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Windowsill Setup w/Pics

JB in Utah

Come To The Light. . .
Well, it took me a while to figure out how to get my pics up but I pulled it off.

So, last year when the 'fever' set in, I tried to figure out the best way to grow CPs in my apartment, finally I concluded that the windowsill was the best option. This is all because of some nice early morning sun in our east-facing window. At first I tried watering trays and this worked for a while, then my collection grew larger than the windowsill. It was a mess, let's leave it at that.

One day I realized that I could make the windowsill bigger by adding a shelf. So I did that, except I took a $5 bathroom door mirror (the kind that are 4 feet long and about a foot wide) and mounted it on a 90 degree angle with the shelf, this was to maximize what little light the plants got (luckily the heat doesn't fry them with this mirror).

The only thing left was a counterweight, so I put this 27 pound brick on the shelf to hold it in the window sill. A couple planter trays later and viola! And for those of you wondering, yes I have very low humidity in my apartment, but the plants seem to enjoy it profusely.

I sacrificed some photo quality so this page wouldn't take forever to load.
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Bonus, here's my living room setup
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I'm going to add some input here. Frankly, the fork-leaved dew doesn't look like it's getting enough light. If the fork-leaved dew needs light, so will your cobra lily, VFT, dews, and all of your Sarrs. Put them outside if you can because they need more light than your average windowsill gets. The best candidates for windowsills are (IME and IMO) Nepenthes, and even then, I'd only recommend them for the sunniest southern windows.

Good luck with your plants in any case! :)
 
That's really nicely set up! I like the plants how you've arranged them.

I agree with clue though..why not hang a light up top to give them some supplemental lighting? Those pings should be pink around the edges, and that capensis should have more pink on it too.
 
I'd be more worried about the sarrs and VFT's. They like direct full sun all day. Do you have a balcony or patio?

I'm doing the windowsill thing for some of my plants too. The neps are doing great there, but my P. moranensis croaked on me. I'm hoping my south african dews will do OK in the windowsill over the winter- they're outside right now.

I like the darlingtonia. I'd like to try cobra plants outside next year and see how it goes.

Anyway, nice plants! Your purpurea is kicking butt!
 
Thanks for all of your comments and compliments! Okay, I'll try and answer some questions in this post.

Actually the windowsill gets about 6 hours of direct sun each day, more is always better, maybe when I move - VFTs, Darlingtonia californica and the D. Binata, and the Sarrs all , they have taken off this year - especially thanks to our cold winters that kept the windowsill supercold during the winter dormancy.

I'd love to put em outside but my apartment complex has automatic sprinklers (ultra hard water) and I do not have a patio. I just got the pings and Cape Sundew (death cube rescues) so that explains their lack of pigment.
I do, however, agree with clue and thez_yo about my S. rubra and S. x 'Cobra's Nest' although they are just starting to come into their color, we'll see how far that goes.

Also - if you saw the state of my Leuco outside, you'd agree the windowsill is a better option. since we don't get rain, I'd go through almost 30 gallons of distilled a month. We don't have money for a RO unit (I want it, I want it, I want it). But the best thing about all of this is that I'm not going to be in this apartment too much longer, it's one of those college necessities.

Later I'll try and post some pics from last year so you can see the difference.
 
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Actually the windowsill gets about 6 hours of direct sun each day...

...I'd love to put em outside but my apartment complex has automatic sprinklers (ultra hard water) and I do not have a patio...

Also - if you saw the state of my Leuco outside, you'd agree the windowsill is a better option. since we don't get rain, I'd go through almost 30 gallons of distilled a month. We don't have money for a RO unit (I want it, I want it, I want it). But the best thing about all of this is that I'm not going to be in this apartment too much longer, it's one of those college necessities.

Well, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, but add some artificial light. 6 hours IMO still isn't enough for great colors and growth... I'd say 12+ hours is better. You can find RO water dispensers at local grocery stores that (at least around here) have a gallon for 25 cents or so, which, IIRC, is much less expensive than distilled. ;)

30 gallons of distilled for your leuco? I'm using about 50 gallons a month in hot, dry, sunny CA for all of my plants, so 30 seems a bit much for one pot... Utah's drier, I presume?

Good luck bro! I wanna see how these guys look a few years down the road. :D
 
I tried RO water from the store but it had ill effects on my plants, I'm guessing the water company hasn't changed the filter for a while. My leuco only uses about 5-6 gallons a month in hot weather, my whole collection would require vastly more water if outside, currently my 20 or so plants indoors are on par with my 1 plant outdoors as far as water usage goes.
Oh, I forgot to mention that in Utah we have a very short growing season (that's frost-free) outside from mid-May to late-August early September (about 3 and half months of growth for my North American plants - nearly lost my tomatoes in early June due to frost) The windowsill helped last year's color peak around early October, plants went dormant in late November, and were back throughout February and March.
I'm just glad to be keeping my plants alive for once - many years ago when I was 12 and CPs were harder to find, I killed numerous VFTs, Neps, and Sundews very quickly, sometimes within weeks. But thanks to ingesting almost all of the CP info on the Internet and in various books by authors whom we all swear by - I can actually grow them, hooray!!!!!

Hey Clue, thanks for talking with me about these things, even if I'm a bit wordy.
I'll be sure to post pics later this year when everything has great color.
 
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