Saturday, 7 January 2017

I did say more pictures


nepenthes gracilis I have a couple , both growing very well.
such dainty little vines.

My  nep ampullaria and nep vogelli a highlander .







 My bicalcarata enjoying the heat and humidity.

This one is my longest nepenthes vine , its a nepenthes merriliana x campanulata over two metres in length , I think its in an 18" pot. Not in any greenhouse , it lives in the backyard , In  winter
I cover it with towels at night.

More Nepenthes pictures

We had a quite a downpour of rain last night and its been 34 degress celsius most days
with the nights in the twenties. Very Humid with the insects being a nuisance.
I started diluting a teaspoon of lemon juice in a drinking glass about a month ago and
placing a small amount into each bromeliad and nepenthes pitcher that I saw after watering.
Somewhere someone had said that mosquitoes don't like citrus that I remembered.
A couple of days after I have done, this I've noticed a large reduction in sandflies and mossies
around the yard. Just one or two instead of many and here where I live there are natural swamps.
I don't see any larvae in the pitchers but I think the fluid attracts them.
I've now done it enough times to say it does work and the last couple of times I've used
citronella oil drops diluted into water (just a couple in a haws spray bottle I received at Christmas) and its effective.

I've been putting up another greenhouse , a smaller one to place the high altitude nepenthes in.
Its really difficult to keep them cool enough. I've resorted( apart from placing them in the shadiest area) to placing blue esky ice blocks around them in the morning touching them against their pots.
I started putting cold water in the nepenthes faizalana's pot because I realised it was a highlander from papua new guinea and it hadn't grown and it hadn't  pitchered, then
one morning I got foolhardy and put ice  in the pot and it was fine. So all through summer a couple of cubes of ice daily and it pitchered.
I did accidentally place ice cubes in a lowland nepenthes truncata's pot and it was dead the next day, so beware of doing this.

















Saturday, 29 October 2016

nepenthes burbidgeae x edwardsiana

I was so surprised a couple of days ago when I saw this pitcher because
for two years it didn't pitcher ,I then watered it every day.
I treat this nepenthes  x and my nep burbidgeae differently now to the lows and intermediates.
I don't water them every day like the others , I let them get quite dry.
before I water. I moved the burbidgeae to an eastern position (morning sun) as it was getting dark patches (looked like fungus) and wasn't growing
and when I bought  this cross , I noticed it liked the same conditions.
They get  good light every day and intense sun for about two hours a day




Its Spring in the southern hemisphere

I saw this pitcher nepenthes truncata x ovata when I was watering.
Looks like on many of them I will get upper pitchers this year.
Its an intermediate nepenthes , I have the most success with intermediates.


Wednesday, 10 August 2016

Almost end of winter .This post re: about my low land nepenthes

Its almost the end of winter and for the first time I've been able to leave the nep bicalarata in the polyhouse outside. What a relief . Those leaves get bigger and bigger every year.
 One day at work, I suddenly thought (at the beginning of autumn), .Here you have
outside electricity points, why not get an electrician to put some outside power switches on the outside wall of your house? The other thing is I double checked the safety switch in the power box to make sure it worked because well, power running outside the house can be dangerous.
I thought well I  could move the polyhouse up next to the house and have horticulture heaters working inside through winter. Now the poly house isn't gap free and I did wonder how much warmer it would be.So it was all done, a nice russian electrician came and installed the power points for me.
I left it late in autumn to move the poly house and had to do it by myself as I only had one day to do it in.I  moved all the plants out in the middle of the day and shifted it eight metres.
Moving it had fixed the gaps. I placed thin blankets on the top and sealed around the base gluing stips of heavy plastic and bubble wrap to insulate from the cold air from coming under.
Doing this, and with the heaters I've kept them eight degrees above the outside temperature.
I kept the bical on a thermostatically controlled heat pad ( one with a dial), I tried a simpler heat pad but it couldn't keep the temperature high enough and the other nepenthes I kept warm  with a tube heater .Most have done well though I lost a couple. I decided to repot when I shifted them for the move. bad decision.
Here are two pictures of my nepenthes bicalarata and one of my  nepenthes ampullaria.








