What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • #21
[b said:
Quote[/b] (JustLikeAPill @ Sep. 01 2006,8:07)]i'd love to see your growing area.. hint hint..
Hi Clint-- My growing area started out as a concrete backyard patio, just outside the back door of the house. It's about 14 x 14 feet square, and was never used for barbecues or backyard picnics because of all the flies around here (this dry region of eastern New Mexico has turned into a major dairy area--not that my VFTs complain).

So, we (the retired professor I live with and I) decided to frame in the patio and make it into a "sun room" or some such. The west wall is the outside brick wall of the house, the north wall has one window and an outside evaporative cooler ("swamp cooler," which works well in this arid region), and the east and south walls are all glass doors and windows.

The peaked roof has a north and south slope, with the ridge running east-west. The north slope is metal panel and the south is multiwall polycarbonate sheets (like the brand Lexan).

So the room gets plenty of sun, but by careful arrangement of the growing tables and plants, anything from almost constant full sun to bright complete shade can be accommodated.

The room is a tremendous solar mass, so even on the coldest days of winter it builds up a lot of heat, so on those days we just open the back door of the house and let the sunroom heat the house.
smile_m_32.gif


I have a Modine gas heater in the sunroom for chilly nights, and during the winter I set the thermostat for the mid to low 50s.

I place my VFTs and other plants that need winter dormancy on the floor during winter, next to a floor-to-ceiling south window that constantly sheds a sheet of cold air that washes over the plants when it's cold outside, but gives them light for photosynthesis during their dormancy. This way, the greenhouse is coldest on the floor, moderate 50s where the orchids and other non-dormancy-requiring plants grow, and warmer toward the top of course.

VFTs will happily accept a dormancy in which they get no colder than the low 50s to the 40s Fahrenheit, so long as most (but not necessarily all) of the hours of the day are in that temperature range. Typically our greenhouse heats into the 70s or even lower 80s on sunny winter days, but the VFTs don't break dormancy so long as they are kept in the coolest area (the floor), and so long as it gets chilly at night (40s - low-or-mid 50s).

Anyway, that's a description of my growing area. I grow a few orchids (which remind me of the rainforest of Peru, where I grew up), and Venus Flytraps and a few other CP, as well as our yearly vegetable seedlings which are later transplanted into the garden.

It works nice. The only plants that don't like the mid-to-low 50s temperatures in the greenhouse during the winter are the phalaenopsis orchids, which I bring into the house on a sunny windowsill or something for the winter.

Best wishes,

Steve / xscd
 
  • #22
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]
I respect your giveaways and your system (your specific PM title instruction sounds good too, EST) as I shared with you. (...) I have been growing my collection through the generosity of others and have also been making preparations to give away plants to "share the wealth." It needs to be simple for the giver.

That's the main thing I think. The person who is giving away plants has already done a lot of work growing and caring for them. And then they carefully pack and ship them. The person receiving the plants only pays a few dollars for shipping. So the process needs to be easy for the person doing most of the work (the generous plant-giver). It's astonishing then when people who are getting something for almost nothing become demanding, angry, selfish, etc.

But, that's not going to stop me from giving away my extra VFTs (and possibly other CP) now or in the future. I enjoy doing that. I'm just not going to pay much attention to people who act frustratingly like those who are described in the previous paragraph.
smile_m_32.gif


[b said:
Quote[/b] ]
I could not resist asking you about your conditions as I have NEVER received VFTs that looked that good!

Thanks! My basic approach with VFTs is this-- Allow them to grow conservatively, with plenty of sun and insect nutrition but not drowning in water. I aim for moist, not soggy, and never dry of course. When I do water, I water thoroughly until water seeps up all the way from the bottom (if I'm tray-watering) or spills out the hole at the bottom (if I'm top watering), but then I allow the planting medium to dry til just moist (unless the plants' top growth is obviously suffering from dehydration) before I water again.

This is just my opinion, and I know there is a lot of controversy about this topic, overwatering creates rapid but weak growth as the VFT stressfully tries to grow faster to accommodate the excess of water, while trying to avoid rotting from fungal infections that the extra moisture can promote.

Too much water can be stressful to a plant. They just need enough to remain hydrated, and if not overwatered they will develop a good root system to efficiently get just the water they want, instead of being forced to drink large amounts of water continuously.

I'm not suggesting to grow a Venus Flytrap like a cactus! But I never leave VFTs in a tray of water for long, with the rare exception of possibly doing so if I can't tend to them for several days during their growing season or if they are outside on a very hot sunny day, with perhaps a breeze (the wind where I live is very dry and dessicating--we even have ancient mummies in New Mexico from people who died and then dried out faster than they could rot).
smile_m_32.gif


I also give VFTs plenty of room for their roots to develop, which means planting them in pots that are 7-10 inches deep. Because those pots tend to be large, I plant a colony of 3-5 VFTs of the same variety in the pot, where they end up looking very nice.

For my baby divisions, when I repot in the Spring just when dormancy is breaking, I use cheap styrofoam beverage cups, the larger 16-ounce kind, and plant one young VFT division in each styrofoam cup, using 50%/50% sphagnum peat moss and blasting sand (silica sand only, no riverbed or sandbox sand).

I'm a firm believer in keeping the planting medium from getting too hot, which often happens when planting containers are exposed to full sun. I have actually baked and killed plants in the past, at this high altitude (4000 feet), simply by placing their containers outside for a few hours in the intense high-altitude sun.

I highly recommend styrofoam or other insulated containers for all VFTs (and I'll bet Darlingtonia would like them too--I will receive one soon and will try out this theory). Most of my larger planting containers are the new urethane foam planters that one can buy at Lowes or elsewhere. They work great and keep the soil down to a reasonable temperature without shocking the roots even when the plants are outside in full sun.

Well--I'm running out of words and getting hungry, so I guess I ought to cut this short.
smile.gif

Thanks for your comments. Best wishes,

Steve / xscd
 
  • #23
I think you provided a lot of valuable advice in that last post! Thanks for sharing.
smile.gif
 
  • #24
Always great to read the different techniques people use to successfully grow there plants.

Trust everyone knows my earlier post was fully "tongue in cheek".  Funny how Steve is giving away free plants and people still want custom orders.  And the "Giant All Red" I mentioned is the name of a VFT I already have..growing from seeds from Triffid Nursies......and yes it won't be true to the parent and yes it is not a registered cultivar.  


Thanks to Steve for his obvious generosity and good humour.
GARandSharksTooth.jpg
 
  • #25
Hey... have you been scarfing up display trays at Home Depot, too?

Strausplants002.jpg
 
  • #26
Now I'm almost sorry I started this rant of a discussion thread--
smile.gif

--because 3 of the people I have sent Venus Flytraps to have written private messages to me apologizing if I was offended by any questions they asked, etc.

The thing is, I enjoyed the communication with each of these three.

The people I was referring to are ones who probably wouldn't even consider writing to say they were sorry if they offended. So, I guess it's more the attitude of another person than their actual behavior that can become annoying or frustrating, and most of the people I have dealt with on TerraForums have been great.
smile.gif


(I'm not really sorry I started this discussion thread though, because I think that the main points I made in the first message were valid and still are. It's just that I'm sorry that it caused some good people to wonder if they had offended.)

Steve / xscd
 
  • #27
rainforests of peru! lucky! the only othe person i've met from Peru is my neighbor Myra
 
Back
Top