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Drosera hydro-bucket

Indiana Gardener

Got Drosera?
For a couple of years since they were given to me I have been struggling with keeping my D. capensis wet, but not too wet. The main problem has been that the house is heated with wood heat. It evaporated their small dishes of water in no time flat.

Finally, I came up with this solution and it seems to be working for me. It's what I call my hydro-bucket. It's a bucket that has an approximately 3 gal capacity. I have about a 1 gal top off point between where it's pumping really well and then starts to slack off. This is a great improvement over the small dish method where I had barely a few ounce space of too much or too little.

The bucket is fairly simple in construction. It has 25 1" diameter holes in the lid drilled at even distances. Into these holes were placed 1" square pieces of foam rubber. They are each about 3" in length. Approx. 1/2" sticks above the lid and the rest is in the bucket. The tops of these sponges are covered by a blanket of java moss and algae.

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The lid is flooded by a constant supply of moving water by a lift tube of 1/2" pvc connected to flexible vinyl tubing rings. The lift tube is powered by both outlets of a Rena Air 400, a birthday gift from a friends some yrs back. One vinyl tube ring goes around the inside lip of the lid and another smaller ring is elevated off of a pvc T in the line feeding the larger ring. Both rings have 3/16" holes drilled ever couple of inches. There are holes drilled in the top for air outlets and holes drilled about 1/2" up the side of the tubing for water outlets. The water is brown due to an old sock that is filled with peat moss. It's sunken on the bottom of the bucket. It helps to condition the water to the plants' liking.

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The light is a simple clamp light fixture with a 100 watt equivalent compact florescent daylight bulb.

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They have been growing on this bucket lid for about 4 or 5 months now I think and seem quite happy. I have 17 new plants and the largest plant is sending up a flower spike with buds.

As soon as the 17 new plants get a bit bigger, I'll keep a few more myself to keep my planting going, but most I plan to share with new growers to help them out as I have been helped over the past couple yrs.


David
 
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David,
Nice Hydro set up! :clap:
Perhaps not for a living room... but the plants do seem to love it and THAT is the important thing!
It is always good to see people trying new things, and indeed necessity is the mother of invention!

So congrats on a nice job solving your dry-dew problem!
Nice home designed solution! :banana2:

BTW, if you are in Indiana, are you attending the North Central CP Meeting 2010?
http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121722
(See post 37 for poster.)

Would love to see you there...!
Paul :water:
 
I could put it in the living room and it wouldn't make a difference in the world. No one ever comes aver anyway. It would look a lot better if it was setting down inside of a decorative planter, had a way of hiding the drip rings, and had a better looking light. It could really be made to look a lot nicer if I had the stuff to do it with. I just made this with stuff I already had laying around out in the shed.

It's doubtful that I will be attending the meeting. Last I heard it was too close to Chicago to suit me. That city air is nasty stuff. Takes two days to recover when you're not used to it.


David
 
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