I am about o receive a shipment of 19 flasks, and in that context I thought that perhaps I should sum up a bit of my activities in that field over the last few years. It all started in 2011, in March when I received several flasks of different things, among which were emersonii, hangianum, druryi farrieanum alba and randsii. Not knowing how to treat these things I planted the flasklings into trays and placed them in the greenhouse.
This is how the randsii looked like:
And here are some hangianums.
Well I said that they were placed in the greenhouse; and that was not a good idea. Some of the plants succumbed rather quicly, like the randsii, others are still on a slow decline, with hardly any growth at all, succumbing to diseases and pests. The plants were potted after a year and I still have a fair number of emersonii and hangianums that are slowly dying. The feirreanums took a quick escape, only 1 or two left now. No growing. The randsii population was entirely wiped out.
Today, after two years, I have a few druryi that looks ok but not great, and perhaps five emersonii and hangianums that look ok. The numbers are shrinking though, they seem prone to all sorts of rot.
I soon realised that growing flasks did require other measures than growing mature plants (even if the latter has been greatly improved since then as well IMHO). This requires some special measures and I postulated some "rules" to follow for sucessful growing
i) flasklings are tender. They should be treated with great care. I normally wash away the agar in luke-warm water(30C?) and place the plantlets in rows in trays like shown in the pics. After placing themalong the edge of a ditch in the tray the compost is carefullymoved to cover the roots, while creating a new ditch for planting. Do not break roots! It is better to plant lumps of plantlets than to divide if they are difficult to get apart.
ii) flasklings are tender and prone to infections. The story of my first flasks(above) tells it all. This means that flasklings must be protected against infections. Which again means that 1) they should be raised in a protected environment away from potential infection sources (like greenhouse conditions). 2) Everything that gets in contact with the plants should be sterilised. Trays etc are either not used before, or has been washed thoroughly in rather strong bleach solution. The compost is sterilised. I use the microwave oven, fill a bowl with moist compost and microwave until its hot enough (boiling). After cooling down its ready to use. Flasklings are not planted in the greenhouse, kitchen or similar is better.
To take care of requirement 1) and 2) above, a special growing cabinet was erected with artificial light and heat and the flasklings were nursed in "windowsill greenhouses". This takes care of the requirement of high humidity (first weeks the vents are closed, later open) and also prevents cross contamination just in case. The cabinet and some growing results have been presented in another thread,http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28212 so if there are repetitions please bear over with me. This is the cabinet with its front removed. That is my door and the photo shows how it looks inside
More info in the other thread.
Okey, I talked about requirement s for clean conditions, well its not 100% sterile. I use the water for watering from the greenhouse and as such it may get contaminated. I collect rainwater in a tank with a heater and of course many things end up there. I have found toads swimming around and also dead mice. More common is debris from trees, particularly during the autumn storms. To keep infections at bay I do buble with ozonised air. I am not sure if it is effective, but so far things look as if the water is clean.
Watering of the flasklings is of course necessary, and I use the same water as in the greenhouse. This means that it is always fertilized at some 200ppmTDS level. And it is alwas tempered. In one of the pictures above you see my watering can, that gets filled after being empties and let inside the cabinet to temper until next watering. Never use cold water. Temperature is maintained at approximately 17C at night and 26C during daytime (16hours). The first round in this new setup were some charlesworthii, regular and album, esquirolei album, sanderianum venustum and hangianum topperii and roth. They were placed in the cabinet in the middle of May 2011. Recently, the venustums flowered, here they are together with some of the other plants of that lot, mostly charliesboth types. A few survivors of the first load are seen as well. This picture was taken 6th of Jan 2013.
Since then, growth has commenced again and some plants rare really showing fast growth these days.
It may look as if everything is fabulous with my set up. That is not the case, so now I will touch the not so sucessful flasks. If we consider the above picture, I would rate the venustums as being very sucessful, the charlies are successful but not that much as the venustum. The lot contained other species as well, the topperii has been quite sucessful, the plants have aquired a size of some 15cm leaf-span. the roths are more mixe, here I believe that the choice of compost was not optimal, actually not good at all. Most of my plants have been potted in mixes very high in marble and dolomite chips. For some plants this is exellent the roots love it, for other species its not. For Micranthum and vietnamense it seems perfect, for esquirolei its not. Charlies seem not to care. Roths are not liking it either i suspect. Topperii is so, so. I do not really see differences in growth here. So, to sum up, the choice of substrate may be important. The sanderianums are btw. no sucess, but some of the plants seem to grow, although slow.
