Oh My, Spring isn't Going as Planned

I just noticed recently that some of my pitcher plants are putting up flower stalks. I finally squeezed in front of the car in the garage to look at the VFTs to see if they're doing anything. They're the color of bean sprouts! That spot on the shelf got the least amount of light.  I moved them onto my grow rack until I can put them outside (we're still getting temps dipping below freezing, and I'm afraid to take them from a 55-60 degree garage and put them out into the 30s). I also moved my purple pitcher plant to my grow rack.

The trouble is, I want to repot all these this spring, but I haven't had a nice day to do it outside yet, and I need to get perlite without fertilizer. The place I found 3 miles up the street that sells it doesn't open for the year until April 16, and the only other place I know of to get it (where I got it before) is almost an hour away, near my sister's house. I guess I could stop in and pat her cat on the head while I'm in the area if I go to that one. I've also ordered it from Amazon.com.

I wanted to divide my VFTs, but since they're already growing and not healthy, I may not. I might not have to repot all my plants, but I probably will, because they grew mold, and even though I controlled it with a sulfur-based fungicide, I'd sleep better knowing they have peat that had never been moldy.

I also repotted a friend's VFT I've been taking care of for the winter today. I also spilled a cupped VFT onto the carpet today. Whoops.

Shelf for dormant plants in the garage.

North-facing window, the only source of light for the shelf of dormant plants.

My VFT planter after I turned it 180 degrees. This clump of VFTs here was in the back dark corner, and now looks like bean sprouts.

S. leucophylla 'Tarnok' putting up six flower stalks.

There's a cupped VFT under there somewhere.

A cutting from D. capensis, looking like a curled up millipede.

Pot of cupped VFTs in its new home in a tray, so there'd be room for S. purpurea on the rack.

Recently toppled cupped VFT in its new home in a tray, so there'd be room for S. purpurea on the rack.

Planter of VFTs looking like bean sprouts in their new home until I repot.

VFTs looking like bean sprouts.

VFTs looking like bean sprouts.

S. purpurea just inches away from six T5 bulbs, with potential to burn, until it's moved outside.

Friend's VFT, freshly repotted. D. capensis in the foreground, showing off its flower stalk.

Nepenthes ventricosa Problems

It keeps putting out new leaves, but they don't grow fast at all, like they did back when it was in the window, and one leaf grew all crinkly. I looked at the plant more closely and saw a lot of globs under the leaves. After posting on TerraForums.com, it sounds like that's just nectar, and the problem with it putting out tons of new leaves that don't develop is because it's too hot for the plant. It's probably partly due to my bad sleep schedule, and since it's wintry, I keep the heat on when I'm awake. So the days have been cooler than the nights. I'm an IDIOT.

Ah, at least I learned before I killed it.

Some pics:

Lots of new leaves that don't develop on N. ventricosa.

What I thought were eggs or something insect-related are hopefully just nectar.

Another shot of the nectar on N. ventricosa.

A weirdly formed leaf from too much heat on N. ventricosa.

I Think I Killed My Cobra Lily

Darlingtonia californica, March 8, 2011.

I don't think I'll be trying my hand at these again. I guess it's because I missed some days of pouring new water over the top of the soil, even though it was sitting in water. Or because the LFS they ship them in isn't what it wants to sit in.

It was healthy and grew some while under my care; it looked like this not too long ago:

Darlingtonia californica, February 16, 2011, showing a new, healthy pitcher.

Darlingtonia californica, February 16, 2011, showing a baby pitcher starting to grow.

New VFT I Bought for Parts

I bought a VFT in January just to try propagating new plants from via leaf pullings. I was too scared to try it with VFTs I already have and am attached to. So I bought it and put it under my lights. They say VFTs don't do well indoors.

Well I knew it would happen. And it happened. I'm attached to it. I should repot it and/or do some leaf pullings, though.

VFT I bought for parts in January, 2011.  March 8, 2011.

I'm going to snip the flower stalk to help the health of the plant. I'll stick it in some peat and see if it will propagate a new plant.

But look how nice and red the insides of those traps are!

First Sign of Growth in Sphagnum?

