Cold-hardy.com * Gardening is fun!

Feeding Sundews Fish Food

December 16, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Each winter, when I keep my sundews inside during the cold part of the year, I try to keep them as strong as possible for the following summer. They are more than capable of catching it’s own meal outside, but when I bring them inside, they don’t get much more than occasional fungus gnat.

Why do I even bother?

Carnivore plants usually require only small amount of nutrients and can easily withstand periods without captured food. They slow down their growth and refuse to start flowering until they get enough nutrients. My goal is, to make them grow as much as possible before the following season, possibly inducing flowering at the time when they come out in the spring. I keep them under grow light, which enables them to start flowering in late winter. They are in their full health when fungus gnats strike in the spring, when I start sowing my vegetables.

Healthy diet

In the past, I tried feeding them different kind of food, but I soon realised that giving them fish food is the easiest option by far. I have given my plants live springtails, while they were seedlings. They multiply vigorously and are excellent source of food for tiny Sundews, but they soon outgrow their tiny food. At one point, I have fed the carnivores aphids. In the spring time, they suck on tender cherry tree leaves. I have picked the infested leaves and placed them into a bag and thrown them into a freezer. I ended up with almost unlimited supply of dead aphids which lasted until the next spring. I could not feed them as much as I wanted to, because it was really time consuming. And as I later realized, giving them fish food really makes a difference. They just love it!
The food consists 50% of common water fleas (daphnia), a bit of vegetable proteins and fish derivatives. I was afraid the food would be too much for them to handle, but it seems to be perfect for the job. I usually mix it with some distilled water, to make it thinner.

Feeding plants

To apply the fish food paste onto the carnivorous leaf, I use a toothpick or a screwdriver. I dip it into the paste and apply it onto the trap. In a couple of hours, leaves usually start folding and start the digestion. When the process of digestion is finished, traps usually die off. Tentacles that were used are damaged and cease mucilage production. Dew appears only on unused tentacles. That’s the reason, why I usually apply the food all over the leaf and I leave some leaves intact. I feed those later. 🙂

What do you think of this post?

Useful (11)
Interesting (3)
Awesome (2)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

Carnivorous forest

December 14, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Anyone who owned Drosera capensis knows how much seeds they can produce. In autumn, all my plants went into full bloom and managed to produce large amounts of seeds. As winter came, I decided to sow the seeds into an empty ice cream container and check for germination. I expected a lot of small plants, a mixture of regular Drosera capensis and Drosera capensis ‘Alba’.

Germination of fresh seedlings

I’ve kept the ice cream container outside during the rainy autumn, filled with cheap peat moss. I hoped for the peat to get thoroughly washed for the new seedlings to grow. When I bought my first Drosera seeds, I needed to wait around a month, before the first tiny seedlings emerged. I expected the same thing with my seeds. How wrong I was!
I used the seeds that somehow ended up on my desk where I kept the flower stalks I’ve cut off during after the flowering. Most of the flowers were completely ripe and the seeds just loved to ‘jump’ out of the seed pods. That is one of the reasons why D. capensis easily seeds into surrounding pots when you leave flower stalks to ripen.

I’ve been growing my Droseras outside during the summer, both regular D. capensis and Alba variety in the same spot. The seeds I used were from both, white and pink flowering carnivore plants.
As I mentioned before, I expected the seeds to germinate really slowly. I was extremely surprised when I saw first tiny green plantlets emerging in less than a week. After a couple of weeks, there was a whole forest of small seedlings, baking under my grow light.

The carnivorous forest

I’ve sown Cape Sundew seeds tightly together in the past already and never managed to separate them. At first they didn’t look too happy and needed to fight for their position in the pot. After a while, weak plants died off and the strong Sundews remained healthy. In the end, the pot got completely covered with healthy sticky leaves and the plants set numerous flower stalks. I actually liked the crowded pot much better than my large but lonely growing plants. There is another thing I loved about that pot – these tightly grown carnivores were hungry! When I placed the pot near to the source of light during the night, or close to the pond during the drought, they caught all kinds of flies, mosquitoes and other flying, bloodsucking vermin. I intend to do the same thing this year, but on a much larger scale.

Taking care of the seedlings

Same as before, I placed some springtails into the container to keep the small seedlings well fed and to remove any possible source of mold infection. Springtails feed on decaying organic matter which can quickly lead to mold growth. When I feed my adult carnivores with beta fish food, I usually use the same food to feed the tiny seedlings as well. Well, at least some of them. I dilute the fish food with distilled water a bit more than the food I make for my large plants. I dip a toothpick into the prepared fish food and tap the tiny carnivore leaves with the toothpick. I make sure there are no large chunks that could harm the plants. I don’t feed them that way very often, because it’s much easier to just watch the springtails get caught.

