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Quick update on 3 variegated P. arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings

June 26, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

I’ve already been writing about possible variegated seedlings from the second batch of seedlings. The variegated seedling from the test germination of 10 seeds remains my most variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedling. The other 3 possible variegated seedlings still show signs of variegation, but they are far smaller and variegation can not be confirmed. The seedlings in the second batch were sown tightly and became weak as they started to grow larger. I failed to plant them into individual pots on time and I’ve lost some of the seedlings that started drying out due to lack of light and water. One of the most affected was the second most variegated seedling that refused to start shooting even when other seedlings started to put out their second shoot.

I found it completely dried out and it seemed to be lost, with only 3 remaining leaves, that were also folded all the time, except during night, early morning and rainy weather. I decided to plant it into compost in the raised bed together with other two variegated seedlings and hope for the best. After almost two months, it somewhat recovered and now it’s pushing two small shoots that prove it’s going to live.

This one seems to be loosing variegation

The third seedling, the one that was dark green with white variegation, looking as inverse version of the first seedling is growing into almost completely green seedling. It’s growing slowly and it changed variegation along the way into white stripe on dark green leaf, similar to Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’, but that faded out too. It will be interesting to see if it returns or not. By planting it outside, it should grow fast enough to discover its possible unique features further.

Praing mantis fighting the insects that damage my seedings — Praying mantis fighting the insects that damage my seedings

Already mentioned first – and most variegated seedling, started growing faster after I planted it into compost outside in the raised bed, but it also got severely attacked by aphids, fungus gnats and all kinds of unknown bugs. The result of all those insects outside are dark brown spots and speckles on its leaves. Highly variegated leaves are also prone to become damaged by direct sun exposure. When the shoots leaf out, the new leaves become dark green enough to withstand the scorching summer sun way better. Spring was wet again and we are now entering the hot and sunny part of the year. Hopefully the seedlings will upsize considerably during the summer.

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Building LED grow light

May 14, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Plants grow extremely well under my new grow light

As many of you already know, I love to grow plants from seeds. Almost every winter, I’m bothering with a new plant, that needs to be kept alive inside under artificial lighting. Until earlier this year, I’ve had a setup with a combination of warm and cool white LED diodes. I’ve had relatively good results and didn’t even think about buying a grow light. One day, however, I’ve noticed a superb deal on a Chinese online shop, which made me think about building more power efficient and effective light setup. I did not think twice. I have bought several power adapters and full spectrum LED diodes with wavelength of 380-840nm. The LED diodes operate at 30-36V, which means I had to get a power supply, capable of supplying two 50W diodes with electrical power. All the commercial products were extremely expensive and possibly low quality, which means there would (could) be a lot of overheating and a chance of loosing my LEDs. I decided to use my old computer’s power supply unit, which can supply 5V and 12V. LEDs operate at 30V, so i needed to take care of power conversion.
I discovered some cheap converters online, and when I received everything, it was time to start building the LED grow light.

My expectations for the first grow light setup were not high. I wanted to see if I could make it work, check its effect on the plants and learn before building a larger, more sophisticated setup some day later. I decided to use simple wooden fixture to place the lights above the surface and attach the CPU coolers with LED chip to the wooden frame. When I needed to increase the height, the only thing I needed was a bit more wood and it took less than 20 minutes to increase the distance between plants and the lights.

I used computer parts, which made assembly easy — I used computer parts, which made assembly quite easy

Computer PSU is capable of supplying energy to at least 5 LED chips operating at full power, so there’s always an option to upgrade the whole thing. Using old computer parts made it super-easy to assemble the whole setup and within an hour or two, I’ve had it prepared for the first test. When I plugged the power supply and turned it on, I needed to set the power converters to appropriate output voltage. When I increased the voltage over some point, the LEDs started to emit dim light. Success!

CPU cooler, attached to the wooden frame

With increasing voltage, the lights emitted more and more light, which became too bright to look at, even below the upper operating limit of 36V. I’ve set the power output to just a bit over 30V, which is the low operating value. Lower voltage means LED diodes use less power and don’t overheat as much as they would if I’d run them at full power. The ability to further increase the voltage offers an option to increase the height of the light – and greatly increase the amount of space for the plants below.

I already have some ideas for my new DIY light setup, which will be taller and have some additional LEDs. That way I may be able to overwinter even some of my adult size plants way better than before.

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Late snow in the end of April

April 28, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Large Moso shoots when it started to snow.

After several weeks of extremely nice and warm weather, polar blast brought much lower temperatures and a ‘shipment’ of heavy wet snow. Most of bamboos already started shooting some time ago, trees are all leafed-out and most of the fruits have already flowered. The day started warm with strong southern wind, but the wind direction changed instantly, heavy low altitude black clouds appeared temperature dropped from around 15°C to just a bit above freezing. When it darkened in the middle of the day, thunderstorm brought sleet and first half melted snow which instantly started to pile up on plants, even if the soil remained warm enough to melt it.
It snowed for the rest of the day and by early evening, I could hear distant breaking of tree branches. Luckily it only snowed for a couple more hours and stopped completely by the end of the day. Total amount of snow was around 15cm. Considering the fact that a lot of it melted, because of nicely warmed ground, there might have been more on the completely flattened bamboo.

Only an inch of wet snow flattened Spectabilis to the ground.

