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Coffee Treatment Curiosity . . .

For those who have been espousing the "coffee treatment" for their Nepenthes, I have been wondering whether the particular composts or age of the materials has had any bearing on the success (or failure) of that treatment -- whether the plants were in either long-fiber sphagnum moss, orchid / cypress bark, or even peat-based mixes?

Were they all equally successful?
 
My mix is cocochips and some lfs thrown in, with a handful of perlite here or there if the mood strikes me. Most have a layer of lfs on top that completely dries out between waterings (think: crispy). Also, in mixes between a year and a week old.
 
My mix is 1:1 LFS/perlite.. mixed fresh daily. And thus far I've had nothing but success.
 
I just treated my ventricosa with coffee the other day so in a few days I'll update on how second run french press is for my nep.

1000 posts wooooot BigBella! haha
 
my girl dropped and broke the coffee pot today.. going to see how they react to NO coffee for awhile. :-(
 
It would be interesting to see a real experiment on this....not the old "ventricosa before coffee...ventricosa after coffee". It means 0 to me.
If you really want to see if it works or not take 2 plants, have them grow next to each other in same mix in different pots and give one the coffee and let the other alone....and then compare. That's how one should make an experiment...
Well BB, after the succesful ceph stalk experiment i think it's time you show us if this one works.
 
I have most of my Neps in a perlite/LFS mix but have some in peat moss/perlite/LFS mix and LFS/orchid bark and have had EQUAL successful results with all of them using the coffee treatment. My usual results have been a doubling in the leaf size about 2-3 months after treatment and a CLEAR increase in pitcher height and size with each new formed pitcher. I've yet to see any ill effects of coffee (when used correctly).
 
  • #10
My usual results have been a doubling in the leaf size about 2-3 months after treatment and a CLEAR increase in pitcher height and size with each new formed pitcher.

That's great and I don't doubt there is a benefit. I have always said all along that Nepenthes need food just like any other plant. Especially those grown indoors in 'soilless' mixes where they are unable to catch their own food naturally and are watered with very pure water. Whether it's organic or inorganic fertilizer food of some sort into the pitchers .. whatever. The plants will respond considerably. Consider coffee is a bean and loaded with nutrients and minerals for what would normally be a young coffee plant. It is not surprising that brewed coffee has many of these same compounds.. In effect making an organic fertilizer.

What Mark is saying and I understand. Without running a side by side comparison you can't say with certainty the coffee was the reason. Maybe the plant would have grown that much if you hadn't given it any? Maybe not.. but there is no way to tell for certain. You can't roll back the clock and see how much that plant would have developed during the same period without the the coffee treatment. Even a side by side comparision is not a 100% certainty because maybe one plant is just more vigorous than the other... anyway...

If you are not feeding your plants in some fashion, consider doing so. It doesn't take much. Play it safe and slow. Just a freeze dried cricket, bloodworms, mealworms into the open pitchers a couple times a month will really help if the plants are malnourished.
 
  • #11
Feeding?...absolutely!!!
Coffee?....maybe!
I'm just calling out these so-called experiments. You are absolutely right about 2 plants side by side not growing at the same rate...but that's probably the closest you can get. One other thing i see in these "experiments" are small plants which are close to that point in growth when they just explode and double the leaf size from one to the next one. But it couldn't be that, could it?
 
  • #12
Absolutely Tony, I couldn't agree more that feeding is essential. The feeding is only a replica of what would otherwise naturally occur in the wild. The pitchers are there for a reason ;) I use coffee twice a year and dried bloodworms every other month. In addition to what I stated earlier following leaf production seems to be much greener and has a much healthier look than the leaves before treatment. Coffee has long been advocated as a fertilizer plants, not just Nepenthes. This is by no means a recent discovery but even using google scholar I have not been able to find official reports. My JSTOR account also only pulls up limited results.

