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Some coffee; some patience; some time . . .

  • #21
Only a year for that growth wow,
I hope my eddy that's on coffe grows like that!
By the way what are its temps
 
  • #22
I did remove a great deal of the moss from the pots; and there are, after all, something on the order of seventy-five species of Polytrichum -- some greener; some more vascular in appearance; some less so; and they vary in size. It was more of an issue when the plants were seedlings . . .

Fair enough. I am only familiar with 4 of the Polytricum species and all of those are vascular and very rigid. :)

Nice pic of the plant updated btw.. looks fantastic. Would kill to have a plant that beautiful. :p lol
 
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  • #23
Here is a recent update on that same coffee-chugging plant from Borneo, with its latest pitcher still opening and coloring up . . .

Nepenthes edwardsiana 28 August


 
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  • #24
Ahrg... And mines starting to get shrinky dinkie at the moment...it was growing fine up until a week ago put out a tiny new leaf and i think its maybe my light its a 250 watt cfl light but its been kinda hot ...so im not sure if that's the case or if im loosing my mind. But yours looks great hun. The atten is doing great but it may be getting shrinky leave to... Any advice on keeping fluid in the seedling pitchers cause i wanna try and feed them but without fluid they turn blackish.
 
  • #25
Ahrg... And mines starting to get shrinky dinkie at the moment...it was growing fine up until a week ago put out a tiny new leaf and i think its maybe my light its a 250 watt cfl light but its been kinda hot ...so im not sure if that's the case or if im loosing my mind. But yours looks great hun. The atten is doing great but it may be getting shrinky leave to... Any advice on keeping fluid in the seedling pitchers cause i wanna try and feed them but without fluid they turn blackish.

Highland plants definitely thrive under bright light; but yours may be getting a bit overheated. Ensure that they get cold nights and satisfy yourself by fertilizing the compost and forget feeding the tiny pitchers. I never feed them or add fertilizer -- save for what they catch on their own. It's far too easy to upset the chemistry within the pitchers and cause them to rot . . .
 
  • #26
They get a good drop at night but day temps are deff becoming an issue without cold water bottles added below the tank. Its day temps are in the 80's night temps low 60s-50's. Humidity is pretty good but my i can't tell what it is since my regulator isnt working to good so im ordering a new one and a new cooling fan. Do u think i should switch to my 60watt day light bulb instead cause lower light makes bigger leaves but its weird cause many of my other HLs are doing fine when the others are finicy and vice versa. I'll post a photo

<a href="http://photobucket.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa215/igethigh420/Mobile%20Uploads/20150905_072136-1.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 20150905_072136-1.jpg"/></a>
You can see the where the other leaves been growing nicely and the recent one is tiny
 
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  • #27
I figure feeding them may increase the leaves and pitchers but their so little its near impossible to feed um
 
  • #29
WOw!


Loos like I need to send my Eddys to BigBella's Highland Health Spa....
 
  • #31
WOw!


Loos like I need to send my Eddys to BigBella's Highland Health Spa....

Thanks for the kind words . . .

Yes, the plants are really enjoying the carefree Northern Californian lifestyle, and gorging themselves on only the finest, cage-free, free-range fungus gnats, heh, heh, heh . . .
 
  • #32
And people say that coffee is a myth..
There's no control in this setting, so there's zero scientific evidence of it not being a myth. One could just as easily equate it to the orchid fertilizer (much more scientifically likely), or the OP's favorable growing conditions/media.

Not to take away from the awesome plant, as it certainly is awesome, but we have to remember that correlation does not equal causation.
 
  • #33
Not to take away from the awesome plant, as it certainly is awesome, but we have to remember that correlation does not equal causation.

As a scientist, I am well aware of that. I am currently micropropagating a number of plants, with which to due a more formal study, perhaps in early 2016. However, in years past, peat "teas" were often used to re-acidify old composts; and rapid increases in growth were often seen as a result. Perhaps, the addition of coffee works the same way. Maintaining domestic peace, no longer allows me to boil bales of peat and "bogify" the kitchen.

I had simply observed that the plants weren't growing that well or fast with simply the biweekly 1:4 strength 30:10:10 orchid fertilizer; and that the addition of the coffee improved their performance within weeks.

I currently have a batch of ex vitro plants that have only seen the use of coffee as a fertilizer or additive, since their de-flasking, what have you; though their current number is insufficient for a formal study.

Of course, should you have a statistically-significant number of Nepenthes edwardsiana and other highlanders with which to experiment upon, I would gladly receive them . . .
 