The next lot of plants came one year later in March 2012; and contained jackii, anitum, tigrinum, a new randsii, tranlieanum, micranthum.eburneum, two vietnamense and one malipoense.
Out of these, the micranthum, vietnamense and malipoense have been potted now. Some of you may have seen the pictures before.
The picture was taken Feb. 20 2013 and shows vietnamense in the middle, tranlieanums to the left micranthum eburneum to the right and one sole malipo from that lot to the right. All of them are significantly stronger today. I would say great sucess for those.
What happened to the rest? Surprisingly the jackii did not prosper, actually the opposite, most of them died, so now only a few are still alive. I suspect that i had an infection of phytophora in the tray. The anitum, seems to grow, but does it prosper? hard to say its sooo slow. I guess the compost is wrong and I will replant those seedlings into something acider.
What regards the randsii, I split the original into an acid compost and one with marble. Checking the roots of the plants after 3/4 of a year I discovered that they were quite bad in the limestone mix. They were planted together with the remaining jackii in a bark based mix. Tigrinum is notoriously difficult. Most of my population is now gone, out of 20 I have 3 left. They were together with the jackii so I guess its pytophora that got them. Extremely slow to establish though. I placed them together with the randsii and jackii and there are good hopes for the tree surviving tigrinums. This picture tells it all: tigrinum in the middle, one jackii lower left and in the back randsii. Picture was taken today March 27 2013.
close-up, note the tiny root coming! indeed a good sign! I did not see the snail until now, have to get rid of it asap!! How on earth did it get into the compost!
Randsii, seem to start to take off! Lets hope that it really IS randsii....none lost so far.
In October 2012 , I received my hitherto last flask consignement, this time another micranthum eburneum, helenae album, stonei and armeniacum.
Now, almost 6 months later, evrything seems to be ok with them all, the armeniacum and micranthum were quite small but comes along, and the stonei is pushing new leaves as well. Micranthum and Helenae album here;first a picture taken in January 14 2013
then one of today March 27 2013, visible growth during these 2 months, or am I fooling myself
Helenae close-up
Due to size limitations I will continue with Part 2 in another thread .http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29236
This is how the randsii looked like:
And here are some hangianums.
Well I said that they were placed in the greenhouse; and that was not a good idea. Some of the plants succumbed rather quicly, like the randsii, others are still on a slow decline, with hardly any growth at all, succumbing to diseases and pests. The plants were potted after a year and I still have a fair number of emersonii and hangianums that are slowly dying. The feirreanums took a quick escape, only 1 or two left now. No growing. The randsii population was entirely wiped out.
Today, after two years, I have a few druryi that looks ok but not great, and perhaps five emersonii and hangianums that look ok. The numbers are shrinking though, they seem prone to all sorts of rot.
I soon realised that growing flasks did require other measures than growing mature plants (even if the latter has been greatly improved since then as well IMHO). This requires some special measures and I postulated some "rules" to follow for sucessful growing
i) flasklings are tender. They should be treated with great care. I normally wash away the agar in luke-warm water(30C?) and place the plantlets in rows in trays like shown in the pics. After placing themalong the edge of a ditch in the tray the compost is carefullymoved to cover the roots, while creating a new ditch for planting. Do not break roots! It is better to plant lumps of plantlets than to divide if they are difficult to get apart.
ii) flasklings are tender and prone to infections. The story of my first flasks(above) tells it all. This means that flasklings must be protected against infections. Which again means that 1) they should be raised in a protected environment away from potential infection sources (like greenhouse conditions). 2) Everything that gets in contact with the plants should be sterilised. Trays etc are either not used before, or has been washed thoroughly in rather strong bleach solution. The compost is sterilised. I use the microwave oven, fill a bowl with moist compost and microwave until its hot enough (boiling). After cooling down its ready to use. Flasklings are not planted in the greenhouse, kitchen or similar is better.
To take care of requirement 1) and 2) above, a special growing cabinet was erected with artificial light and heat and the flasklings were nursed in "windowsill greenhouses". This takes care of the requirement of high humidity (first weeks the vents are closed, later open) and also prevents cross contamination just in case. The cabinet and some growing results have been presented in another thread,http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28212 so if there are repetitions please bear over with me. This is the cabinet with its front removed. That is my door and the photo shows how it looks inside
More info in the other thread.