Like I already mentioned, most of my bamboos already started shooting, especially early shooters like Fargesia sp. ‘Rufa’ and Phyllostachys edulis ‘Moso’. These two started shooting early this year and many smaller shoots already started poking over the canopy of last year’s culms. All those shoots were not nearly hardened enough to handle the weight of heavy snow alone, not to mention the weight of whole bamboo flattened to the ground. Large Moso shoots have been growing on the northern side of the older clumps and that’s what saved them from breakage – bamboo grew more leaves towards south and the culms always fall down into south-eastern direction.

Here's how the Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Spectabilis' culms look like in the snow. — Here’s how the *Phyllostachys aureosulcata* ‘Spectabilis’ culms look like in the snow.

Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’ was lucky to have started growing the shoots slowly. The largest shoots were pushed towards the ground by the weight of the culms, but so far, there’s no visible damage, even if they point into different direction. Other bamboos were only slightly damaged, because new branches already started to grow, shoots were either too small or not existent.

When the snow finally melted, most of the shoots that were bent to the ground recovered. Some of them snapped and died off, but most of them recovered with culm deformation which resembles genuflection, often seen on P. aureosulcata.

Some of the shoots have snapped under the weight of snow

None of the larger shoots got damaged and they took off instantly after the snow was gone.

Fruit trees and walnuts were also lucky enough to survive without a lot of breakage. Could be much worse if there was just a little bit more snow.

Shoots that did not snap are seriously bent

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Moso shooting 2016

April 9, 2016 tarzan Comments 5 comments

I tried planting bamboo seeds in 2011 and failed miserably with old Phyllostachys pubescens Moso seeds. I’ve tried 100 seeds and couldn’t get one single seedling to sprout. Second batch of seeds was supposed to be fresh and much more viable. I was able to get several seedlings to grow slowly from tiny little plant to not so tiny bamboo seedlings. I’ve learned Moso bamboo is hard to keep happy. I’ve been slowly learning about bamboos on my onwn mistakes and growing them in containers was a nightmare. In the end I’ve ended up with 2 living seedling, one is declining and is now hardly any larger than one year old seedling, but the second one managed to survive all the torture and eventually escaped the pot in its second year. It started growing in tight space where I left it, knowing that some day, it might become too large and I’ll have to remove it. That day seems to be getting close.

Smaller shoots appeared all around last year's culms. — Smaller shoots appeared all around last year’s culms.

A year later I’ve bought Phyllostachys aureosulcata rhizome division, and learned how much faster they grow, compared to tiny little seedlings. Well, all that was true until this year (Well, Spectabilis should also upsize considerably this year – can’t wait)! The tiny little Moso seedling finally took off after completely covering the area with thick rhizomes.
Last year I’ve been a bit disappointed in the spring, when it only managed to put out around 10 shoots which did upsize, but not as nearly as much as I had expected. Largest rhizomes were around the diameter of the largest shoots, but… rhizomes were everywhere and upsized shoots only grew in a tight clump on south-eastern position of the bamboo.

A bit larger shoots are not as packed together as the smaller ones

The last summer and autumn, seedling further increased rhizome growth! Some of the rhizomes that were ‘dolphining’ around the clump were a bit over 1cm diameter, which is larger than last year’s shoots. I expected upsize. And I expected more shoots than last season.
I haven’t been fertilizing the beast much, except for the bucket of wood ash or two over the winter and a thick layer of mulch in the fall, which I removed when warm weather came with first signs of spring. I noticed first shoots quite early, compared to previous years, so I wasn’t really aware, what to expect regarding the shoot size. After the first real rain, the shoots instantly took off.

Haven't even noticed the largest shoot until now! — Haven’t even noticed the largest shoot until now!

The winter this year was quite warm, and the bamboo didn’t suffer almost complete defoliation like it did a year before. Like usually, first shoots that appeared were the smaller shoots of the shooting season. They appeared a week or to before the large shoots started to appear. And when they finally did, I knew why I like this time of the year so much. 🙂

New shoots growing out behind last year's culms. — New shoots growing out behind last year’s culms.

Is the coin getting smaller, or are these shoots getting thicker?

It's quite easy to determine the rhizome direction — It’s quite easy to determine the rhizome direction

Some of the shoots show white variegation

Some shoots seem to be quite compact at the bottom

Incredible variegation looks even better on larger shoots

The same kind of variegation in low-light overcast conditions

Like in previous years, white variegation of the shoots returned and with this seedling’s first more mature shoots, variegation started to show completely different effect. On juvenile shoots, variegation was nothing more than white striped leaves, sometimes even with a hint of purple. Variegation seemed fabulous, but then I’ve seen how mature shoots look like! On mature shoots, there is much more purple and red pigment, which brings out beautiful bright orange coloration. I’ve taken two shots, one in bright sunny condition and one in low light overcast weather – shoots look great in both cases, but the light emphasizes the bright color even more. Like previously, the variegation builds up with each additional node. At the beginning they start without variegation and the shoots look like regular Moso shoots.

This year, the diameter of the shoots increased considerably. There are still a lot of juvenile shoots, especially after some late snow related damage, but the majority of the shoots only started to show mature form. It will be interesting to see how the shoots look like in a couple of years, when they receive even more features of an adult plant. The pattern of spots and speckles on the culm sheath also became evident this year. Shooting season is not even over yet and I can’t wait to see the next one. 🙂

Juvenile shoot vairegation — Juvenile shoot variegation

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