Sarracenia leucophylla “Purple Lips” – OP
Here’s another one of those little surprises that I chanced upon while cleaning and organizing the seedlings. This is an open pollinated youngin’ of unknown pollen parent lineage. A promising spawn of Sarracenia leucophylla “Purple Lips” throws up a new pitcher above the fray of the old and decrepit foliage.
Posted in Blog
Tagged American, carnivorous, hybrid, leucophylla, North, Open Pollinated, Pitcher, Plant, purple lips, Sarracenia, seedling, Unknown
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.
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!
August 2012
Sneaking a peak!
September 2012
REPRESENT!!
Again, congratulations to the SF Giants!
2012 NL West Champions!
**GO GIANTS!**
Posted in Blog
Tagged Baseball, Catcher plant, Chris Nieman, Garden, Giants, Pitcher, Plant, represent, San Francisco, Sarracenia
Thank you SF Giants for a good season. There were many memorable moments this year, one of which was that I was able to take both of my sons to their first baseball game – we witnessed the debut and the rise of VogelSTRONG. And my kids LOVED it.
Ahh… 137 days left until pitchers and catchers report to spring training. Refocus, recharge, and RECLAIM in 2012.
Yes, it was good. We’ve done so much and battled through a lot of injuries that were sustained this year. That combined with a lack of offense diminished our post season hopes… but hey, it happens. And yes, I’m still a little emotional about it. 🙁 Fellow gardeners, if you’ve been following me on twitter (@Sarraceniadude), you’ve probably been a victim of my in-game tweets/SF Giant tweets. Hey, I can’t help it. I love this team! (Go Giants!!)
But let’s back up here – baseball and gardening?!? Baseball. Really? Well… I do grow and hybridize my own *PITCHER* plants! So why not?! Get it? Pitcher? Baseball? HA! (Womp womp!) … But yeah, there were some SF Giant inspirations and parallels that could be drawn with my garden.
[RALLY POT WILL BE BACK WITH A VENGEANCE IN 2012.]
-#Rallypot worked some magic this season. Obviously not enough, but it will be back next year, with a vengeance. I ask you this faithful SF Giants fans — what should I plant in it? Something that would make Timmy proud? 🙂
-Injury plagued the SF Giants this year. Injury plagued my plants this year. I lost a lot of hybrids and flower buds in the hail storms, dashing my (post season) hopes of harvesting seeds. For example all the flower buds from S. ‘Adrian Slack’, S. ‘Leah Wilkerson’, — along with other buds of MANY select Sarracenia — gone. (Damn hail…) In looking back, it probably shocked the plants which caused many of them to abort their buds.
-It wasn’t my best year because of that. Lots of recovery being done this year… but next year looks promising.
-Although there were many injuries, a couple pitcher (plants) really surprised me this year with exceptional growth and pitching. Er, pitcher-ing I should say. They came outta nowhere! Quite inspirational… (Very Vogelstrong-esque!)
-I’m noticing more orange and black plants and themes appearing in my garden. (I wonder why…? Hahah!) and once I amass enough of this color scheme, I’ll have my own SF Giants theme section in my garden going on. I plan on taking my dark/black plants and breeding them with orange tone plants next season – once I can get ’em to flower. Perhaps name a clone of that after this team!?
-Facial Hair. That is all.
– The FINGER was used to successfully pollinate plants. The FINGER you say? Yeah, click that link. The FINGER.
-When hybridizing and there’s a hybrid I can’t create, my mantra is “There’s always next season.” Same thing could be said after the last out that sealed our fate this season on Chase field. After a few choice expletives of course.
-Later in the season, The SF Giants pulled up some young hopeful prospects that showed great promise. Later in the season, there were quite a few seedlings that showed great promise. From what I can see – there is a faint glow of hope for the future seasons. As I reflect on the happenings of the season on the diamond and in my garden… I can say that I’m excited and hopeful for what the future seasons will bring. There’s hope.
Posted in Blog
Tagged Baseball, Pitcher, reflections and ruminations, Sarracenia, SF Giants, there's always next season
