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Suggestions on this plant...

My girlfriend bought me a bunch of plants at Lowes when she was on vacation in Florida. This is the Darligtonia she bought for me.  It looks pretty healthy and I would like to keep it that way.  I know the roots need to stay cool. I now the potting mix needs to be loose and airy. Suggestions for lighting and any thing else I might need to know.

Also too, elgecko gave me some D. californica seeds and they have pretty much all germinated. I took them off the heting pad I had them on. They are currently inside and receiving only the light from grow bulbs and as well as cool fluorescent light bulbs.  Anything better I could do for these?  

Here's a photo of the plant April bought me-
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Healthy looking little cutie isn't it with new growth!
 
Nice little plant! I'll pass on advice as I'm a Cobra Killer. I'll stick with forgiving Sarracenia...
 
Hello Laura,
I would take it out of that plastic box and put it in a proper, round plastic pot(dont put it in a black pot because these have a habit of overheating)
The medium can be 100% Live Spaghnum Moss(it looks like its in this now) or 1:1 peat, perlite or 2:1:1 two parts peat, sand, perlite

On hot spring and summer days, store rainwater in the fridge so its nice and cool, and freeze some rainwater ice cubes in the freezer. Then flush the pot with the refrigiated water and place a few of the rainwater ice cubes on the soil surface;this will keep the roots cool all day.
I hope this helps!
Dino
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Oh, and for lighting....
They do not like midday sun, I dont think they like strong afternoon west sun either.
Therefore, you should avoid west and south facing windowsills completely. The best place for these plants are east facing windows, you can put them outside in summer but again, you need to avoid strong afternoon sun and midday sun.
 
Thank you very much Dino! I'll follow your advice on the lighting and pot but I sort of had a different idea for the potting medium. I have to think about this now. Do you grow these and if so what are you growing them in? My husband is on the way to HD to buy pots for these plants so I need to call him on the cell real quick and change my "pot" order. Gotta run.
 
I grow mine in 2:1:1 two parts peat, sand, perlite.
However, as I was potting it I ran out of sand when I filled the pot up 3/4 full.
So for the rest I mixed up 1:1 peat, perlite and topped it up.
I hope this helps!
Dino
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P.S
What was your original idea for the potting medium?
 
Hi Dino, I just found this bit of information from another source-
[/QUOTE]Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 19:11:55 -0800
From: "Michael Milstein" <xxxxxxx@msn.com>
Subject: [CP] Darlingtonia cultivation
To: <Cp@omnisterra.com>
Message-ID: <BAY9-DAV28D7F3E124680982A577BEA53A0@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1".
A low-maintenance way of growing Darlingtonia that has worked for me has been to take an undrained plastic pot or bucket and drill a hole about a third of the way up the side. Then I bury it in the ground up to the rim. I pot the Darlingtonia in an unglazed clay pot that fits inside the buried plastic container, with a few inches to spare all the way around the rim. Set the clay pot with Darlingtonia inside the buried container in the ground and water. The buried container fills with water up to the hole drilled in the side, which keeps it from overflowing. It's effectively the tray method, but underground. This keeps sun off the sides of the pot, which keeps it from heating up. Also, the ground is generally about 10-15 degrees cooler, so you're enjoying the same kind of cooling effect you get in caves. And the evaporation of water off the interior clay pot also cools things. I water like I do Sarracenias above ground, and Darlingtonia seems to do just fine even with air temperatures near 100. I have put ice cubes on it occasionally on real hot days, but I don't always do so. I'm not sure which element of this setup (the shade, evaporative cooling or ground temperature) has the biggest role, or if it's the combination of all three, but Darlingtonia has grown happily this way for three years now, and right now has two emerging blooms.
I happen to live very close to Darlingtonia's native range, so the weather is generally conducive. But they still need extra cooling, and usually grow around cool seeps in the wild.
The only real problem is that slugs like the cool, damp space between the two pots. They go in there and generally drown. So I occasionally have to remove the interior pot and scoop out the slug corpses and detritus. I also found a dead mouse in there once. I usually feed the slugs to the other CPs, but I may experiment with some kind of screening so as not to take a toll on other wildlife.
My idea for a potting mix was going to be perlite, LFS, and orchid bark.

Sorry, I tried to edit this to get all that was written by that person in quotes but it isn't working for some reason. The man had some very interesting ideas that I liked very much.
 
orchid bark in Darlingtonia mix? never heard of that before.......
I must agree, very intresting ideas but I have never heard of them before
 
I'm trying a Lowes rescued Darlingtonia in an improvised pond basket. So far, so good.

I took a 6 inch plastic pot and melted 1/4 inch holes spaced an inch apart all through the pot. I'm using the tray system, growing under lights, the soil is LFS & live LFS.

It's been about a month and a half - now it has 3 happy new hoods!

Good luck with it.
 
  • #10
Hmmm, I never did quite understand what you did to the pond basket. I did like the idea of the aquatic plant basket so I potted my plant in one. I used an 8" though as I didn't dare send my husband back to Home Depot again. I used 100% LFS as I figured what the heck, that sounded better than the idea I had. I did not have any live LFS though.  Right now, the aquatic basket is in that stainless steel bowl so that the LFS hydrates well. Tomorrow morning I'll take the pond basket out and rest it in that pyrex plate and add about an inch of water or so.

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Have you any ideas what I should do with my seedlings? They seem to be growing well.
 
  • #11
I had good success last year with my Darlingtonia's by putting them in one of those white shower baskets with all the drainage holes. I then planted them in a mix of LFS/sphagnum peat moss/vermiculite and red lava rock. I kept them out in full sun during 90* weather with and never once used frozen ice cubes or cool water and they grew like weeds. It's a pity I kept them too wet over winter and they rotted. I am pretty sure the trick to growing these awesomely in the sun is to give them an extremely loose/airy mix so their roots can breathe and get oxygen.
 
  • #12
Looks nice -

I have 8 inch pond baskets that are still on "backorder" from a mail order company. So, I used the soldering iron to melt/poke holes all over a regular ol' plastic pot to make something similar.
 
  • #13
Looks as if quite a few people are electing to use "ventilated" pots. Now I understand what you did to your pot. You made your own aquatic basket. I have two more actual aquatic baskets the same size. Do you need them? I will not be getting another mature Darlingtonia so it would be no problem to send them your way. I think they came from Home Depot of all places if that helps but Menards carried them also. They were very affordable.
 
  • #14
[b said:
Quote[/b] (LauraZ5 @ April 04 2005,12:33)]Looks as if quite a few people are electing to use "ventilated" pots. Now I understand what you did to your pot. You made your own aquatic basket. I have two more actual aquatic baskets the same size. Do you need them? I will not be getting another mature Darlingtonia so it would be no problem to send them your way.  I think they came from Home Depot of all places if that helps but Menards carried them also. They were very affordable.
The aquatic baskets I would assume are allright however I generally shy away because they are usually black which absorbs heat. But I don't think they would absorb so much as to kill a plant unless you lived in like Tuscon arizona or something.
 
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