This has been a big week of potting, repotting, sowing seeds, and dividing. More work will be done tomorrow, but today I divided my big S. x readei.
I got 7 divisions out of it, many with multiple growth points, and a couple smaller ones. Even after taking the divisions the plant barely looks any smaller (which is a good thing.) After dividing it I moved it into a 15" pot from the 12" pot it was in. Should give it some room to grow for another year or two. I was quite disappointed to find some mealybugs at the root base. I was hoping that my doses of Orthene would've knocked them out, but nope. I killed the ones I did find, but I'm sure there are some more deeper inside the root ball and middle of the rhizome. I decided to keep the core of the plant intact for another year, I'll battle the mealybugs where I can. Next year I may have to break the whole plant apart to really clean it out which is a shame, I really like having one big mother rhizome. :-(
The new pot and the old.
What I started with.
LFS layer on the bottom to keep the peat moss from draining out of the hole.
After an hour of mixing and packing peat moss/sand, the pot was filled…and now weighs about 50 lbs. Oof.
Roots sticking out of the drainage hole in the old pot, time to move it to a bigger home!
Just a little root bound. The roots were lining the bottom and came back up the sides.
Fresh and delicious looking growth points.
6 of the 7 divisions I made. I got the 7th division by breaking a piece off the massive rhizome on the left.
A rhizome for TheCarnivoreGirl, YourRealMom, and Goodkoalie. One rhizome is being donated to Berkeley Horticultural to be added to their bog garden (quite an honor for me), one rhizome to giveaway here on TF (won by SubRosa), and one to give away on Sarracenia forums. The last rhizome (the big one on the left) I'm keeping for myself along with the little nub of a rhizome.
The mother plant all potted up in its new home.
Closeup of one of the divisions.
All 7 divisions bagged up before going to their new homes. The pitchers will get trimmed down before I ship them out.
I picked up a few sets of seeds from hcarlton that I sowed as well. I made two new triple tray sets, the red set contains three Drosera seeds and the white set my Utricularia.
From left to right.
D. spatulata "white flower"
D. burmannii "pilliga red"
D. x tokaiensis
The white triple tray set is for my Utricularia.
U. subulata on the left.
A pot full of U. bisquamata in the middle.
U. sandersonii will eventually reside in the right most pot, though it is empty right now.
The green pot at the end contains D. capensis 'Albino' seeds.
This week I won a division of S. alata var. nigrapupurea (a Mike Wang plant) and got it potted up.
Lastly, a quick update on the two death cube plants I picked up a a couple weeks ago. Both are showing a lot of red pigmentation now where there was none before.
VFT
The D. spatulata has had a pronounced change, it is MUCH more red now, but still has not produced any dew. Not terribly worried about the lack of dew as the sunlight hours are so few right now.
When I got it.
How it looks now.