerances.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:50
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 02:11 |
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I stand corrected! Those are cool lithops.
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Jun 20, 2014 07:50
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