🙂

What do you think of this post?

Interesting (7)
Awesome (2)
Useful (2)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

Variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings – fall 2016 update

November 3, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Three variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings are now all around 1 year old. All three are still showing different degrees of variegation. As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, I placed them into a more shaded position during the summer. The reason for that was the fact, that the most variegated seedling started showing leaf burn when exposed to full sun in the spring. The damage in the spring could also be a result of change of growth environment, not the light exposure alone. The reason for that was, because I wanted to see, if shaded location affects variegation level and if the leaves remain healthy – without burnt leaf tips. I planted them in the same raised bed with my chillies. I never expected the peppers to grow that large and bamboo seedlings got completely shaded out by early summer.

During most of the spring, the seedlings received full sun exposure. At that point, they had shown some growth, but not nearly as much as while they were inside under LED grow light. Even the smallest seedling that was about to perish, managed to push out two tiny shoots, both more variegated than it’s original shoot. Shade prevented it to continue growing during the summer. The largest, most variegated seedling stopped growing completely and only managed to unfold a couple of leaves. The leaves remained healthy and I think there was no difference in variegation strength. It was way to shaded to grow and it would certainly not survive another season like that. The least variegated seedling was also placed in deep shade. It somehow managed to grow a couple of new shoots and leaves throughout the summer. It’s showing a lot less variegation and most of the leaves remained dark green, which allowed it to photosynthesize in low light environment.

None of my seedlings had shown any culm variegation of the mother plant, Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’, so far. The variegated seedlings are not nearly large enough to show it. I am now deciding what to do with the seedlings, if weather permits, I could leave them outside during the winter. Much more likely, I’ll just bring the seedlings inside, not just because of the poor current weather forecast, the main reason is, that the seedlings are really not in their best shape. Full shade might not have been the best idea. 🙂

Update a week later…

We did receive enormous amounts of rain and weather cooled down considerably, so I moved the variegated bamboos inside. I have placed them into small pots where they can recover, before I up-pot them for overwintering inside. None of them had shown any leaf curl, which means there was not much root damage when I dug them out from the raised bed. A couple of days after I brought them inside, I have noticed some shoots that started growing when temperature increased.

Green seedling's variegation — Green seedling’s variegation

What do you think of this post?

Interesting (3)
Awesome (0)
Useful (0)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

Borinda fungosa update 2016

October 15, 2016 tarzan Comments 2 comments

This growing season, Borinda fungosa seedling was 5 years old. Like during it’s previous seasons, it started shooting late in the spring and managed only to push out a couple of shoots that were about the size of last year’s growth.
We’ve had relatively mild winter last year. Since there was not enough snow, to protect the bamboo, like year before, there was some damage. Most of the late summer shoots have been defoliated completely, fresh branches died off, but the culms remained alive. Most of the unbranched nodes restarted by mid spring. This year, one of late autumn shoots actually remained alive and started growing when soil temperature got high enough.

The shooting season began early, because one 3cm tall shoot from previous autumn managed to survive the winter. As usual, spring shots are roughly the same size as large shoots from previous year. With a bit more damage than usual, seedling lost at least 6 fully grown culms during the winter. Winter damage is probably the main cause of smaller upsize this year and very bad spring shooting cycle. The late summer / autumn shooting, however, ended up “heavier” than ever. Shoots are not much larger, but they really came out in great numbers this year.

Culms upsized a notch during their 5th season

The summer was quite dry, with abundance of sun and mild summer temperatures that never reached more than 33°C. Night temperatures also remained below 20°C most of the time. Leaves remained healthy and green throughout the whole summer. I was watering it occasionally, especially when the weather remained dry for longer periods of time in late summer. Borinda fungosa is supposed to look bad in warm and dry weather, but it seems that with maturity, the plant became resilient enough to withstand strong, full sun exposure. Seedling behaved differently from any of my bamboos from the early beginning. The shooting is usually completed in about 2 months. Not the case with my Borinda. Shoots are maturing throughout the whole season, and only the earliest shoots manage to harden off completely before the winter cold destroys all the branches that are still soft. During summer, it looks healthy, but it’s growth slows down considerably. With cooler weather in late summer it starts growing faster and doesn’t stop until hard frosts kick in.

So far the vigor and overall appearance of Borinda fungosa seedling is surprisingly good. Due to the fact, that it grows in marginal climate with cold winters and (too?) warm summers, it grows extremely well. It survived cold, drought, heat, got infested with insects, rodents,… It grows faster than all of my Phyllostachys seedlings, including my vigorous Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’.

What do you think of this post?

Interesting (1)
Awesome (0)
Useful (0)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)