Peabody

Hello from England. are any Hellcats available ? is posting to the U.K. possible ? thank you :)

I am curious to know if it is a reasonable idea to boil Sphagnum peat in order to prevent carpet moss growth which swamps juvenile plants.

I was interested to see the orange heater pad. I had a look on eBay but stumbled across motor cycle handle bar heaters which are flexible and laminated and run on nominally 12 volts. I had an idea that the number of LEDs you are using would run quite warm. I am considering getting some of these LED strips which are relatively inexpensive apart from the cost of some kind of heatsink arrangement : https://neonica.eu/led-strip-neonica-growy.html

Discovered a company based in Poland that have an interesting range of LED lighting components. Particularly 5 metre strips of LEDs that are optimised for Vegetative growth that can be cut down into shorter lengths and joined to make a parallel strip arrangement. www.neonica.eu I might be making a purchase.

I have just ordered four of these 15 Watt COB LEDs from Aliexpress. I realise they won't be the brightest but they are cheap enough for an experiment. I have already got a suitable driver that has a display of both voltage and ampage so it will be easy to run them at a reduced level and easy to calculate the wattage. (Amps x Volts = Watts). https://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/0.html?orderId=500862428457789&productId=32592009102 I have got a couple of polystyrene tropical fish transport boxes and a small aquarium that I am using for LED growing experiments.

The thought I have got on LEDs is that some plant leaves have colouration and are not "green". So presumably the colouration will have a filtering effect on whatever spectrum of light is shone on it.

I am going to try growing some Toad Lily's from seed very soon. I have got a packet of seed from Johnsons World Botanics. Has anyone had any success ?

I have bought some of these 10 Watt "Full Spectrum" LEDs to experiment with. I've bonded a couple of them to fan cooled heatsinks using silver loaded heat transfer epoxy. After a couple of weeks the plain bearing fan has gone noisy so I think I'm going to consider using second hand computer fans over the heatsinks. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01DBZK3V6?psc=1 I am using them over Cephalotus leaf pullings in a small aquarium I got from the charity shop.

How about buying an off the peg aluminium cold frame and having the components powder coated by a general engineering company ?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_qzBYl6_5kFOE1MLXVPYTdOcUk Hope my attempt to post a photo has been successful. I have done leaf pullings in live sphagnum this year. I have used small takeaway pots as used for minty yoghurt from the curry shop. I've melted a hole in the base of the pot so that when it is placed in the propagator on a layer of wet capillary matting the moss is kept wet. My plan is to plant up the entire contents of the pot so that the roots do not get disturbed. There are smaller pots available if you do some searching for them. One source is clear polystyrene sample cups as used for tasters in supermarkets/farmers markets etc. They should be easy enough to buy in craft shops.

I planted some seeds in October 2014 and only in the last fortnight I was going to throw the pots out because nothing had emerged. I had another close look and saw just one seedling. It must have germinated fairly recently.

One of my leaf pulling experiments is to make up a compost mixture and form a depression in the compost in the plantpot using something about an inch in diameter. I reckon less than an inch would be OK as well. Then I've filled the depression with live Sphagnum for the leaf to be placed in. This means it won't need to be disturbed when it sprouts.

I am on a learning curve but I've used small pots (chilli sauce / mint sauce from the takeaway) with a hole melted into the bottom with a soldering iron. Then I've filled the pots with live sphagnum and poked the end of the leaf pulling into the sphagnum. Then I've put the pots in a propagator in partly shaded sun getting up to about 37c. It's worked well. Got a few sprouting leaves.

The moss in a tray is in my greenhouse.

In my spare bedroom out of direct sunlight. It's in a standard sized propagator. It only a small scale experiment to see how things turn out.

Just in case you want some fairly decent Sphagnum moss in a hurry and you live near a Pets at Home shop they are selling moss for reptile bedding. It's not exactly inexpensive ( £7 ). I bought some and it is a red variety. I have it spread out in a tray and I have also spread out a small amount on some capillary matting wrapped around a foam plastic block standing in rain water just as a bit of an experiment.

I spotted that Pets at Home sell live Sphagnum moss for reptiles and other uses. It isn't exactly inexpensive (£7) but it seems to be very good. The moss I bought was a red variety.

I have sown some Cephalotus seeds on chopped live Sphagnum moss yesterday and bagged up the pots and put them in my fridge. I am planning on taking them out towards the end of May so that will be about 10 weeks. The thermostat in my fridge is faulty and the temperature is certainly below freezing. What are people's views on the ideal temperature for stratifying Ceph seeds ?

I made two extra brackets from aluminium greenhouse shelving supports to provide extra bracing for the roof ridge on my 8x6 greenhouse because the roof was starting to come apart after a high wind. It's been fine since I added the extra brackets.

Please can I have a recommendation for a Nepenthese that will withstand temperatures going down to about 5 centigrade.

Ron Is that a sand/peat mixture and what kind of steady temperature are you keeping the pots at ?

I bought one of these modules for my tinkering. http://www.banggood.com/5A-Constant-LED-Driver-Battery-Charging-Module-Voltmeter-Ammeter-p-917524.html Ignore the small plugs on the photo. There are terminal blocks on the lower printed circuit board. If you use an old laptop power supply and remove the 19 volt plug and bare the wires you can insert them into the terminal blocks. The LED displays show voltage and current so it is easy to calculate the wattage ( Amps X Volts = Watts). The voltage and constant current is adjusted using potentiometers on the module. I am using my module with a fan and resistors to produce a low wattage heater. I am using three 33 Ohm resistors in parallel and feeding them with 12 volts. The output is about 13 Watts and I am turning the 12 volts on and off with a thermostat (look for W1209 on eBay).

I would guess that the glass is old bottles and jars etc. that have been pulverised. I wouldn't be too sure if there isn't any residues from what the bottles and jars had contained.

I grew some sage from seeds under two T5HO lamps and they were very leggy. I think the lamps need to be much nearer than people think to get a reasonable amount of light at the plants.

Richard, Check out a Greenhouse Sensation thermostat. It's dead easy to set the temperature and can switch upto 300 Watts so that's more than enough for heat mats.