Tag Archives: Chris Nieman

SF Giants + Sarracenia = AWESOME

Posted on September 22, 2012 | 6 comments

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE
SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!
2012 NL WEST CHAMPIONS!

 

In honor of the SF Giants clinching the National League West Championship tonight, I wanted to update you on this project that I’ve recently completed. YEAH! So you may recall that back in May I started this little experiment inspired by the artistry of Japanese apple farmers. To the left you’ll see the photo of the plant before it colored up, with the SF Giants sticker applied to it. I wanted to see if the sticker would keep that area of the plant lighter as the plant got darker throughout the season. The result I had in mind would be to have a plant that represented the SF Giants nicely. Oh, by the way — a special thank you to fellow SF Giants fan homie Chris Nieman of Sticky Fingas Customs for creating these stickers! (Check his feed out on Instagram: @duffmanivxx.) I am glad to report that this was a success with this plant!

YES, there are awesome phenomenal parallels between baseball and gardening. If you haven’t seen it, be sure and check out John Markowski’s post: Why Gardening is Just Like Baseball. See, I wanted some way to combine and represent the SF Giants madness with my obsession with pitcher plants. Pitcher. Get it? Pitcher as in – baseball? (Womp womp…) Heck it even affects the way I pollinate my plants: see figure E in this post. And yo, in my garden, you will find a couple things that represent.

Catcher Plant SF Giants Huffii
Left: A Catcher Plant amongst pitcher plants, growing in the rally pot
Right: Sanfranciscogiantsaiea Aubrey Huffii

Funny enough, just like the SF Giants, my garden has gone through similar times. Had a rough year last season facing lots of adversity. This year was off to a slow start. Lots of changes and losses. Aaaaaand after going through a few adjustments, things all of a sudden look much brighter and better. My garden is finally coming to life, and the SF Giants just clinched the NL West Championship. AWESOME.

Back to the experiment: My little project first started out with 3 plants. The other plants didn’t do to well. Because of all the moving the plants underwent in the past few months, the pitchers got really torn up and the results weren’t too good. The other pitcher was accidentally torn up, and the Sarracenia rosea turned red even with the sticker. I will have to select a different plant next year. The one plant that did work out was this select clone of Sarracenia ‘Alucard’ – “Prince of Darkness”. This plant was created and bred by the legend,  Phil Faulisi. Below are two pictures, documenting some progress. Glad to know this works, I have some more ideas for next season! (Chris, going to have to hit you up again bro!)

Now I just gotta breed an orange and black Sarracenia… hah! 

SF Giants Alucard-1August 2012
Sneaking a peak!

Sarracenia 'Alucard' GiantsSeptember 2012
REPRESENT!!

Again, congratulations to the SF Giants!
2012 NL West Champions!
**GO GIANTS!**

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Sarracenias & SF Giants Awesomeness

Posted on June 7, 2012 | 3 comments

Baseball. Gardening. Baseball.
Sarracenia. Baseball. Sarracenia.
What the…?!?

Yes folks, there are parallels between these two seemingly separate worlds. For example, check out this amazing rad post by fellow garden blogger John Markowski – a must read: Why Gardening is Just Like Baseball. And dude – if you haven’t figured it out by now by now, I am a San Francisco Giants fan and gotta represent with my plants one way or another! So, let’s look at this again, shall we? Baseball. Sarracenia. Baseball. Pitcher. Pitcher … plant. Sarracenia. Pitcher plant aaaaaaaaaaaand… check out the catcher plant. (Heh, catcher plant… Get it?!)

Anyway, one of my very talented homies, Chris Nieman of Sticky Fingas Customs (follow him on Instagram, @duffmanivxx) creates custom vinyl stickers. As the season started this year, I was inspired by the artistry of Japanese apple farmers for this next experimental project. Inspired by the work on apples to give a few Sarracenias a freekin’ badass SF Giants tattoo.

Sarracenia Pitcher Plant SF Giants ProjectSF Giants vinyl stickers created by Chris Nieman.

Yeah, I know I can get SF Giant decals at various locations, but I needed stickers that were a little smaller than whatever I could find out there. Thankful that Chris hooked it up! He sent me the above photographed stickers in the mail.

Sarracenia Pitcher Plant SF Giants Project

Stick it to ’em. The next step was to place the sticker on a select pitcher. You can see in the photo to the left that I’m using tweezers to apply said sticker, as suggested by Chris. I found that I didn’t have to do that if I was careful and was able to simply peel the stickers off using my fingers and apply carefully. My main goal was to apply the sticker before the pitcher really colors up.  Being that I’m in a sub par lighting position right now means the plant won’t color up as fast – this plant should really be a deep rich and intense crimson red by now. The colors of my plants right now are kind of boring at this point but that will all change once the lighting situation is fixed. I’ll keep you all updated on how that lighting project is coming along.  Once the plant gets to be deep red, that’s when I plan on removing the sticker and what I am hoping for is the SF insignia to be left imprinted on the pitcher. Pitcher plants representing the SF Giants. Dude, now that’s BADASS. I chose 3 plants that (under ideal lighting) would get very rich colors. Below are photos of when I first applied the stickers on 17 May 2012. I will update again once these pitchers color up!

Chris, thanks again bro for hookin’ it up!

Sarracenia Pitcher Plant SF Giants Project
Sarracenia ‘Alucard’ – “Prince of Darkness”

Sarracenia Pitcher Plant SF Giants Project
Sarracenia leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora

Sarracenia Pitcher Plant SF Giants ProjectSarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa v. burkeii

By the way – if any one in the SF Giants organization is reading this — hire me to be your freekin’ gardener or something. I’ll also design and hybridize custom Sarracenias for the team!
Imagine – pitcher plants named after pitchers…

GO GIANTS!!!

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