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Poppy

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Posts posted by Poppy

  6. COIR experiment on lockdown

    in Sustainable and Peat-free Cultivation

    Posted

    Hello Guys

    In the end I hydrated coir using my tap water. I then put it in a cotton tote shopping bag and tied up the handles. I washed it twice with tap water in a sink and squeezed and drained till the TDS more of less matched my tap water. Then repeated with my RO water twice and managed to get the final wash water down to about 20.

    This is fine for small amounts but I dread to think what you would do if you needed large quantities.

    Don't gross out but I did taste the first wash and it did not taste salty.

    Cheers Adam

  7. COIR experiment on lockdown

    in Sustainable and Peat-free Cultivation

    Posted

    Hello all Growers,

    Hope you are all well. I did an experiment today and found out something quite interesting. Yes it is a lock down experiment

    I am mainly an indoor grower but all my Sarracenia, VFT and Darlingtonia are all outside and watered with rain water. I live in the North West of England.

    I grow three hybrids of Nepenthes in a window, a few Drosera binata in a window, a Ping in a window and a hell of a lot of Cephalotus in windows. I went peat free about three years ago. I straight switched coir for peat but always noticed a definite sulk in all my plants on re-potting. I have an eBay (£3) TDS meter and to the 10's they are quite sufficient. I have a eBay Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit I bought  for about £35 and my RO water goes from tap (@360 ppm) to 15-10 ppm depending on the time of year. Well below the magical figure of 50 ppm. No one has died!

    I hydrated a whole brick of Coir at the recommended rate using water at 11 ppm (yesterday) from my eBay RO unit. I left it for one day to fully hydrate. After that I put 125 g of coir in a 3.5 inch pot with a disc of clean J-Cloth at the bottom. This is about 250 mL in volume to the brim. I then poured a series of 125 g of water (125mL) over the pot and collected the effluent (what came out the bottom of the pot) over 10 minutes. Of interest was that the volume of the first effluent was only 40 mLs! After that the effluent  matched  just under what I put in. This suggests that the compost was not fully hydrated originally?

    Bottom line was that I washed a mass of 125 g of coir with a mass of 125 g of water 10 times and waited 10 minutes to collect the water that passed through that compost. I measured the TDS of each washout. Here are the results:

    Wash 1 - 907 ppm

    Wash 2 - 600 ppm

    Wash 3 - 229 ppm

    Wash 4 - 101 ppm

    Wash 5 - 50 ppm

    Wash 6 - 33 ppm

    Wash 7 - 27 ppm

    Wash 8 - 25 ppm

    Wash 9 -22 ppm

    Wash 10 -  21 ppm

    Considering I was washing with water at TDS 11 ppm, it took me two washes to get washout less than my tap water! It took five washes to get to the "magic" level of less that 50 ppm much after wash 6 there is no improvement. I may repeat this experiment with water at 0 TDS? Take 11 of the figures.

    Bottom line is wash your coir and wash it at least five times. After that it is fine. I have VFTs, Cephs, Sarrs in it but I kind of noticed the water in the trays going up  when I first started using it and I just flushed the pots through a couple of times with rainwater. TDS goes up with passage through peat too (a bit). I suggest the first wash of your coir is using tap water!

    Keep safe, and as Jeff and Dallas say...

    Happy Growing!

    Peace Adam x

     

     

     

     

     

  9. Cephalotus leaves, rhizomes and roots

    in Propagation

    Posted · Edited by Poppy
    grammer

    Hello Everyone

    I have been growing Cephalotus in the UK for over 25 years now but still no expert. I have done some Googling and there is often debate over what bit of the plant is which. For the purpose of this post I am referring to both leaves and traps as leaves. I have taken leaf cuttings in the past which you can do without disturbing the mother plant so much. I get around a 80-90% strike rate. However due to now living in a flat I don't have much windowsill room I don't take leaf cuttings anymore.

    I have a mother plant that I have had for ages and she was in a 4 inch (10 cm) and she is now in a 7 inch pot (18 cm).  I take cuttings when I repot. I mainly take crown divisions which I remove from the outer rim of the plant. Now when I say crown I mean a rosette of leaves attached to a structure that is creamy white to brown (which I shall call a rhizome) that is usually below the potting medium. Now sometimes this "rhizome" in a bigger plant can be dark brown and sometimes a bit hairy and partly above the potting medium. In both the cases the cutting may have roots, or may not. When I say "roots" I am referring to the thinner parts of the plant below the "rhizomes" usually the same colour. Now then I have this year in January I had 8 crown divisions all of which have taken and a few have put out some new growth.

    As a few bits fell off I tried to take three "root" cuttings and put them horizontally in a pot covered by a centimetre of potting medium. All three have struck and have popped small leaves above the surface. I now wish I had taken pictures but here is one I found that I think make my ramblings clearer, it is on the website below. On this website it talks about root cuttings but it then refers to them as rhizome cuttings interestingly.

    https://carnivorousplantresource.com/the-plants/australian-pitcher-plant/

    Any thoughts? I would appreciate any suggestions but a botanical slant would be good.

    Keep yourselves safe and happy growing

     

    Peace Adam

  10. Ikea Led Grow Lights - VÄXER

    in Terraria - Cultivation & Equipment

    Posted

    Hello,

    I am probably being really dumb, but can I ask if the person with the wonderful Heliamphora collection has their plants under the Vaxer LED's from IKEA or another setup?

    I have my mother Cephalotus under a single VÄXER LED bulb for cultivation PAR30 E27. This is a relatively new experiment maybe, two months now? She is in a 7-inch/18cm pot about 25cm from the bulb. Just putting on new spring growth now. I have a timer which I change to sunrise and sunset in the UK every week.

    https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/indoor-gardening/indoor-growing-cultivators/växer-led-bulb-for-cultivation-par30-e27-art-60317483/

    My sister's children bought me a BITTERGURKA Plant holder with LED cultivation bulb from IKEA at Chrismas 2018 which I now have a small Nepenthes ventricosa x maxima under (4-inch/10cm pot). Doing well, it is holding onto a pitcher produced early winter and seems to be forming two new pitchers since being under the light in the new year. The leaves (old and new) have coloured red since going under the lights. Again under the same timer as the Cephalotus. I know this is against convention but I only have one timer at the moment.

    https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/indoor-gardening/indoor-growing-cultivators/bittergurka-plant-holder-w-led-cultivation-bulb-art-50351689/

    So my take-home message is that in my limited experience these two luminaires seem suited for a specimen Ceph and a small hybrid Nepenthes. Both these plants are a long way from any natural light. I do worry about supply issues with IKEA, as in will I be able to get replacement bulbs in the future?

    Hope I have helped a bit but would love to know how others have fared with the IKEA LED cultivation lights.

    I will try and post the pictures tomorrow but the lights are off at the moment.

    Cheers Adam

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