Sunday, 13 September 2015

Thoughts on growing ultra highland and highland nepenthes

When late last year I saw a new website selling nepenthes I had a real flutter in my stomach, because most of them were highland species. I had tried three times previously to grow  highland nepenthes with no success. The plants just got smaller and smaller and then died.
So when I saw this website newneps selling in australia I thought well I have failed,  I need to revisit what do I need to do to grow the alpine species.
I found  Robert Sacilotto's piece on his experiment with highland nepenthes seedlings and I thought
whatever the conditions the seedlings will grow in will be what the adults require.
So we had a small weather station showing humidity and temperature with a remote gauge in the area the plants will live and I used it for my ultra lowlanders so I bought a couple more and a hygrometer.
I bought a water distiller because sensitive alpine nepenthes must have a very low conductivity in their water supply. It must have a ph around 4.5 so I need a ph indicator. 
The hardest thing I thought was the temperature as I'm living in the subtropics. 
 The breakthrough  was to buy a wine fridge , I don't drink wine very much and I didn't know they existed.
 These alpine plants need a large drop in the temperature at night. below 14 degrees and the wine fridge fitted the purpose. So I bought one a week after I put my order in for my new plants .
Its now eight months later and I haven't killed one. I bought them in the middle of summer.
It was the worst time in the year with temperatures outside from 25 degree to 32 degrees celsius , so with the air conditioner on every day they sat on a wire planter in the lounge room.
under one at first now two aquarium led lights ( they are called aquaone 21 w)  from the pet shop. They are 
about 8 inches from the lights. Maybe a little too close as I noticed the rajah got quite bronze.
I planted them in spaghum moss and just kept them moist with the lights on for 16 hours a day.watered once a day , they are all seedlings,so for now there is enough light
I first bought a n. singalana , n.vogelli then later from elsewhere n rajah, n jacquelineae  
The jacquelineae I found needed at least 12 degress celsius for 3 hours daily through the summer just to survive. Throughout this winter with temperatures ranging from 25 degrees celsius to 9 degrees celsius  it has thrived outside in the garden under my grevilleas , in dappled light with a n rajah , n mira ,n aristocholides and a n chaniana at humidity levels mostly 65 percent humidity to 85 humidity and with occasional storms about once a fortnight .They sit outside on a piece of stryofoam with holes in it, and through it I stuffed sphagmum moss and underneath the stryofoam,  is a very shallow drip tray  with a small amount of water in it .
Its spring now so when these cold early mornings finish it'll be time to come inside on the wire planter again.
They will slow their growth inside so the longer I can keep them out there the better.
 This is the robert cantley when I bought it in Dec 2014
 Here is the vogelli in Dec and on the bottom nep jacquelineae in dec
 Above nep rajah in the same pot now 130915
nepenthes jacquelineae today I'm so happy it has a pitcher almost ready to open. This is one of the species
that I had tried to grow before with no success.



The vogellii has grown much more vigorously than the others

and Nepenthes Robert Cantley looking good.
















Friday, 2 January 2015

Update on keeping my lowland nepenthes in the poly house

It's almost the end of my holiday time, I been able to spend more time looking at my plants.
I have a remote temperature gauge in the polyhouse . Its has registered very high temperatures at  times in our summer ,
Top temperatures twice of 42 degrees celsius at midday  but with 89 percent and above  humidity .
They are irrigated once in the morning and then in the evening but being home and with the high temperatures I given them extra water at midday .  I'll often hand water , I hand water because experience tells me to check on them contantly. I have most of them in self watering pots , I think the safest way to go .
The gauge tells me at night that the humidity levels are in the ninetys. I thought the humidity should be lower at night but the gauge tells me this constantly..The gauge tells me in the afternoon the humidity drops right down to 54 percent for a short while.
The reason I bought the poly was to get the humidity and temperatures much higher. Many years ago I killed some plants trying to get the temperatures higher and I used a solar weave product but  it gets way too hot here I found out (as I suddenly realised what I was subjecting the plants to)  when the water from the irrigation hitting the metal frame hit me and it stung it was so hot . I badly burnt them and I lost a couple of favourites before realising , and looking back, I didn't have the humidity levels high enough, it wasn't in shade  and now I wont let the irrigation hit the frame just the plants . I should have experimented first so I was cautious  getting this poly house in the right situation.
The poly house is under the shade of a tree and I didn't take all the  plastic sheets off the polycarbonate , and it gives them bright but diffused light .
The good news is its working.The ampullarias are beginning to pitcher ,In the past I only had very tiny little pitchers off one. This time a couple are goig to give me full size pitchers.
Another exciting thing I bought some n northiana seed from ebay and looks like one has germinated.
All the other lowland nepenthes are doing very well including the seedlings.