Careful removing plant from packaging. Have planter ready before unpacking roots. Make sure to add a drainage hole to the planter. Remove sticks and stems and break up moss. Always use rain water.
Clean rhizome before potting. Remove dead leaves. Take note which way the rhizomes are growing. You can use a support stalk until roots are settled in.
On todays episode, wire training a seven year old Chinese Juniper.
Quick tips:
Use appropriate wire thickness to coil branches
Don’t coil so tight as to bruise the branch
Use thumbs as a fulcrum to coil the wire
Try not to make too sharp a bend
Carnivorous Plants can grow in different mixtures of live or dead sphagnum moss, peat moss, pumice, sand, vermiculite or perlite. Nepenthes seem to favor a mix of long-fiber sphagnum moss, perlite and orchid bark.
Drosera like peat moss and perlite. Pinguiculas have grown great in sand, vermiculite, perlite, peat and pumice. Cobra plants and Sun Pitchers do well in long-fiber sphagnum moss and perlite. I have both Flytraps and Sarracenias growing in a mix of sphagnum moss and perlite.
Todays will be repotting a Nepenthes Khasiana into a bigger pot. I use a 50/50 Mix of sphagnum moss and perlite, with a topping of orchid bark to keep in moisture. Make sure pots have a way to drain excess water.
Coming up on this episode, a look at the triggerplant
Flying insects land on flowers which trigger the floral column to quickly slap the insect, covering it in pollen. These insects are not eaten and help the trigger plant spread it’s pollen. Trigger plants eat smaller insects. Parts of scape feature sticky tricrome traps that capture and digest insets too small to pollenate.
Trigger plants grow in poor nutrient conditions similar to Drosera which includes moderately dry pea moss and rainwater.
Trigger plants thrive in warm humid temperatures.
Growing in a separate planter is recommended as this plant quickly multiples and takes over the entire planter.
Growing year around, trigger plants are hardy and can easily be propagated through root clones.