Well, I've been watching this topic and thinking "I should really put my words in there!" but I'm far from a pro-grower, but I would say I've been successful. Although, I need to stop physicing myself out and do some transplanting and propagation attempts!
(heck - Andrew somehow found a way to keep them happy in the middle of the Arizona desert!!).
With that said, I guess I really need to get a post in
When I first got my plants from Blake when he drove down and visited me they looked like this (3/17/2009)
A better picture about 10 days later
I put them where I was growing my D. prolifera (second level shelf near the cooler) and pointed some cooler fins toward this area to make it a tad cooler than before. I would say this rack barely got any direct light, but if you know how twin wall poly works, you know it does pretty good at diffusing light for lower level shelves. It grew pretty good there, but I only really realize how good when I go back at look at the above picture!
By 4/6/09 I had something like this going on (note: the one I put in the little thing that I'm holding the lid up on, did not last... I did that in response to hearing about how they need such a high humidity level...)
By about 5/8/09 I had this going
By the end of Sept/start of Oct somewhere I was very kindly offered some more D. schizandra plantletts... Here are the new guys and my current ones at that time.
Then finally toward the end of October I had to rearrange my whole g/h set up in order to get ready for cooler temps. I heat one g/h and the other do not. For summer my highland plants were just on the south side of my main g/h (opposite of the schizzys) where they also get direct air from the swamp cooler... These areas do pretty good at staying just under 80f in the day and cooler at night so highland is actually working pretty good for me!
Anyway, highland plants were moved from the main g/h to my smaller one which mostly held sarrs, I also move most of my vfts here for dormancy. The humidity in the main g/h for some reason is much lower than the smaller g/h. During the day it is somewhere around 30% for the most part, and it of course rises at night to somewhere around 65+% Everything looks good so I've never really messed with the fogger timer or anything to bring it up. In the smaller g/h, the humidity tends to sit much higher but I can't say I've seen any difference in the schizandra since moving them. Over there they sit on a top shelf in direct sunlight, but there is less hours of good sun through the day since this g/h sits between two houses but some direct sun none the less and definitely plenty of light to color up my Sarrs if you've seen pictures before.
This is my D. schizandra as of just now... The day temps are about the same (around 80is or just below) and nights are even cooler since this g/h isn't heated cept by a oil filled heater to keep it around 40-45f or so.. but so far most nights in there have been around 55ish.
And here are some D. prolifera that I keep pretty much right next to it (and a D. adelae that doesn't seem to like the same spot and conditions as well).
I hope my experience on this very lovely plant can help someone out there in some way... And maybe give new found confidence in those who have written the plant off as a lost cause!
Andrew
PS- the dates are the best I can figure out, but no promise of their correctness!