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  • #34
Lol bigbella if anyone had a significant amount of N. Eddies i don't think they'd be experimenting on them lol but u never kno! I'm currently doing an expiriment on VFTs on seeing how diff food causes diff growth or numbers in emerging traps..etc..etc. This coffee thing May be fun to try some time, do you have time to explain how to do this coffee method?
 
  • #35
This coffee thing May be fun to try some time, do you have time to explain how to do this coffee method?

This was mentioned on a far earlier thread; but the long and short of it is to prepare coffee as you would prefer, with RO or distilled water, if your local water is unsuitable. I prefer using a four cup French Press with 34 grams of coffee grounds per pot. The prepared coffee is then diluted by fifty percent with RO or distilled water; and is allowed to reach room temperature or can even be refrigerated. It is poured through the plant media until it is obviously draining through. To prevent algal build-up, I thoroughly water the following day. Looser composts are preferable with this procedure than those which are peat-based . . .
 
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  • #36
Of course, should you have a statistically-significant number of Nepenthes edwardsiana and other highlanders with which to experiment upon, I would gladly receive them . . .
Hah...I wish. I may have access to enough cheapo seed to do a fair experiment, though. :)

Right now, I've seen no evidence that coffee would have any specific reason to benefit the plants. The NPK of it is so negligible: "coffee: 0.000848 -- 0.0099 -- 0.0976." Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means there's little known reason that it would. Hopefully further testing can help give more definitive answers. Thank you for sharing your protocol. It may make its way into a more formal test, soon.
 
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  • #37
Right now, I've seen no evidence that coffee would have any specific reason to benefit the plants. The NPK of it is so negligible: "coffee: 0.000848 -- 0.0099 -- 0.0976." Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means there's little known reason that it would.

If you limited its potential benefits to only its NPK numbers (which would certainly vary a bit based upon the coffee concentration, etc), I could appreciate that; but there are over one thousand active chemical compounds within coffee; and who is to say whether chlorogenic acids; phenols; pyridines; lactones; or, perhaps it is simply the action of trigonelline, whose decay product, during roasting, is nicotinic acid -- niacin, aka B3 (already a common organic fertilizer constituent) -- which carry the potential plant benefits?

It is one of those interesting questions that will require time and skill to prove or disprove -- a bit like the current fashion of adding laterite or burnt earth to Nepenthes composts, in an effort to duplicate ultramafic soils. Do those species simply require huge amounts of iron oxides and aluminum to thrive; or have they simply grown a tolerance to their presence and are capable of excluding them, while competing species are potentially limited by them?

Time for an espresso with 3 mg of B3 . . .
 
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  • #38
Hey BigBella!
Been a long time since I have been on here. You might remember me?
Just wanted to say that you have an absolutely beautiful plant there!
I had one of them about that size that I lost once. Took months to get over that!
Made me take a close look at how I was carving for my neps. I'm a wateraholic.
Yes I kept my plants way too wet and they don't like that long term. You learn from your mistakes.
I think between my Cephalotus plants and my neps I'm beyond grey and going totally white! Lol
Funny but true! I still have the cephs and slowly building up my neps again. I will be doing a lot of reading on here.
You are never too old to learn!
Keep up the great work!
Jeff
 
  • #39
Hey BigBella!
Been a long time since I have been on here. You might remember me?
Jeff

Thanks, Jeff, of course I do; haven't totally lost my mind, just yet; and I still have your Cephalotus plants from years back. They're doing great; and I recently uprooted one of them and took my knives to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kico0_ENOXo and divided the rhizome -- about the diameter of a carrot! Sorry to hear of losses; just plain nasty. How was NECPS show? I assume that you attended? Here's that plant, eight weeks out . . .

David

Cephalotus follicularis cv. "Hummer's Giant" 7 September
 
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  • #40
Very nice! That's going to explode with growth especially with the cooler months coming!
Oh yes, I was at the show. I think we might have had the biggest turnout yet! Each day was a mob of people all day long!
I'm pretty sure Jeremiah and Native Exotics completely sold out of everything they had by day two, just crazy.
Tons of great plants. I had one big ceph there that still had last winter to early Spring pitchers on it. It's cloning time for that plant.
Lots of great neps there too. There was a nice Eddie, really sweet Hamata, and I brought a decent Wistuba macrophylla.
Of course there were tons of other great neps, just those stick in my head. I'm sure people took pictures? Mine didn't come out all that great, the lighting was slightly off for my camera anyways. There was a guy there from the Boston Globe that took lots of pictures. I'll have to look and see if I can find them online.
Jeff
 
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