In that same container covered in Saran where a D. capensis seedling is growing I spotted what looks like the first sign of sphagnum growing.

Sphagnum starting to grow.  I think.

Closer look of a small piece of growing sphagnum.

Box Elders

I find several of these in my basement every day. I used to feed them to my N. ventricosa, but then I moved that, and it doesn't have any open traps right now. They're as abundant as stink bugs here. I took a picture of this one before introducing him to Mr. Sweeper.

Box elder in my basement.

Follow-Up of D. capensis Feeding

It looks like I used a piece of food too big. The leaf is stressed a bit. Kind of burnt.

D. capensis after being fed too big of a piece of a betta pellet.

My best D. capensis typical form is one that I didn't even sow myself. It's in the pot with the mama plant.

Nice seedling in my D. capensis pot.

You can see a bunch of other out-of-focus red seedlings there, too. They get everywhere.

Fungus Snow

I've had lots of mold in my pots before, but it never looked like snow like this.

Fungus in D. capensis seedling pot.

I don't know if my sulfur-based fungicide is only preventative, but I guess I'll give these moldy pots the ol' scraperoo with a toothpick and then spray them a little. It's almost like these plants are made to be kept indoors. I need to look into getting smaller fans that I can put on the lower shelf instead of one kind of aiming down between the lights.

Darlingtonia californica

I bought this little guy on January 13. He finally put up a pitcher that looks like a pitcher.

Darlingtonia californica not long after getting him.

D. californica on February 11, looking like a D. californica.

A worse view of D. californica on February 17.

A new pitcher coming up.

The big pitchers are dying off because they were used to no light and higher humidity in their death cubes at Lowe's. I don't know how I'll care for this thing in the summer when they like their 60-degree nights. It'll probably die. :-(

Stray Seeds

It's been said that D. capensis is the weed of CPs. Well I found one growing in the darnedest place today.

Saran-covered plastic container I'm trying to grow sphagnum moss in.

A closer look:

D. capensis seedling growing in covered container.

Since the day I ground up the moss and covered it, it's been covered. I may have uncovered a few inches for a couple seconds just to add some more water. Those seeds get everywhere! In fact, I was peeping the dust on top of my light today when I saw D. capensis seeds.

D. capensis seeds in dust on the light fixture.

Close-up of D. capensis seeds in dust on light fixture.

Then I looked down a little:

Lots of D. capensis seeds in the lip along the light fixture.

I have no idea how they got there.

My D. capensis Seedling Container

I took pictures during some of this little project, but I forgot to post about it.

I had a couple flower stalks full of seeds and rather than let them go to waste, I decided to put a container together and just sow them and see how they do. I started with a roughly casserole-sized plastic container I got at the dollar store. I put LFS on the bottom in anticipation of wanting to use the tray-watering method in the future. Then peat/perlite on top of that.

I kept it covered with the included blue lid to keep humidity up so they could germinate. Then I got a little worried, thinking maybe they'd rather have white light, so I took off the blue lid and used Saran. They germinated shortly after, and I moved them up to under some lights, but not before making them tray-waterable.

Hopefully the pictures and captions can tell the rest of the story:

My pointiest bit in my cheap AA-powered screwdriver.

Putting holes into the bottom of the plastic container, while using my other arm to apply pressure downward across
the container.

Cue to get a paper towel.

Heck

Paper towel catching all the drips.

Seedling container in its new home in a watering tray.

This helps to reduce the amount of evaporation out of that watering tray, too, because of less surface area of the water exposed to the air.

I'm Going to Have a Whole Mess of D. capensis

This is a small section of a big (casserole-sized) container I have. I hope these don't get as moldy as the D. capensis seedlings on the bottom shelf. These ones have better air flow. If most die, I'll still have a ton. And the mama D. capensis doesn't want to stop making seeds.

D. capensis seedlings. February 11, 2011.

For a reference of how tiny these are, That picture was taken on February 11, and these were taken on January 31:

D. capensis seedlings. January 31, 2011.

D. capensis seedling next to a dime. January 31, 2011.

The seeds are like dust, almost impossible to control where they go.