Okey, I talked about requirement s for clean conditions, well its not 100% sterile. I use the water for watering from the greenhouse and as such it may get contaminated. I collect rainwater in a tank with a heater and of course many things end up there. I have found toads swimming around and also dead mice. More common is debris from trees, particularly during the autumn storms. To keep infections at bay I do buble with ozonised air. I am not sure if it is effective, but so far things look as if the water is clean.
Watering of the flasklings is of course necessary, and I use the same water as in the greenhouse. This means that it is always fertilized at some 200ppmTDS level. And it is alwas tempered. In one of the pictures above you see my watering can, that gets filled after being empties and let inside the cabinet to temper until next watering. Never use cold water. Temperature is maintained at approximately 17C at night and 26C during daytime (16hours). The first round in this new setup were some charlesworthii, regular and album, esquirolei album, sanderianum venustum and hangianum topperii and roth. They were placed in the cabinet in the middle of May 2011. Recently, the venustums flowered, here they are together with some of the other plants of that lot, mostly charliesboth types. A few survivors of the first load are seen as well. This picture was taken 6th of Jan 2013.
Since then, growth has commenced again and some plants rare really showing fast growth these days.
It may look as if everything is fabulous with my set up. That is not the case, so now I will touch the not so sucessful flasks. If we consider the above picture, I would rate the venustums as being very sucessful, the charlies are successful but not that much as the venustum. The lot contained other species as well, the topperii has been quite sucessful, the plants have aquired a size of some 15cm leaf-span. the roths are more mixe, here I believe that the choice of compost was not optimal, actually not good at all. Most of my plants have been potted in mixes very high in marble and dolomite chips. For some plants this is exellent the roots love it, for other species its not. For Micranthum and vietnamense it seems perfect, for esquirolei its not. Charlies seem not to care. Roths are not liking it either i suspect. Topperii is so, so. I do not really see differences in growth here. So, to sum up, the choice of substrate may be important. The sanderianums are btw. no sucess, but some of the plants seem to grow, although slow.
The next lot of plants came one year later in March 2012; and contained jackii, anitum, tigrinum, a new randsii, tranlieanum, micranthum.eburneum, two vietnamense and one malipoense.
Out of these, the micranthum, vietnamense and malipoense have been potted now. Some of you may have seen the pictures before.
The picture was taken Feb. 20 2013 and shows vietnamense in the middle, tranlieanums to the left micranthum eburneum to the right and one sole malipo from that lot to the right. All of them are significantly stronger today. I would say great sucess for those.
What happened to the rest? Surprisingly the jackii did not prosper, actually the opposite, most of them died, so now only a few are still alive. I suspect that i had an infection of phytophora in the tray. The anitum, seems to grow, but does it prosper? hard to say its sooo slow. I guess the compost is wrong and I will replant those seedlings into something acider.
What regards the randsii, I split the original into an acid compost and one with marble. Checking the roots of the plants after 3/4 of a year I discovered that they were quite bad in the limestone mix. They were planted together with the remaining jackii in a bark based mix. Tigrinum is notoriously difficult. Most of my population is now gone, out of 20 I have 3 left. They were together with the jackii so I guess its pytophora that got them. Extremely slow to establish though. I placed them together with the randsii and jackii and there are good hopes for the tree surviving tigrinums. This picture tells it all: tigrinum in the middle, one jackii lower left and in the back randsii. Picture was taken today March 27 2013.
close-up, note the tiny root coming! indeed a good sign! I did not see the snail until now, have to get rid of it asap!! How on earth did it get into the compost!
Randsii, seem to start to take off! Lets hope that it really IS randsii....none lost so far.
In October 2012 , I received my hitherto last flask consignement, this time another micranthum eburneum, helenae album, stonei and armeniacum.
Now, almost 6 months later, evrything seems to be ok with them all, the armeniacum and micranthum were quite small but comes along, and the stonei is pushing new leaves as well. Micranthum and Helenae album here;first a picture taken in January 14 2013
then one of today March 27 2013, visible growth during these 2 months, or am I fooling myself
Helenae close-up
Due to size limitations I will continue with Part 2 in another thread .http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29236
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