asgaard

It takes shape (pond life #3)

Sat, 27 Jun 20 19:26:30 +0000

The pond is now taking shape and starting to look like a pond:

We've started to put a few plants in it. The one at the front in the terracotta coloured pot is a Drosera Filiformis I already had which I just put in because I think the grassy type plants look quite nice in ponds. If it works out, we'll repot it into a darker pot, but I don't know if it'll like being so wet.

The others are plants we've bought specifically for the pond. The three groups of three are plants we bought as single plants but have split, hoping they'll fill out and look a little bit more voluminous. You can't really see it in the photo but the one on the left sitting on the surface is probably the one I'm most interested by. This is a red stemmed parrots feather, which sits in deeper areas and seems to rise up to the surface. I think this type of plant will provide most interest for aquatic life.

In terms of the more unusual insect life we've attracted so far, we've seen a few things we think are diving beetles and have had a few dragonflies taking interest in the grassy plants. No sign of any frogs yet, but hopefully once there's a bit more greenery...

We are still undecided on exactly how to edge it, but the pebbles around the top shelf seem to be working so far (though we need more), and we're thinking of slate slabs to cover the edge of the liner.

(Almost) Peat free carnivorous plants

Sun, 03 Sep 17 16:11:02 +0000

I've accidentally conducted a completely unscientific experiment into peat-free carnivorous plant growth over the past 12 months. Unfortunately, 12 months ago I didn't really appreciate that 'peat-free' was significant or controversial so this has unfolded by accident and lacks rigour, but I feel it's still interesting enough to write about.

12 months ago - in August 2016 - I bought this set of three carnivorous plants - a Sundew, Venus Fly Trap and Sarracenia - from Ebay and some compost mix from the same seller. It turns out the compost is 'Thrive', which is notable as it brands itself as a peat-free mix suitable for carnivorous plants. The plants actually claim to have been grown in it via a sticker on the pot which reads "grown peat free using Thrive".

I repotted them all immediately into larger pots, using Thrive. This was unremarkable except I recall the VFT having only a very shallow root system and I wasn't convinced it would survive.

The VFT and the Sarracenia spent winter in an (unheated) conservatory where they underwent around 3 months of dormancy. The Sundew was moved inside and has been growing continually since. In spring, the Sarracenia woke up and started putting up some much larger pitchers. Shortly after, I moved it into a planter outside with a few others. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy - the planter outside is using a peat based mix, but I didn't remove the Thrive from its roots, so around 80% of its roots are still in Thrive. The VFT has had a layer of extra top-soil added because Thrive has a habit of growing bubbly green goo (algae) on the surface, which looks fairly disgusting, but the pot is 99% Thrive. I may have done the same to the Sundew, I don't recall.

The Sundew and the Sarracenia now are virtually unrecognisable. I've highlighted last year's Sarracenia pitchers which you can compare to the original photo at the top. This year's pitchers are around 3x the size. The VFT's growth has been much less dramatic, but it has grown and it looks great. I'm pleased with the colouration, but I'm more pleased that it's lost the slightly 'spindly' appearance it had when I got it.

Overall the results are great and I'll be happy to continue using Thrive for adult plants.

For seeds, however, it's a different story. In late Spring I planted some VFT seeds (also from Ebay) into three pots: 1 large pot of Thrive, 1 small pot of Thrive, and 1 small pot of peat. Unfortunately, there's no competition; the seedlings in the peat mix are doing well and looking like healthy miniature VFTs, but the seedlings in the thrive pots are really struggling to grow traps and look quite yellow. Interestingly, the small pot (pictured below) of Thrive is doing better than the large pot (although still not great).

So overall: Thrive appears to work well for plants, but so far it's not looking great for seeds. Perhaps, as adult plants appear to grow well in it, that they're slow to get going but once they get to a certain size they'll kick into a higher gear. We'll have to wait and see.

I'm quite curious as to why the seedlings are struggling. It's easy to just say "well, it's not peat", but the whole point of peat is that it's nutrient poor, so it feels unsatisfactory to say that the seedlings rely on some special component of peat which is hard to find elsewhere. I wondered if it might have something to do with moisture or heat retention properties, but that's just idle speculation due to the fact the pot size seems to make a difference.

