Richard

Looks good Yossu. I feel your pain though, I assembled two, 10 X 6! The instructions where just diabolical so most of it was trial and error. We had to take bits apart as they where either assembled incorrectly or didn't go together quite as they should have. Now though you can start to enjoy it. What are you going to use as staging?

Spring has well and truly sprung. After 10 years away from the hobby, It has been painful waiting for my plants to wake up from dormancy but things are now exploding into growth. Vft's are unfurling new leaves, Sarracenia are budding and I've got my first leaf on my Drosera binata var multifida f. extrema. This is only a young root cutting so I'm quite excited that it's showing 24 points already! Should get more impressive as it matures.

Hi Deltatango. In your main Sarracenia list, only S oreophila x flava maxima needs to be moved. The other plants are all pure species. Hybrids should be designated with an 'X' . For example, the hybrid between Sarracenia rubra and Sarracenia purpurea can be shown as either: S x chelsoni S rubra x purpurea ( if the rubra was the seed bearing parent) S purpurea x rubra ( if the purpurea was the seed bearing parent). I do not know what the rules are when the seed bearing parent is unknown and the hybrid does not have a botanical name

U subulata has no problem reproducing and is one of the main 'weedy' utrics! To be fair, if it continued to produce full, proper flowers I wouldn't mind but once it gets to the weed stage it tends to produce cleistogamous flowers. These are flowers that aren't fully formed but still self pollinate and set seed.

Yossu, there is a membrane under the gravel to prevent weed growth.

Staging and first plants in!

Excellent, you'll see me (older and greyer) in June!

.

I remember those early open days and I've still got a group photo we did somewhere! I went to see Mike a couple of weeks ago, can't believe how the collection has grown. Do you still go along to the open days? Are there any other members from that time period still floating about? Does Andy Collins still run this site?

Alexis! You're still here then. Good to see a familiar name.

Just got to put the staging in and I'm ready. The top house will be home to Sarracenia and the bottom house for Dionaea / drosera and other misc items.

Have finally assembled ( and disassembled, and tweaked and adjusted and reassembled) my new greenhouses. They have been a total pain in the backside to put together (extremely poor instructions didn't help) but now they are up and ready to be filled. I've already made a very good start and would like to thank those who came clean on their promise even after 10 years ( I gave my more desirable plants away for free, in return for a small devision if I got back in the hobby). I cannot wait for the for the growing season to commence!

The Macroura is extremely easy. I usually grow it outdoors for the summer, twining up a tripod of canes. I usually chop it down to a more manageable size in winter and keep it somewhere frost free.

I grow a few Aristos myself. Is your fimbriata the silver veined form? I've only got the plain green form at the moment. I also grow A. Sempervirens A. Macroura And a hybrid between elegans and grandiflora I find them extremely easy to grow but have never succeeded in taking cuttings from them.

ITF, Green belt. Do you train?

Thanks all. Seems there must have been a forum cleanup at some point, i'm down to 146 posts. Im sure I had crossed the 1000 mark!

Hi all. It's been a long time since I was last on here, I joined the forum and helped moderate it when it was first created. I made lots of friends, many of whom I had the pleasure of meeting at various CPS meetings. I had quite a nice collection, mainly Sarracenia, Drosera and Utricularia but when I moved in with my partner in 2004 I had to reluctantly sell (and give away ... More on that later ) all of my collection. Fast Forward 11 years and we've now purchased a new house. Obviously, a nice sunny garden was top priority and even as we speak, two bases are being laid for my new greenhouses that will be arriving within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, the new greenhouses will be fully assembled just in time to have a collection by spring. Its been a long time since i've been able to enjoy Sarracenias in flower! Calling in an old favour.... When I sold my collection, there where a few choice / rare plants that were given free of charge to a few select people. This was done on the promise of a cutting being provided if ever I got back into the hobby. Its been 11 years so I won't hold you to it now, but if the people involved would like to honour the agreement (especially on my Pink Lipped Leucophylla :) ) I would be extremely grateful! I look forward to chatting to you all, i'm sure things must have changed quite a bit since I was last here!

Glad the plant is doing well for you! It is a very vigorous species. You will soon have a large clump! Rob, both the typical zebrina and var magniflora are extremely variable, but I suspect you have the typical form. Here are my two side by side: Huernia Zebrina by Coolsox, on Flickr

Another thing to remember is U. dichotoma has never been a sgy flowerer in my experience, especially if given a cool spell in winter. If you have one stem forming, you can almost guarantee there will be several (hundred) more over the next few weeks!

Here you go Geoff,

The url is correct so it may be that imagehost don't allow direct image linking. If I paste the url into my browser, the picture shows up fine.

If you only have a small pond you could give Utricularia australis a try. This looks very similar to vulgaris but is smaller in its parts (it seems though that a large portion of U. vulgaris sold in this country is in fact australis anyway!). I have this species happily romping away in the pond at my parents house. Once it has become established it does help maintain the water quality too. My pond houses a large lilly and a ton of pondweed but non of these seem to cause the bladderwort too much stress, and I regularly have to thin the stuff out! I can usually be seen at Mikes open day selling bags of the stuff! The only thing I have noticed is that mine has never flowered. This may be because my pond is in heavy shade, but I have had the plant for many years now and each spring more and more plants begin to float to the surface so it must be happy!

It depends what species of sundewss you are talking about. I have had success with keeping D. binata and all varieties except 'extrema', capensis, aliciae, capillaris and filliformis. All these except capillaris died down to either roots or in the case of filliformis, a hibernacula. other more tropical species wouldn't survive our temperatures in winter.

Another problem is that the wet conditions required by the plant soon causes clay pots to develop a thick green layer of slime, mould, moss and algae. After a few months it becomes very unnatractive!

I would think they will be fine if you put them out now. 3 weeks indoors is unlikemy to have altered the plants that much, and there is still time for the plant to re adjust.