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.

Neostylis Lou Sneary 'Bluebird'

This little mini is a hybrid of Neofinetia falcata crossed with Rhynchostylis coelestis.

With the new genus lumping this one is now Vandachostylis Lou Sneary 'Bluebird'. Good luck getting the Neofinetia fans to start calling them Vanda anytime soon.

Anyway, I've had this plant for a good few years now. Picked it up from Waldor Orchid's booth at The Philiadelphia Flower show the first time we went. It's a clump of 4 growths now. Maybe when more growths are mature I'll have a really good showing of flowers, but in the mean time it smells great and blooms reliably every year with no special effort on my part.

The camera really picked up the iridescent blue, especially under the T5's. It's more of a lavender tone in natural lighting, but I've come to the conclusion that my camera cannot capture pinks, purples, and blues correctly and have given up trying.

GROW TENT!

As I was making plans to set up a small shelving unit and some lights for the more cold sensitive Nepenthes and orchids, my husband got me this for my Christmas gift before I went out and spent money on stuff we didn't need. It's a grow tent!

It's still in the 70's and 80's F here during the day, 50's and 60's at night, but after hauling everything in and back out for the brief cold snap we had I decided to plan for this winter early. Now "winter" here is not cold, not by any stretch of the imagination for someone from New York. It's doesn't snow, but we do get an occasional frost in January and February. It's a light ground covering, never frosted on the deck, but still cold enough to do some damage to more tropical species. I never thought the husband would let me have something this large though. I guess he really was sick of seeing the bathroom and kitchen covered in plants on nights that got too cold! I should've taken pictures of the construction with a real camera, but I was trying to help in between jumping up and down and talking too fast about all the plans I was making for it. Anyway, here are some quick iPhone pics in the mean time. I'll take another round of photos when it's all set up and all the plants are in there. I'm still planning out what I want to go where.

Here's the breakdown of what it is so far:

• GrowLab GL80L Growtent (4'11" x 2'7" x 6'7")
• Quantum BadBoy T5, 8 bulb fixture [mix of 3400 (2), 6500 (4), and 10000 (2) K bulbs]
• 4 Tier polished chrome finish shelving unit (Styleselections brand, not that that really matters)

Now, what I still need is an exhaust fan. The Quantum BadBoy is a good replacement for the sun in light, and unfortunately heat.

The tent has more than enough vents and I may be able to get away with the clip on fan I already have for fresh air intake. So there's still some experimentation to be done, and some shuffing of things around. I may also get some horticultural lattice to hang my mounted orchids and bromeliads on the side(s), and possibly another smaller shelving unit. I don't know, I'll figure it out as I go, but suggestions are welcome. Updates to come, moving the last of everything in this week.

Quick photo, getting set up. House cat for scale: