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Share your worst plant disaster

  • Thread starter PlantAKiss
  • Start date

PlantAKiss

Moderator Schmoderator Fluorescent fluorite, Engl
Everybody who has been growing CPs for a while has experienced some kind of plant disaster whether by your own hand or "external forces beyond your control."

It can be very frustrating and disheartening at the time.  So I thought maybe if people shared some of their disaster stories (and any happy recoveries), it might give heart to anyone who's feeling bad about losing something special.  It happens to everyone from the newest newbie to the most experienced at one time or another.  In this sense, everyone is on the same level! And maybe we can learn some "to do"s or "NOT to do"s!

Maybe after everyone has shared, we can vote on who had the most tragic and/or funny story.  They can be crowned King/Queen of CP Disasters.  
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So...have at it!  Lets hear those stories.  
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Worst disaster huh? How about this. I was trying to cut a basal shoot off my N. Coccinea and in one nice swift motion cut off the main stem. Smooth huh? So, I now have two ft worth of stem lying on the ground, I felt pretty stupid. Anyways, I had just gotten the Savage Garden from the library and so I thought, "Aha! All is not lost! All I have to do is make cuttings!" Well, I tried to make cuttings. I failed miserably. The key thing I missed was the vertical slits up the sides of the stem. So, my one and only Nepenthes got a haircut that was way too short and I lost the opportunity for 10+ baby plants.

That was my worst mistake, so far. (Knock on wood).

SF
 
I guess the worst thing that's happened to my cps was really not that bad. I bought one of those tiered shelved greenhouses and put all my cps in it. I staked it to the ground so it wouldn't blow over. We had several 30-35 mph windstorms but nothing seemed to faze it. But then one night we had very strong winds, probably 60+ mph blowing west. The greenhouse broke in the middle and dumped my cps on the ground. I didn't lose any, except maybe 2 or 3 small vfts. Since the greenhouse was trashed i decided to buy a bigger sturdier one. So i got 6 ft x 4 ft x 6 ft tall one. It had 10" spikes on the posts that stuck in the ground. I even modified parts of it to make it even more sturdy. Then one night we got 2-3" of rain which saturated the ground. We again got strong westward winds, probably only 45-50 mph this time. And since the ground was so wet the stakes were easily pulled out of the ground by the wind. So then the greenhouse blow over and knocked my shelves over that my cps were sitting on. I only lost 2 small vfts this time. Both of these storms and cp dumpings occurred this past summer, about a month apart. This is part of the reason why i built an in the ground bog. Now if my green house blows 3 counties away nothing will bad will happen to my cps!


-buckeye
 
-My cat ate my U. humboldtii twice.
-A fungus rampaged through my Sarr collection and I lost a total of 7 plants
-The dog decided the U. gibba tray was good for drinking then flipping over and smearing all over the sunporch
-The batch of unmonitored kids at my old apartment complex stole my pineapple and S. oreophila and I didn't find them for 3 day (bare rooted and not happy at all.)
-The same brat kids knocked over my H. heterodoxa x minor that had 8" pitcher, it died not long after that.
- The A/C failed while I was away for 10 days and the room my CPs were in broke 120F, half of my (luckily at the time small) collection was roasted.
 
I lost all my standard U. livida, sandersonii, subulata
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! as well as my D. capensis
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and possibly my U.dichotoma
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I think something got in my water. The rest of my plants look really bad but are starting to comeback
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I think its my fault, I have been working way way to hard lately and wasnt paying attention, thankfully I did notice something was wrong before I lost all my rarer Utrics and Pings.... I didnt loose anything I cant easily replace!
 
Two springs ago I repotted two S. leucophyllas, and lost both of them. They were nice mature plants. However, my worst plant disaster would be the "barrel water purge" so commonly refered to by Homer and myself. One spring I was taking my plants out of dormancy and used water from my parents wine/wisky barrel fountain. The barrels had a lot of old leaves and other junk that had been sitting and saturating the water with nutrients. Never the less, I lost a few sarracenia and a few dorsera in this case.
 
Mine would be the dreaded "Micacle Gro" bog. I put together a third container bog for my back porch. I didn't notice the peat I was using was impregnated with Miracle Gro. I hadn't noticed there was such a thing as they also had peat with no Miracle Gro. I finally figured it out when everything started to die. I managed to save most of it, but lost a vft in the process.

Caplsock
 
A year ago we got a new "psycho napoleon complex" landlord where we lived. He destroyed the backyard, including my kiddie pool bog, cut down 8 maple trees, ripped out our gardens and put in, ugghhhhhh an asphalt parking lot.

Blue Jays dug out young pitcher plants from the pots on the 3rd floor fire escape and I found the plants dried up on the ground downstairs.

This spring our dog, Gypsy, learned a new game called grab the potted CPs and run around the yard then throw them up in the air and chew up the containers. Lost about 10 Sarracenia that way. She has made up for it by killing and keeping the squirrels at bay this fall. That's a MUCH better game.

WildBill
 
I like the way pyro list his darkhest hours, so I'll do it the same way, short and effective:

-The famous story of my roomate's cat which killed 25 of my D. dilato-petiolaris;
-Fungus gnats larvae rampage my pymies last winder; lost almost all my species (15)
-My cat chew up my N.alata cutting (my first nep) and my only 2 VFT when I started growing cp (It always the cat, so if you never had any problem with it yet, keep an eye on it, it is propably complotting against you!), and the numerous time it threw down the windowsill my pots (until he got fat and lazy);
-I put outside my Sarracenia during summer; all my seedlings were in pure sphagnum... When i got back home, half of my plants were bare root on the patio, knowcked by the sun; the birds came to take the mosses for their nest (you learn by your mistake... I've learned a lot these past years!) (They probably plotted this along with the cat ;))
-I always lost/erase/broke my labels... It is the worst to my eyes! Sarracenia seedlings are a pain to distinguish like this!
-the last one and the most recent: I traded a lot of CP during the last Rendez-Vous Horticole, at the Montreal Botanical garden, where I got some species I wanted for a while (you see it coming, huh?). 1 week later I was away for 3 months in New-Brunswick for my internship and a friend of mine took care of the cp. A huge aphids attack rampage the collection, and the only losses (fortunatly, they weren't numerous) were most of the plants I got (Brocchinia reducta, Genlisea, Pinguicula primuliflora, Heliamphora nutans), plus 3/4 of my Nepenthes (maxima, rafflesiana, pilosa x veitchii, stenophylla, reinwardtiana). That's all, I think, and I hope! (knock on wood too!)
 
  • #10
Well, this is a timely thread to post the photos i took 10 minutes ago.

But first, a photo from a couple months ago:

20030912-CP-U.sandersonii,U.livida,U.graminfolia,etc.-Squirrel%20damage,%20round%201.jpg


Those are (were?) my utrics after leaving them on my windowsill with the window open.  There is a fire escape outside my window, and i leave some sarrs there, but the squirrel climbed up the siding to my (third storey) window and dug up all the peaty pots of utrics
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.

I knew it was the squirrel, because a few mornings i awoke, startled, by motion at my windowsill as the squirrel peeped inside.  He would sit in the tree in the yard and beep mockingly at me, too.

He made a return visit a week later and finished the job (not that there was much more that he could do on the same pots).  I was, of course, furious
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, and frustrated
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that my supposed utopia of a new apartment with a sunny fire escape for plants was infested with CP-eating squirrels!

I hadn't any more encounters with the squirrel for a month, and assumed he had given up.   Then, the other day, a few of my sarr pots were knocked over.  That seemed odd for something the size of a squirrel, but not out of the question.

Then, i was repotting some plants in my room this evening, and thought i saw movement outside the window (it was dark).  "It's just the wind," i told myself.  

Then i was sure i heard something.  I rushed to the window and opened it, and there, on the fire escape (on the third floor), was a raccoon, trompling and mucking about in my sarrs!

He immediately slunk off when i opened the window...
20031110-da%23%%20raccoon-slinking%20off.jpg


... and sat there hanging on the fire escape as i tried to cut him off at the next floor down....
20031110-da%23%%20raccoon-glowering.jpg


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And when i didn't have the heart to carry out raccoonicide, i went back upstairs to check on the damages and he got away...
20031110-da%23%%20raccoon-got%20away.jpg


I wish i'd gotten a pic of him climbing down the ladders.

Three storeys of ladders, with a 2' drop off on each, in the middle of Boston/Cambridge.  It's almost like nature has some personal grudge against my plants
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My S. purpurea ssp venosa was one of the victims:
20031110-CP-S.purpurea%20ssp%20venosa-raccoon%20damage.jpg


My only other thing to list is that my big VFT (one of the first CPs i got when i started collecting 2-1/2 years ago) spontaneously self-destructed a few months ago, going from a beautiful plant to an empty pot in a couple months.
 
  • #11
this occured through sheer stupidity lol.
It was a nice day out, and it seemed perfect to give my cp's along with the bearded dragon a good sun bath. I took care to provide half the tank of the dragon with shade, but i neglected to do the same with the plants that were in terria's. BIG mistake. When I came back home, the dragon was fine, but all my terrarium plants were goners. I lost 80% of my neps, and a total of about 50% of my collection. Many plants came back from roots, but some rarer ones, like my south african drosera, were gone for ever. I rebuilt my collection, working with the lost drosera the most. Oddly enough, the bulk of the drosera lost were petiolaris dews, i thought they loved the heat lol.
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  • #12
WOW! And I thought that I had it bad...The worst that happened is that my rabbit eat alot of my vft leaves and traps...I was mad, but know consider myself lucky after reading these!
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  • #13
Better sit down, this is going to take awhile.  Back in 2001 I was acting on behalf of the Senior Seed analyst of the Idaho State Herbarium, assisting him in obtaining Drosera seed for a microdigital seed testa project from various quarters of the world.  This was part of a much larger work in constructing a "virtual herbarium".  In my search for rare seed I made the aquaintence of a grower in Australia willing to provide me with seed from known geographic localities in Australia: priceless!  It was a long hard search to find him, many letters were sent before I located him.  He sent me a wonderful assortment of seeds.  I might have been fined thousands of dollars if I had been caught without the proper papers, but back then I didn't know.  It was my intention to confirm their identity by growing them to sufficient size to make the determination.  For this purpose I bought the 1000 watt metal halide/high pressure sodium unit.  Upon learning of the necessity of using Giberellic Acid to enhance germination, I set out to purchase it.  The cost was then beyond my means, so I contacted my old botany professor from college who still taught at the local University here.  He put out a plea for me on the academic listserve which was answered by a pharmaceutical worker in Belgium (!) who said he could make the GA3 I needed.  A month later it arrived in the mail.  I got a pharmacist to cut it to the proper dilution (I was clueless).  Due to the number of species, I asked to use the University lab to have access to the test tubes and racks I needed.  Seed was stratified in numbered test tubes, recorded, and  then individually sown into pots placed in the cellar to meet the requirements of cold for good germination.  I was delighted that the effort of so many people all over the world would lead to some fine digital scans of Drosera seed testa to produce a worthy reference.  Some 2 weeks later I heard a crash in the cellar.  "No!" I thought, "it can't be that, it just can't!"  But friends, it was.  I turned on the light to see the guilty face of China Cat Sunflower: my cat, whom I *thought* was my friend.  "errr, sorry!", he said trying to dodge by me.  Why?  Why would the cat climb on top of  the old file cabinate to get at the tray the pots sat on?  There was no food, nothing to interest a cat, and not even easy to get up onto!  He had to have WORKED at it!  I concluded he was jealous of the whole deal and acted thusly to communicate this to me.  I chased him down and scruffed him, all the while singing a rather unpleasant song in his ear composed of small words rapidly strung together with deep feeling.  That night, he learned how to fly: out the back door in a remarkably FINE arc into a deep fluffy snow bank.  After this debacle, not ONE seed germinated (it wouldn't have mattered since I would have no assurance of what was what, so the project was worthless!)  The cat and I did not speak to each other for weeks.  Now anytime he watches me potting up things, I mutter "dont   even   think   about  it" through clenched teeth, and he immediately slinks off.  We are friends again though, but only my deepest affection for him kept him from lining my mittens that day.

Oh yes, I love cats!  Last winter when I was sick in bed for days with the flu the door to the growroom blew open after the cat was let in through that door. (Valerie still feels bad, but it wasn't her fault!)  Everything froze solid!  Then this summer, when things were starting to recover, the heat spell we had here polished off many weakened species.  The remainder were on shelves, which collapsed in early fall in a mess of shattered light tubes, plaster and peat muck....

If it wasn't for Plant-a-Kiss, and Pyro, Andrew, Joseph, and Ozzy and all my other CP friends worldwide (and I have many), I believe I'd have chucked everything onto the compost heap.  I was right *there*! They picked me up and dusted me off, and told me I couldn't quit and not to give up, that the lost plants would return again by some manner (and they were right!)

Then there all the individual acts of idiocy where I went to reach for something in the terrarium and broke once in a lifetime flower scapes I had been waiting years to see, uprooted nearly priceless plants by accident, found them bone dry and dead because I forgot I moved the pot, dug up by squirrels, pecked by birds, even crapped on by some animal......it's a wonder I have any plants at all!

Just remember, plants come and go, and they can always come again.  We've all been there.  Friends support friends and always seem to make it better with a little package in the mail and a shoulder to cry on.  It's all part of being a good CP'er: and the very best are right here on this Forum.  

It's also proof positive that the best way to keep your plants is to give them away: that way they can come back again if you lose them.


What's that sound!  I gotta go........!

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  • #14
Dormancy is my worst killer. The first year I got into CPs I bought a VFT, Darlingtonia, and a beutiful Sarracenia Purpurea 'Red Ruffles'. This was, for me, pre-Savage Garden and I was ignorant of the idea of a COLD dormancy. I knew of dormancy, and fearing that my plants would freeze I kept my plants in my Mom's nice and warm classroom. Not only did I have to answer a lot of questions by sixth graders I lost all of the plants. I really miss my Sarracenia Purpurea 'Red Ruffles', and I have yet to find another one. So there goes my first round. I found the Savage Garden and bought some more plants. The next dormancy went great all plants came back. Then this past year I put my plants in the same set up as I did the year before, but unlike the previous year it was a really cold winter for our area. So this year I lost all of them agian. They included my vft, S. leucophylla, and other Sarracenias. Lucky I was able to replace all this summer. So I yet agian face dormacy, but this year I think I'll place them in a set up in the well house or maybe perhapes a cold frame.

Also my cats have twice tiped plants of the table, but no loses due to that. Yet  
 
  • #15
Methinks that CP growers should not have cats.  It makes me mad just reading about the havoc they wreak on other's collections!  While i'm an acknowledged cat-hater, this thread is doing nothing to convince me that my deep-seated belief that cats are demons incarnate is rubbish.  C'mon people, where are your priorities?

Tamlin, that's terrible!
 
  • #16
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]dug up by squirrels, pecked by birds, even crapped on by some animal......it's a wonder I have any plants at all!

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(sorry for laughing William) My cat has actually not caused my plants any trouble, but I have been their greatest enemy.  My worst thing is forgeting to water them, I have lost 3 pots of sarracenia seedlings because of my stupidity.

Cole
 
  • #17
I lost 3 small pots of pygmy sundews this summer.  I thought that they needed to be dry, as in completely dry.  So, for days on end there they sat, frying in the hot afternoon sun in the kitchen windowsill.  I did manage to water them occasionally, but that was trivial.  For the past 2 months the 2" pots have sat in water.  What a way to go.  But I may be in luck!  There is a 1/16" diameter sundew that sprouted from the soil in the occidentalis ssp. occidentalis pot.  Hopefully, it won't turn out to be an opportunistic capensis!!

I am proud; however, to have been apart of the Great Barrel Water Purge of 2000 that Brisco225 mentioned beforehand.  It was a sight to behold!  Not only did many of his plants get wiped out in the 1st wave, there were residule effects for months/years? to come.  Spindly growth, deformed traps, you name it!
 
  • #18
We all know how painful these losses are at the time...but you just have to laugh at some of these stories!  
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  Dontcha just love kitties??  lol  

All the squirrel disasters...I feel your pain!  Most of my losses have come from squirrels.  I have a pecan tree in my yard which basically makes for a Gourmet Squirrel Diner in the fall ("Party at Suzanne's house!").  Many here have heard me cry over the squirrel issue time and again.  They just can't keep their grubbing little paws out of my pots!!  Any pot!  
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 As I write, there is potting soil all over my deck from the squirrels digging in the flower pots and flinging the dirt out.  I find pecans and acorns in them all the time.  They just tore up my pygmy pots...lost my scorpioides and others.  
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 But one of the events that hurt the most was...I was getting my VERY FIRST sarracenia flower this spring.  I went out eeeevery day and watched the flower scape grow...the bud form...and then soooo close to blooming.  Came home from work one night to find the flower bud neatly severed and laying on the deck wilted.  *CRY*  It was soooooo close!  And knowing it would be another YEAR before I'd have the chance again!  I nearly died.

My dog never caught/killed any squirrels except twice...oddly within a two week period.  The second one I discovered when I peeked in to see what was that grey lump was in one of my FLOWER POTS.  It may be a small bit of irony that Jonah had very neatly deposited his kill in one of the pots...maybe the same pot the squirrel had dug up in the past.  The nut burying pot became the squirrel burying pot.  HA!

But still...I just can't kill them.  
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 I might try fox urine but its expensive.  (Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd hear myself say).

Tamlin...your disaster had NATIONAL SCOPE!  
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  • #19
Ive never had any real "disasters" with my plants.. At least not on the scale of what Im seeing here..  Funny thing about the cat deal though, it seems the neighborhood cats are oblivious to my plants, they walk in and out of the area where the pots sit, in between and around without ever batting a whisker at them. But MY cat, the little orange plant chewer..   turn my back on her for 10 seconds with a plant in the house and you can bet your jelly beans shes gonna have her paws (and teeth) into it faster than you can scream GET THE #### OFF THE COUNTER!!!   Earlier this summer I got a batch of tiny plants in the mail which I potted up and left on the counter, They sat there fine all day long and I didnt really think much about them..  went off to bed..  had a good night sleep, got up in the morning and
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 1 spat completely gone...   1 chewed up, The capensis albino uprooted, chewed up and left for dead on the in the computer chair covered in cat hair. Then as I was cleaning up the mess and repotting the capensis, she jumped up and grabbed a mouthfull of the U. livida RIGHT BESIDE ME  
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ooohhhh she is brave... Needless to say I NEVER leave any plants unprotected around the house anymore  lol


Steve
 
  • #20
Who could hate this lil squirrel ?

who%20could%20hate%20squirrels.jpg


to you , cp enemy number one but to me , a lil fella that was in the wrong place at the wrong time with no mother to find food or water for . i found this poor lil fella at y uncles house , said that the dogs were going to kill him if he had not come in time and that he was skinny and that he must be starving . brought him home , rehabilitated him and the lil guy or girl i must say is on his way back to freedom where he can live on his own . now how could someone stay mad at squirrels now ehh
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. anyways , i have gotten a pot of cacti fall on the ground by a squirrel before and had to take a hard time repotting everything but i neevr witnessed it and my brother only told me so i have no clue . anwyays , my disastors have been :

- when i first started out with cps i kept them in hot steamy shade and they all wilted and died
- gave plants too much fertilizer ( one spoon per pot
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)
- mocking bird keeps pecking through my seedlings and flytraps , stole my p. moranensis as well
- plants got flooded in my tray and there was peat and plants floating everywhere
- some one a couple days ago knocked over my tray of seedling flytraps
- some of my trades were lost during shipping
- times where temperature got too high and humidity too low making my plants drie up
 
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