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  • #141
Man I wish my adelaes would grow like that! Superb photos Reaper!
 
  • #142
Thanks, everyone.

@mass: the weather's still looking pretty crappy. Lows right around 40. ;c But I'll get your D. adelaes out as soon as possible. ^.~
 
  • #143
Thanks, everyone.

@mass: the weather's still looking pretty crappy. Lows right around 40. ;c But I'll get your D. adelaes out as soon as possible. ^.~

only in the 30*s here.. spring will be upon us soon enough.
 
  • #144
Your plants rock yer mai manbeast
 
  • #146
LOL, lime.

Thanks, guys!
 
  • #147
And THAT, is why I love sundews... glisteningly morbid :')
 
  • #148
I'm finally running into some problems with my plants. First, a couple random pics, then they pics of the issues and a cry for help. :cry:

Click on any image for full-size.


Pinguicula primuliflora.


The sphagnum chamber coming along alright.


Now for the issues. First up, my Nepenthes ventricosa has some leaf issues going on.





Any ideas?


And the issue I'm more worried about: I discovered my minibog has an aphid infestation. I can only imagine it's because I took it outside a while ago for a photoshoot in the sun. Must have picked them up out there. But now they're everywhere. Again, click any image for full-size (useful to see the aphids in better detail).

This is a shot I took before I realized:


And this is it zoomed up. Notice the aphids on the Utricularia bisquamata stalks:


Here's a screwed up leaf on a Drosera capensis (I noticed after the shot the aphid on the petiole in the background):


The back of a Drosera capensis "Broad Leaf" leaf:


The bugs themselves:



Now I'm not familiar at all with pests, so please correct me if the following logic is unsound: They don't have 8 legs (they have 6), so they're not mites. They don't jump, so they're not springtails. And they look an awful lot like the aphids I see in macro shots on the web.

Now, what the heck do I do with them? They're all over my dews, so I'm hesitant to try spraying anything on them. The first thing that came to mind was to attempt to fumigate it, but that seems extreme. The thing is, I've sprayed water on my D. adelae only to find them burned all to crap a few days later. >.<

So far, chibae has recommended neem oil and seedjar has recommended diluted rubbing alcohol. Anything else?

Please help? ;c
 
  • #150
Get a bag of ladybugs for the aphids... they'll make quick work of it because they LOVE those guys!
 
  • #151
Watching that vid now, tommyr, thanks.

@thez: That was my wife's first recommendation. I figured they might make quick work of the aphids, but the plants might make quick work of the ladybugs first! What'ya think?
 
  • #152
yeah... we tried tried the ladybugs in our greenhouse and they went straight for the sarrs. The praying mantis worked better.
 
  • #153
Your purps will be having indigestion and puking up ladybugs for *months* :lol:
 
  • #154
Haha! I'm thinking I'm going to start out with an organic spray (such as neem) on one or two plants and see what happens.

Humorously, I've been feeding the aphids to my seedlings, pygmies, and one Ping. Play with fire, you're gonna get burned!
 
  • #155
Doktor Doom

This stuff will kill everything but your plants;). The active ingredient is pyrethrin and it works fast.
 
  • #156
looks like a lab of illicit activities in disguise as a plant spot JK
 
  • #157
I'm sorry but I think your two ventricosa leaves are suffering from a terminal condition known as old age xD New growth seems healthy, I wouldn't worry :p

As for the aphids issue, I found the little buggers infesting my VFTs and some sundews. A pyrethrine based insecticide spray worked wonders and they've all perked up since. I couldn't find neem oil locally though, but that definitely sounds like an environment friendlier solution if you can get some. Keep us updated and good luck :D
 
  • #158
Man, I use this stuff called Green Light Fruit Tree Spray on mine. It's mainly neem oil and pyrethrines. The stuff even smells like oranges! I must be using it wrong, though, because new aphid infestations just keep popping up in random pots! SO FRUSTRATING. I can't get into every crevice and under every leaf, and wouldn't you know, it's exactly the spot where those :censor: little :censor:s choose to lay their evil, evil eggs.
 
  • #159
So, the aphid infestation hasn't seen much change. I'm testing an imidacloprid insecticide on some plants. A day after application, I'm still finding live aphids. But I also found a leaf covered in dead ones, so maybe it just needs a little more time, being a systemic.

In other news, I chopped all the bog grass down to the soil level to cripple it until I give the entire bog new media and can get it all out. I also ripped a few of the small chunks out and that was a serious chore - the stuff has a root system unlike anything I've ever seen. I'm sure, as suggested by seedjar, the grass is choking the heck out of the other plants in the bog, so it's done taking up residence in my bog. My D. adelae, across the entire bog, has seen some decline recently, and pretty serious decline in some areas. I can only attribute it to the grass. So what I'm going to do, probably next week once finals are over and I'm in for summer break (woo!), is rip EVERYTHING out of the bog and dump all the media. While everything's out, it will all be thoroughly inspected for aphids and, if even one is spotted on the plant, sprayed with insecticide. Then everything goes back into the bog with new media - that friggin' grass all gone.

On that note: does anyone have any advice on how to keep all the plants from being dried up (the roots) while they're out of the soil? Can I do something like put them all on a wet towel and put wet paper towels over the roots? That's essentially how I ship bare-root, so I figure it should be fine for a few hours that way.

Also in other news, while I was pulling up some of the grass, the entire chunk of media lifted up with it (yes, the root system on that grass is insane enough to essentially turn the entire bog into one big block of peat and perlite). Figured I'd take the opportunity to poke around. I saw about eight gazillion D. adelae babies growing from roots smashed up against the (clear) side of the bog. Took those out and stuck them in my sphagnum chamber - a move I will, no doubt, end up regretting. I also found a couple D. adelae roots that were a good 12" long, so I chopped those off and snipped them into 1" segments for propagation. Hopefully I'll be able to do a big ol' D. adelae giveaway in a couple months. Here's a couple shots of some of the funky growth that was going on under the soil level (ignore the dirty finger(nail)s, you understand. ;p


That's a plant growing on the end of a leaf... Drosera adeliflora? XD


Big ol' clump of babies.


We'll see how things go over the next few weeks...
 
  • #160
The ant got away... bah...

Also, I screwed up the image resizing, so definition may not be stellar. I think I might be starting to get the hang of this, though. Time to get better software than Windows Movie Maker.

A number of things went wrong with this one, so I'm not proud of it, but oh well.

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cKFlRk8YFo0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Music is Schubert's Serenada.
 
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