The question of what exactly Thrive is eludes me. I haven't been able to find out online. It looks to be about 50% perlite, which isn't too interesting, and also appears to contain bark chippings, but what the actual meat of it is, I don't know and I'd be very interested to find out.

Update 27/10/2017: Unfortunately, the VFT seedlings in the large Thrive pot have all died and the remaining seedlings in the smaller pot are looking pretty anemic. Meanwhile the seedlings in the peat are looking great and are now large enough to be catching fungus gnats.

Since writing this, some flower stalk cuttings in a small pot of Thrive have started putting up some small traps (after many months of doing nothing), and they are looking quite healthy, but the largest one only has five tiny traps so far. I'm tempted to transplant one into peat.

Sarracenia Leucophylla

Sat, 10 Jun 17 13:56:45 +0000

Sarracenia Leucophylla looking quite majestic:

Unfortunately there is actually a split in the tallest pitcher, which probably occurred during transit/packing/unpacking. But hopefully the great magic ball in the sky will grace us with its presence and we'll get some new pitchers this year.[...]

Pinguicula

Sun, 22 Jan 17 20:42:17 +0000

I'm very excited to see my pinguicula Tina flowering.

It took about 12 days to go from the bud in the first picture to a fully open flower as in the second. In the second picture, you can see another flower bud directly behind the stalk.

Even more exciting, my other ping is flowering too! This one is labelled as a Weser but it doesn't look that similar to Wesers on Google Image search so I'm not entirely sure at the moment, but I've only had it a few months. It'll be interesting to see what the flower looks like.

[...]

Insulation

Sun, 06 Nov 16 19:59:06 +0000

The overnight temperature getting worrying close to freezing, even though it's only the beginning of November, prompted me to take action.

Several layers of bubble wrap will hopefully give the soil an extra degree or two.

So far there's no reason to think they're faring any differently to the plants in the unheated conservatory, which is usually a few degrees warmer, but occasionally shoots up to 30°C for short periods if the sun comes out. Both sets of plants have very noticeably slowed their growth and might halt it entirely soon. Traps on the Venus Fly Traps are dying faster than new ones are growing.

Note the unfortunate wasp that wandered head first into the venus fly trap.[...]

Dormancy experiments

Tue, 18 Oct 16 20:51:49 +0000

Carnivorous plants: I'm the proud owner of a set of carnivorous plants which need to be going dormant for winter quite soon.

Nothing I read online tells me what's really necessary to make a Venus Fly Trap or a Sarracenia go dormant over winter, so I am not really sure if keeping them in an unheated conservatory is OK. My main concern is the heat can build up very quickly when the sun comes out, but this will be a pretty rare occurrence over winter.

So I'm doing it the only way I can: I have a Venus Fly Trap and Sarracenia Purpurea inside, and one of each outside too. I'm interested to see which set goes dormant first, how much if any growth they experience over the winter, and when they come out of dormancy.

I've had the outdoor Venus Fly Trap for a few years now. It went dormant on my windowsill two years ago, but last year it did not, so I really want to make sure it does this year. I think it's ready for it - it's nowhere near as impressive as it was a month or two ago; it has much fewer traps and the ones it's growing now are very small.

Date	Avg outdoor min temperature (°C)	Avg outdoor max temperature (°C)	Observation
2016-10-16	—	—	Plants put out
2016-10-23	7	14	Indoor VFT has caught a spider. Otherwise, not much.
2016-10-30	9	14	New growth on all plants has definitely slowed and traps seem to be dying at a faster rate than before. The indoor sarracenia (which has a huge number of pitchers) has 3-4 that are definitely dying. The outdoor one looks unchanged.
2016-11-06	3	10	The weather has suddenly become a lot colder, which prompted me to insulate the outdoor plants' pots, but, apart from that, little obvious change.
2016-11-13	3	9	I'm pretty sure that any new growth on the VFTs has stopped
2016-11-20	5	10	No obvious change.

I won't update this anymore, as I'm confident both sets of plants are dormant, and they went dormant around the same time. The conservatory was consistently a few degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature, with occasional (short lived) peaks up to 40°C, which didn't seem to affect anything.