Tag Archives: Pitcher Plant

Sarracenia ‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Adrian Slack’

 

Sarracenia 'Leah Wilkerson' x 'Adrian Slack'
[Sarracenia ‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Adrian Slack’ – Spring 2011]

Happy Friday All! It’s been a long week, for sure.  So thankful for the weekend… I’m kickin’ this weekend off with a photo of this baby – S. ‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Adrian Slack’.

This particular clone came from a cross created by Brooks Garcia, and seed grown by me.  These are the spring pitchers, and as each day passes, the nectar roll and upper pitcher portion of the pitcher seems to get lighter and lighter.  Looking forward to the way it will look in the summer and autumn. I hope that the fall pitchers will display that really strong contrast of upper white pitcher and the red band in the throat as it did last year.  Autumn is the time when the Sarracenia leucophylla influence is most prominent, so I hope for those same characteristics to be prominent then.

Here’s a couple photos of this seedling growing up…

Sarracenia 'Leah Wilkerson' x 'Adrian Slack'
[Sarracenia ‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Adrian Slack’ – Spring 2010]

Sarracenia 'Leah Wilkerson' x 'Adrian Slack'
[Sarracenia ‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Adrian Slack’ – Summer 2010]

Pink Eye

So these past few days I’ve been having a battle with conjunctivitis. Or, more commonly known as pink eye. It really sucks having this. I’m currently on antibiotics and so far, 3 days in, I think it’s finally working.  Not am I only battling this conjunctivitis, but I also had some nasty eye infection that totally closed up my right eye.  I can open it now though. It could of been caused by a lot of things – allergic reaction to something, or playing in the garden with all that dirt flying everywhere (and landing in my eyeball). Or perhaps it could of been from boxing this weekend and injuring/scratching my eyelid or something  … eh who knows.  Don’t worry, I can’t infect you via blog posts.  Even my doctor said (and these were his exact words) “Don’t let anyone suck on your eyeball”.  Not sure what kind of medical humor that was but … uh… akward!!!

Anyway, as my fellow blogger and Sarracenia grower/breeder friend James from Lost in the Landscape had suggested to me recently, now would be a perfect time to show you my pink eye.

You wanna see my pink eye?

MY PINK EYE!

Sarracenia Pink Eye
Sarracenia “Pink Eye”

Now I got my pink eye from fellow Sarracenia Addict, Brooks Garcia. This photo is from September 2009. Sorry dudes, I can’t find anything more current right now, but this is the photo of S. “Pink Eye” that I was able to quickly locate to illustrate my present pink eye predicament. It’s still a young plant here as it was from a small division.  I really have hopes to multiply it so that I could spread the “pink eye” to fellow growers. Yes! GET INFECTED (with Sarracenia madness!!)  HA! 🙂

Behind Glass

To break up some of that monotony of dead foliage and seeds, here are a few current shots of some seed-LINGS that I am growing indoors under lights, behind glass.   I grow my plants mostly outdoors or in an unheated greenhouse (to protect from wind and such), but I have started seed successfully indoors under lights. These seedlings will be shifted and grown out in the unheated greenhouse once it gets a tad bit warmer. And those flowers are from Mexican Pinguicula (another carnivorous awesome plant.)

Now don’t get me wrong, I do love this season, but it’s seems like there is never enough time for all I want to do with the plants. Winter is a great time for me to work on all them since they be all dormant! Once they’re up and growing/blooming, I don’t like to bug em. Trips em’ out.

Anyway, basically the photo below is in a 50 gallon terrarium/grow chamber with lights.

These babies are just over a year old and as you can see, have been growing in rather cramped conditions.  Yuri in the earlier post commented:

“… I just sowed something like 50 different crosses, and needed space is really a problem…”

Yep. I have that problem too! LOL!  No way I can grow all these seedlings, so what am I doing with them? Compost some (the very weakest ones), or distribute some as gifts, give aways, or sell some off to help offset my growing costs.   These plants above are ready to be thinned out.