I also agree with you Mark, a more 'official' study is needed and I would very much be interested in reading it over. I am hoping to see sometime in the future something in the ICPS about it similar to the Osmocote on Sarracenia seedlings in the ICPS newsletter.
I am rooting a few basals at the moment which I hope soon to be able to use in order to run a comparison of the two treatments. With these basals we will know for sure that the plants are identical in every way. I have used the treatment on seedlings as well as mature plants with similar results in both cases but again too many uncontrolled factors can or may come into play. Wonder if we can place such a request to the ICPS or at least someone that would have multiple specimens up for such a test?
 
  • #13
I have my ventricosa in pure peat moss. Nothing spectacular about the coffee treatment I gave it a few months ago. If there was a benefit it must have just gone to producing the flower. ???
 
  • #14
I'm just calling out these so-called experiments.

Hehe - reader beware! Just because someone calls it an experiment doesn't mean it will be rigorous or reproducible in the tradition of the Western scientific method. An experiment is just a test in the vocabulary of most people. Sometimes if you've been in a lab/academic environment for a long time it can be easy to forget... I know I certainly do sometimes. Lately, I've tried to condition myself not to expect a controlled experiment until I see a real lab sheet. And even then, I'm dubious.
For day-to-day learning, I like Popper's philosophy. I've yet to falsify the notion that coffee is an effective fertilizer; it certainly has never appeared harmful in my experience, and only rarely/questionably so for others, according to my research. I don't know that it's good, but I'm pretty sure it's not bad, and it's cheap enough that using it is a totally negligible expense. (I get my grounds for free - the only cost is the time it takes to apply.) I'd love to test it formally but I don't have the time, money or endurance to run a satisfying trial with a large enough sample to weed out coincidences and experimental errors.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to set me up with some seeds and a stipend, I'm open to negotiation. :D
~Joe
 
  • #15
I've tried different mediums over time and so I have plants growing in a variety of different mixes, It doesn't seem to matter whether it contains cypress mulch, coconut chips, LF sphagnum, peat, perlite, or diatomite, So far I get the same phenomenal response to even one application of coffee.
 
  • #16
what is the coffee treatment? I can just imagine my neps not being able to sleep and bouncing off the walls.
I think that feeding them grubs and caterpillers from my garden is great. It teachs them (the bugs) for trying to eat my plants. Pitchers must get feed somehow as they are expensive for the plants to produce, I imagine. Im sure this debate is going be like the whole superthrive thing.
 
  • #17
I've decided to try a bit of the java on a nep that is struggling a bit to pitcher. I'll let you guys know how it works.
 
  • #18
I have an N. 'Red Dragon' growing in pure lfs (That's how it was shipped to me and i haven't seen the need to repot yet) that I gave the cofee treatment last month (12oz very strong cold black coffee). The plant is growing in a west window and gets 2-4 hrs direct sun, as well as 2-4 hrs supplemental lighting from a 23w cfl 2-3 in from the plant. I also give the plant a good soaking of schultz african violet food at 25% strength every fortnight or so. And the plantgets fed heavily with carpenter ants. The results so far have been favorable, the latest leaf is 2 inches longer (6in vs. 4) and the tendril is about 2x as thick, I'm hoping this means the pitcher will be larger when it opens?
 
  • #19
IMHO, the reason so many get such results from coffee is that the plant is basically starving. 0ppm water is not natural, neither is the critically low amount of nutrients found in common cp substrates used by hobbyist.

There is plenty of good peer review research on this subject. One striking example is Cephalotus. Cephalotus gets as much as 70% of its nutrient ions from its roots, it loves to be root fed, especially when young. I root feed mine all the time and they love it.
Their root based nutrient uptake is also tied to pitcher intake once the plant has at least 4 pitchers. So its not an either/or situation, it's a balancing act that is regulated by pitcher phosphorous intake IIRC (I would have to dig through my notes for the specifics) .

You cant dump a bunch of plant food on something that is getting poor light, or one that is lacking in another area and expect it to be able to utilize the nutrients. It has to be treated as a inter-related dynamic variable, not a static one.

Lubomír Adamec has done some great research into this subject. Every CP grower should read his work. If nothing else at least read this

http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.com/mineral_nutrition.htm

Coffee may work great for one person and not for another, just depends on what link was the weakest in their chain.



Just my 2cents :)
 
  • #20
Av8tor1: what do you root-feed your cephs with?
 
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