D. capensis Time Lapse

I fed my D. capensis a little piece of crushed betta pellet. I forgot to wet it, but it seems to be doing all right. I took a picture every 3 minutes over about 27.5 hours.  Except between the first two pictures it's 5 minutes, because I messed up.

When I was looking at the first few pictures, I was surprised by how much it moved in just 3 minutes after being fed. I'm going to have to do another one with shorter intervals.

I made two videos from it, one of them being a crop to show up-close on the fish food.

Anyway, from far away, it seems like a nice, cute little plant, just growing and curling all nice-like...

Then up close you see it ain't playin' around.

Mold on Drosera adelae

See, I hate my D. adelae.  They're so fussy.  The only time I can get them to stay alive is when I keep them covered and forget about them.  I tried feeding one ground up betta pellets like I've done with other sundews, and this is what happened with my adelae.

Mold on Drosera adelae, after being fed ground betta pellets.

That leaf looks dried out.  I reckon I'll just snip it all off instead of trying to pull the mold off with tweezers.  I don't think that leaf's good for any photosynthesis anymore.

My Nepenthes ventricosa

I repotted it, and the soil looks a lot better, but it holds a lot more water. I don't think Nepenthes like too much water, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the repotting and/or the winter made the tropical pitcher plant halt growth and all the pitchers turned black. I moved it from the glass block window to under my grow lights, and it picked up growth right away. The only bad part is that if it grows too much, it'll be hard to get out of its shelf.

From

My Nepenthes ventricosa in its old home in the glass block window.

to

My Nepenthes ventricosa in its new home under the lights.

Nepenthes don't like as much direct sunlight as VFTs and pitcher plants, so it's a shelf lower. I may need to adjust things so that I can get the plant out, because it barely bumps on the rack above it when I slide it out. It'll only get taller.

My Grow Rack

I wanted this to be my first post.

A little info:

• Apparently they call the bulbs "lamps" in the biz. So when researching lights, I kept reading that and started calling them that.
• Lamp sizes are Tn, where n is how many 12ths of an inch in diameter they are.

I started by buying a 74" x 48" x 18" metal rack from Lowe's. I bought casters to go with it so I could wheel the rack around as needed. Turns out it was a good idea, because where it ended up is right by the heater. So I angle the rack out into the room away from the heater in the winter. I only have my rack half the height it can be. And I have three shelves installed.


And I bought a 6-lamp high bay fluorescent fixture. It's High Output, and takes 54W T5 lamps. I got it online, because I don't think you can get the HO fixtures at Lowe's, Home Depot, and the like. I use 5000K lamps. They seem to work.


If you're shopping for lights for your plants, make absolutely sure it says it has a 95% reflective backing.  It might say parabolic or faceted or something like that. It practically multiplies each bulb's light by 3. The fixtures with a flat back, even if it's white, don't give you near the same amount of light.  Something like this is a no-no. Even this is a no-no. This is a shot looking up at my fixture:

95% reflective backing

See how each light looks like three lights? Happier plants!

The problem with my light fixture is it's 48.125" long and 17.5" wide. It can't hang inside the four corner posts. So I had to get creative. It sits on top.  But the posts aren't even all the same height. Two are a half inch or so shorter.

I drilled a hole and put a screw through it.

There was too much wiggle room, even after one snug nut, so I added a bunch.

This post is shorter. But the black pieces that you put on the posts to hold an installed shelf in place raise it just the right height to make it even with the taller post. This screw is real loose, but I guess it doesn't need any nuts to keep the whole fixture in place.

I bought 2mil 50" x 25' mylar to surround my rack with to reflect light back in. Then I realized my lights got hot and I needed a fan blowing under them all the time, so I just put mylar along the two long sides. Later, I took it off one side to help with air flow, because I was getting some algae. But that might have been caused by my covering the plants for waaaay too long after germination. Heck, maybe I should put the mylar back up on that side, too.

Eventually, I wanted to add another shelf of lights to my rack, but I couldn't get another fixture like I already had, because of the dimensions. I also wasn't crazy about sticking with T5s because of how hot they get. I said ah what the heck, I'll go the el cheapo route and get Walmart T8 shop lights and some lamps also from Walmart. People on the forums said they work fine.

Walmart shop lights.  No mirror or parabolic backing.