Parodia werneri ssp. werneri: 1st Cactus Bloom This Year

 Love this cactus, total of 8 flowers this round of blooming. Lots of other cacti budding up now...

Doesn't it look nice even when the flowers are starting to wilt? Like it's wearing a purple crown.

By Request: "How's Your Robcantleyi Doing?"

I do take requests for this blog and the most common one I get is for how my Nepenthes robcantleyi 'Queen of Hearts' x 'King of Spades' is doing for me and how I'm growing it. This being among the "newer" Nepenthes on the market, most hobbyists have not grown it to maturity yet and many are still figuring out how to best grow it at all.

N. robcantleyi 'Queen of Hearts' x 'King of Spades'

Here's what I've found out about mine. 

1.) It likes it's media wet.

Like really wet, wet. I've partially by accident, because it's been on a rack with another plant overhead, been watering it (from what I consider, having grown Nepenthes for many years now) too much. It seemed happy when I looked at it so I let the plant above continue to drip extra water onto robcantleyi. It's now growing better than it ever has.

2.) It has always grown better for me under artificial lighting in a semi-closed environment.

Back when I first got my robcantleyi it was expensive, still maybe the most I've ever spent on one Nepenthes. So I chose to grow it in with my Drosera and mini orchids in a 10 gallon terrarium. It grew well, and pitchered on every leaf in there. Then it outgrew my tiny terrarium and I grew it on a rack in a window or outdoors after that. It rarely pitchered and seemed to be susceptible to every mite attack possible. It looked and grew like crap, even when I wasn't stalling it out with pesticide. This winter when I brought everything inside for the colder weather I had the luxury of a grow tent. It's now growing better than it ever has.

This leads me to believe one of two things. Either it's the amount of light or it's the consistent temperarures. Or maybe a combination of both. The tent is consistent like the tank was back in the day. Warm, 85 F/29 C during the day, and room temperature, about 70 F/ 21 C at night. I would call that intermediate temperatures. Robcantleyi seems to be ok with this. 

Robcantleyi was not ok with the heat when I attempted to grow it outside here over the last year. It tends to be 90's F/ 30's C during the day and 80's F/ 20's C at night for months. Robcantleyi grew very slow with funky shaped leaves and small pitchers. Not happy, so back indoors it went.

On the other hand, robcantleyi does seem to be ok with inconsistent, wild swings in humidity. I am not the most diligent water-er and I tend to underwater by choice rather than over-water and rot something. Thus the tent has high humidity when I water and for a day or two afterward, then the humidity drops into the 40-50% range for a few days before I water again. The same went for the old tank.

So for all of you that have asked me how my robcantleyi is doing. The answer now is great. I hope what I have discovered about growing this Nepenthes is somewhat helpful to others. Now I don't advocate for any of the above methods for successfully growing yours, this is just what I've found mine to consistently like over it's lifespan and travels since 2010 with me. This being a seed grown plant it may be a stronger or worse grower than yours, or maybe it's pickier or more tolerant than yours.

Oldest picture I could find of robcantleyi in the 10 gallon terrarium, 3.5" pot, late 2010/early 2011. Drosera for scale.

Summer 2012, 6" pot, outdoors in NY

N. robcantleyi 'Queen of Hearts' x 'King of Spades' today. Had to wash it out a bit with the light, otherwise it was hard to capture the detail against the black pot.

N. robcantleyi, 4/6/14

iPhone photo, captures the color better than my digital camera

I'm excited to see what it looks like next year!

Spring Sarracenia 2014

The Sarracenia and Flytraps are all budded up, it's officially spring!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'. This is it's first flower for me, so I'm super excited to see it in all it's mutant glory!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' bud

Next up, but much further behind, is Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora Red Tube.

Sarracenia flava. var rubricorpora

This year we also have some new additions to the family. You know those "Bug Biting Plants terrarium set," sold in Lowes this time of year? More on this in another post. Well, I decided to buy one because I didn't have the Sarracenia in the kit already in my collection. The kit comes with a dormant rhizome of a flytrap (and despite what the package leads you to believe picture wise,) a Sarracenia rubra rhizome. According to the internet identifiers, it's S. rubra ssp. rubra, however AG3 just lists this as S. rubra, so I'll wait for a flower + mature plant to ID. There's also reports of a green flower, which means it may be a rubra hybrid or even a mutation.