Being that I am new to this, I am finding my way and trying to get somewhat even more-so disciplined in the art. It’s hard though. You have a seedling that you’re about to toss, but yet, that nagging voice says “OH, but you don’t know if it will have some insane beautifulnormous pitchers in a couple years, after all you can’t really tell what it will be like at this point in time…”

This is true.  But it’s also dangerous especially with limited space and resources. So I tell the voice to “Shove it.”   Then, I just plod along, composting some and transplanting even this early (which, isn’t too early for me…) shifting them to roomier abodes.

In the background here are some Mexican Pinguiculas. They are great for in the terrarium gnat control! I haven’t had any gnats so the leaves are nice and clean. During the first week of set up on this terrarium, the leaves were chalk full of those lousy fungus gnats. Cycle broken. Yay.

And… standing head and shoulders above the rest of it’s fellow seedlings is this one UNKNOWN plant.

It’s a plant that my good friend Jerry Addington crossed. The exact parentage is uncertain.  The plant is S. [(leucophylla x rubra) x minor giant] crossed with the pollen parents of either S. “Nadine” or S. “W.C.”   Unfortunately I do not have a photo of either parent plant, but can tell you that S. “Nadine” and “W.C” both have the Sarracenia leucophylla (white top pitcher) influence which is very present above. It’s kinda hard to tell and will probably be impossible to really determine later as it gets older. Who knows, we’ll see.  It happens.  This was an “Oops cross”, as Jerry called it. (Hey, it’s all good Jerry, it’s showing a lot of promise to be an interesting and beautiful plant already…)

Sarracenia, I am told, can accept pollen from several different sperm donors, and the seeds will of course be all mixed representing characteristics of pod parent + sperm donor A, or pod parent + sperm donor B… or donor C… and so on and on.  Digest that for a while and then a new world of madness opens up.  Fun stuff, this breeding thing!

Winter Solstice Eclipse

My current Sarracenia collection will soon be eclipsed by the up and coming seedlings. Here’s a shot of only …. like… 2 flats. Many other flats strewn about here and there. Good times.


***

Yesterday mornings lunar eclipse was pretty phenomenal. Granted I only saw bits and pieces of it in between the cloud breaks here, but what I saw was pretty cool.   Below is a crappy photo. It was too windy to get a decent shot without the camera on the tripod moving a little.

I was still pretty fortunate to see a portion of it. The last one according to many sources was 372 years ago. Check out The Weather Channel’s site for instance. If you missed this Winter Solstice, not to worry, next one will be 12/21/2094. Work on your garden until then.


[Just getting the end of the lunar eclipse. Clouds, fog , and drizzle rolled in shortly afterward.]


[The bright thing in the upper left third of this shot is the moon. Clouds rolling in…]

Some Nice Surprises

Salutations,
Man, it’s been pretty busy – I would imagine this is so for ALL of us in this holiday season.   My cube day job especially has been pretty busy –  resulting in my recent silence here on the blog.  Honestly, I’d rather NOT have these mini hiatuses but would rather share Sarracenia goodness with everyone. All day. Every day.   These past couple of weeks have  most certainly has been quite the flurry of activity.

Anyway, I just wanted to say a very special thank you to fellow blogger James at Lost in the Landscape!  (If you haven’t done so, check his blog!) He had sent me a few things that really added some awesomeness in my not-so awesome past couple of weeks…  (Thanks James, you ROCK!)

[Some seeds that will have some star potential!  It may not look like much now, but I wanted to start documenting their growth.  A couple years later I’ll probably refer back to this post just to show how these plants started.]


[Sarracenia division, unconfirmed ID at this point, but we’re pretty sure that it is a S. ‘Judith Hindle’]

Surprise
[I’m really excited about this one- Seedlings of S. x melanorhoda, Triffid Park x purpurea ssp. veonsa v. burkii f. luteola. Yes! I will be using these for breeding in the anthocyanin free line. They have that recessive antho free gene in them now!]

[I potted them up a couple of nights ago right when I got home.  It was about 10pm, and dark and cold out, but I still did it! Brrr!]

