56 replies to this topic

[Gareth Davies]

Time for some pitchers- at last. Now these plants are out of their cramped hotbox, I've been able to see what I've got, for the first time in some cases!
I'll admit these are all babies, but with room to grow now, things are getting interesting (at least they are for me.)

First up probably isn't that interesting to anyone else, but it's one of my favourites.... this is the first raff I've grown from seed....



And another baby raff, this one is from seeds from a very generous friend from the forum... it was collected in the wild from a raff nivea female, but I think she might have been up to no good with another raff in the area.... this is a great seedling, growing like a rocket



Another plant from seed, this time from Ricardo (ebay)... baby eustachya



BE's treubiana (Andamana)



longifolia (Wistuba)



bical Orange (Wistuba)



merrilliana (EP)

[pyro_hyde]

Beautiful greenhouse, food, plants the lot well done I'm sure they will grow like weeds.

Also I was just wondering if you really want to boost the humidity a low watt water heater such as for a fish tank in the "paddling pool" could help maybe.

Ben

[durham]

Or you could get one of those 24m soil warming cables, that should help steam things up in there.

Looks really great, hope the plant settle in well for you.

[Gareth Davies]

 durham, on 11 June 2012 - 15:57 PM, said:

Or you could get one of those 24m soil warming cables, that should help steam things up in there.

Looks really great, hope the plant settle in well for you.

Plants are stressing a bit- it hasn't helped repotting them all at the same time as moving them- and I'm relying on a fan heater thermostat at the moment, until the accurate one arrives in the post, so the temperatures are all over the place. It's the scary phase of learning about a new growing zone....

I've used a soil warming cable (in sand) to heat trays of water that the Neps have been standing in, in their old lives in the hotboxes... it works brilliantly... not sure how it'll do in a big greenhouse though. So far, an airtight greenhouse with a flooded floor is working well....

[pmatil]

Looks great! I wish I had my own greenhouse for the neps :) But even if I had, the warming costs would be enourmous as in the winter it could get -30 degC (-22 degF) in here...

[Gareth Davies]

Well, it's so far so good with the greenhouse as I've filled it up. There's been some cold nights here in the frozen North, down to 9C, but a 1kw heater has comfortably managed to keep the temperature up at 21C.



Now, for the seedlings, I've built an Intensive Care Unit. This is just some bits of timber with horticultural bubblewrap stapled on.
In the base, there's a 110w soil heating cable buried in sand... with a couple of gravel trays on top, with some gravel in them.

This has worked quite nicely, raising the temperature 5-10C above greenhouse temperature.

[North]

Wow that is a beautiful greenhouse! ur plants are coming along very nicely now! Love that seedling chanmber u built up :).

[Phil Green]

Looking REALLY GOOD Gareth  
I'm sure the Neps are going to love it.

Makes me wish I had more space.

Looking forward to seeing pics in a year or two - It will probably look like a real jungle.

[Gareth Davies]

Thanks Phil.

At last, the IC species you sent me have a worthy home. A couple of them have put on more growth in the last 2 weeks than they have in the last 8 months.
They seem to like it roasting hot and quite bright. This is the first time I've seen them looking happy.

Other things have been deeply traumatised by the move to their new home- not surprising for Neps.  A bical and a couple of sumatrana look like their new growth has been fried by the change in growth conditions... and some seedlings are wilting during the day, when it gets up around 35C, even though humidity is surely around 100%.

It's going to take a while for me to get used to my new growing space... I might need to fiddle with it yet... I think the ICU is in too bright a spot... and we all know that some positions in a greenhouse will make a Nep happy, while other spots in the same greenhouse cause them to sulk for months.

[Gareth Davies]

Random update.
It's always traumatic moving Neps, and this mass migration of plants has been no exception... some things have thrown strops and gone into sulks, but the one thing that I thought would freak out and never recover would be northiana. As others have pointed out in the past, this is a species that can die if you look at it a bit funny.

Bu so far so good.

[Blocky71]

What a great thread Gareth, and there's me stressing over essentially putting a roof between between a shed and a fence!.
Your passion and humour have inspired me to get off my lazy ass and go create, well tomorrow anyhow !.
Anyhow it's been 5 days since your last post, I'm guessing your busy adding a 2nd storey to the nep house eh?
I hope all is still going relatively smoothly and your more "moody" neps are beggining to appreciate their new home and your hard graft...
P.s I'll pop round for one of those profiteroles next time i'm up in leeds visiting the munsters, sorry inlaws i meant ;-)

[Ilyua]

Oh,great!Iam from russia,Moscow and i am sorry if i do mustakes.but you greenhouse is brilliant! There are a lot of neps!

[Sockhom]

Wow. What a great achievement. Congratulations Gareth! I'm sure your plants will thrive.
Glad also to hear that some people enjoy growing the IC species.

Keep on the good work!

François.

[Gareth Davies]

Thanks Francois. There's still some terrible gaps in the collection though... things like the true thorellii (without by some fluke those "thorellii" from Mr Son turn out to be the right thing....) and nice forms of bokorensis from locations B and C. Just saying.

Hoping that the rumours are true and Wistuba has mapuluensis.

Apart from that, if I could get hold of a good red northiana, and my seeds of "giant sumatrana" would germinate, that covers most of the lowlanders....

[Marcia]

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. You can see all the hard work and dedication that's gone into it, despite the glorious British weather  

I wish i had the time, energy and lets be honest....knowledge lol to do something like this.

[Gareth Davies]

Update!

Still worrying about heating bills. However, last night the outside temperature dropped to 7C by 10pm, and was 4C at 7am (I know, 4C.... in August!) and yet the 1kw heater kept the greenhouse at 19C.

Given a layer of bubblewrap insulation, this might not be as cripplingly expensive to run as I feared.

Random pics from this morning:

treubiana (this one just seems to like me)



raff88 putting on some size



viking x hook



and- oh yes- after years of careful cultivation, northiana (Wistuba) is starting to look like a grown-up (this pitcher decided to sit on my pervillei)

[nadja77]

That turned out rather nice! I'm really impressed with your northiana! Mine has only recently started to make some progress.