I made this first pot with the original box I bought. The flytrap isn't much to see at the moment but the Sarracenia rubra has the tiniest little flower bud I have ever seen on a Sarracenia!

S. rubra

Isn't it cute, next to such a tiny pitcher?

Then, one of the Lowe's here had started putting the kits on sale already so I picked up a few more. Mostly because I'm a total nut, I decided to go back and buy all the kits on sale. I gave the flytraps away and made a big community pot of all the Sarracenia. They are all a bit light deprived and squiggly from trying to grow in a small sealed package.

S. rubra compot

There's a few buds in there.

My Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa may not flower this year. It had started to dehydrate for no apparent good reason, so I unpotted it to find some mold and some evidence of insects munching on it. I treated it for both and it's now growing again, but I don't expect flowers unfortunately. I decided to forgo flowers for the flytraps and cut them all off. A healthy flytrap can flower and make decent sized traps throughout the year, but I decided to try and do some stem propagation with the flower stems instead. I have never had much luck trying this in the past, so I'm trying it differently every year until something works and I can claim some skill in this area.

Happy Spring! Wishing you all a productive growing year!

A Few of the Latest Nepenthes Pitchers

Nepenthes rafflesiana (q) squat x var. alata

Nepenthes sumatrana, juvenile pitcher

Nepenthes veitchii Pink

Not much to see yet, but the Nepenthes peltata I got last summer has colored up nicely and is starting to put out bigger leaves. I'm still not sure about how this one will do here, but it seems to do fine with intermediate/lowland conditions in the tent so far.

Nepenthes peltata (BE clone 3464)

Nepenthes peltata, juvienile pitcher

Phalaenopsis Blooming This Year

Just a few pictures, as all my spring blooming Phalaenopsis are flowering at the same time again this year.

Phalaenopsis stuartiana

Variegated Phalaenopsis NoID 

Medium Phalaenopsis NoID

Pink flowering mini Phal NoID

Another Death Cube Carnivore!

I've been to Lowe's and Home Depot's a lot lately picking up things like timers and extension cords for the grow tent. A day before Valentine's Day, in with the pink Phalaenopsis and pink Bromeliads for the holiday was a big new shipment of Death Cube carnivorous plants. I'm not sure how that made sense, to have flytraps and pitcherplants in a Valentine's Day display, (unless we're talking metaphors here, but I doubt it in this context.) I am glad I took a minute to look through the boxes while I was there though.

Score! Happy Valentine's Day to me!

Both the Internet and Instagram seem to agree at this point that I've got a baby Nepenthes sanguinea.

I initially grabbed the box thinking it was something I already had and I'd be able to trade it or re-home it easily, but now I'm keeping it. The box's label on the back has "Nepenthes ventricosa," just like the one I got 2 summers ago, but when I opened it up and looked at it, it's clearly not. Botanical Wonders only sells so many species clones, so I guess there's no point on their end to label each one correctly for the mass market.

Be warned, if you decide to buy one of these, they have a minimal root system out of the box. This is my 3rd Death Cube Nepenthes and every one has looked like this picture below. I cleaned it up a bit before I took this picture, but it looks like they leave the taproot intact and cut off all the feeder roots to fit it in the pot.

Now it's repotted nicely, and ready to grow. Hopefully I'll have some nice orange, spotty pitchers in a few months when this little guy adjusts and gets some more roots out.

Updates on everything, including the growtent to come. My laptop, a red acer netbook died recently and I've been legitimately upset over it. They've stopped making them as the trend has been going to notebooks, iPads, and Chromebooks instead. I just wanted to replace it with another of the same, or fix it, and until I was positive neither was an option I didn't buy a new anything. RIP "Little Red," I feel like I should bury you out of respect for the years of excellent service and companionship, but I can't. I finally bought a new laptop, so once I get all my pictures organized again, I'll be posting more often.