**Thanks again James!**

Potting up

Expand. That’s what going on with the collection right now. I guess that’s what happens when you hybridize and grow things from seed.   In order to prepare for further expansion, I need to shift some seedlings out and move things around.

I have a lot of pots that were once used for other plants that are just sitting there, so instead of buying more pots, I figure that it would be beneficial to use what I already have. I tweeted about the pots a while back and I really love how fellow blogger Bom Gomez (@plantchaser) from Plantchaser put it:

“@SarraceniaDude how many are we who find cleaning pots a portent of good things to come?”
(Bom, Salamat, pare! 🙂 )

Oh so true... some see crappy empty pots. I see space to grow some carnivorous art.

[Old pots, in need of a good scrub down]

So here I have all these old pots that have been used an abused. I wish I was was one of these gardeners that could keep things kinda clean, shiny, and sparkly, but unfortunately… eh… I’m not.  The pots are still in great condition, but they do need a good scrub down to puuurrrrty them up a bit.  What better tool to scrub the crap off them than the good ole’ crap scrubber…

[OH YEAH! LET’S DO THIS!]

The crap scrubber works great on scrubbing crap off the pots. You know, crap like that old dirt that kinda coagulates mysteriously inside those pots… As you can see, I used a brand new clean and shiny crap scrubber that is dedicated only to the crud that one finds adhering to the pots.  It’s an awesome Clorox brand scrubber with the “Antimicrobial protection of the brush fibers”!!

I cleaned off as much crud off as I can for now, then take the pots and lined em up in the handy dandy utility tubs. These tubs also are used for the water trays that I keep the plants in.


[Getting em lined up!]

Next, I soak the pots a bit to soften up that older harder crap. I scrub down again, and I leave the pots sitting in a slight bleach solution for a day to sterilize them.


[Gettin’ a scrub down and a bleach bath]

So now I have all these awesome pots ready to be filled to the brim with potting media goodness.  But wait!  There’s large draining holes there and the media over time will seep out. So, in order to counter this, I am using up my unused rolls of weed block.  Some people use coffee filters, pine needles, or any other course media to stop the flow of media from seeping out of the drainage holes.  I say use whatever works for you.

[Left over weed block going to be used at the bottom of the pots to prevent planting media-leakage.]

As far as the media goes, everyone has their own special mix to use for their carnivorous plants. Again, use whatever works for you. I will use either 1 part peat moss to 1 part sand, or 1 part peat moss to 1 part perlite.  I’ve also just used pure peat, or a combination of all 3.

If working with perlite, it’s a good idea to wear some type of dust mask. It’s not very good for you to be sniffin’ that stuff.

I like to use the sand because of the added weight, especially when growing in pots outdoors.  Perlite is irritating when it rains and it all floats to the top, however you can use the peat/perlite mix at the bottom and add a nice top layer of pure sphagnum on top to prevent the perlite from floating out. Works for me.

[Ahhhh! Nothing like the fresh smell of freshly hand mixed planting media!]

Today I only got to about 18 or so pots, shifting some seedlings out, have another 50 or so more to go. I still have more pots to do after this set is done. I trimmed off the pitchers from the seedlings that were growing in those little square pots as they’re dormant anyway and separated them in clumps as you can see below.   For me, cutting off the pitchers makes it easier to handle the plant, without those pitchers floppin’ all over the place. The pitchers will come up next growing season and the seedlings now have a little bit more room to grow.

[Room to grow.]

Down with O.P.P.

Yo, so who’s down with OPP? (Yeah, you know me!) I’m not talking about the song by “Naughty by Nature” – I’m talking plants.
*Open Pollinated Plants. * Dude. I just had a 1991 moment. HA!

Anyway, OPP’s can be interesting. Today’s OPP feature is one I grew from seed from a few years ago. The parent plant is Sarracenia ‘Doodle Bug’ but as far as the pollen parent, ehhh…. who knows, hence the OP designation.  It’s a sibling to this wide-ish-thing  plant I wrote about earlier.   Yeah, I’m down with O.P.P.

Doodle Bug, OP[Sarracenia ‘Doodle Bug’ OP, Photo taken 11/13/2010]