Andreettae bud progression

[dodidoki]

I got it in autumn, hard to keep it alive, till this spring seems to be established finally, and now it is in bud. I keep my fingers crossed (under the shagnum there is a new growth....)


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[SlipperKing]

Too cool!

 

[NYEric]

I agree it is hard to keep alive. i've killed a few. Can you show us how you grow it?

 

[dodidoki]

I agree it is hard to keep alive. i've killed a few. Can you show us how you grow it?

In mix of bark, akadama and clay balls ( 2:1:1), watering every third day with 100 ppm K-lite, avoid from Sunlight, under artef light, humidity always near 80-85%.Temp. is around 16-18 C at night, 22-28 in daytime. She suffered in the beginning, old growth died back, nowadays she started to produce few new roots and new growth. I think the golden trick was covering surface with shagnum, what is always wet.

 

[NYEric]

If I get another one I'll try that, covering w/ sphagnum. Can you post a photo of the media in the pot please?

 

[dodidoki]

OK, but I can just tomorrow ( time is 22.37 here...)

 

[Rick]

What's the size of that plant?

I've been growing a couple new fischeri. They are growing much faster and bigger than when using MSU and adding oyster shell to the mix. I lost all my early fischeri when growing with "high pH" and high K, even though they did try to bloom several times and made new growths for a couple of years in the process.

 

[dodidoki]

Today I carefully removed sphagnum, Eryc, you can see new starting root and growth. Another photo shows media, in wich plant grows.

Rick: plant LS is not too big, only about 20 cm across. Older growth was much bigger, about 30 cm LS. I tried to grow it in this original mix with traditional fertilizer, and plant started to diminish within few weeks. I changed then to K-lite, some improvement , but slow diminishing didn't stopped, however I repotted plant to avoid from "theoretic" salts in old media.
Wrong sign was that new roots stopped and died ( and dRied) within few days. Then I decided to cover surface with sphagnum and NEVER let it dry. Plats stopped diminishing, produced few new leaves and now it is in bud. I hope it will survive.


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[NYEric]

Very good. Next time I have a couple $100's laying around I will pick up a couple and try again. Do you keep the pot sitting in water or anything?

 

[dodidoki]

Very good. Next time I have a couple $100's laying around I will pick up a couple and try again. Do you keep the pot sitting in water or anything?

I water it regulary every third days, in winter once every week. The most important, I think, never let to dry out surface! New root die quickly if there is not enough water surrounded. If a new root can reach enough deep in potting mix, where it can survive, regulary watering can keep it alive. But surface dry out very fast and my opinion that this specie is very-very sensitive to this. Good way to eliminate this proplem is wet sphagnum "scarf" around the "neck" of plant.

 

[dodidoki]

What's the size of that plant?

I've been growing a couple new fischeri. They are growing much faster and bigger than when using MSU and adding oyster shell to the mix. I lost all my early fischeri when growing with "high pH" and high K, even though they did try to bloom several times and made new growths for a couple of years in the process.

I don't think that oyster can play role if you use YOUR (!!!) K-lite formula. There is enough Ca I think, much more than oyster can give to your plants.

Another thing is distribution in time, after reading your article carefully, I decided to give fertilizer to my plants not sequentially, but with every watering, difference is that I give it to my plants with weaker cc, cc is with TDS meter is 100 ppm, total. ( I use always RO water, TDS is around 10 ppm). Results are surprisingly good.

 

[Rick]

I don't think that oyster can play role if you use YOUR (!!!) K-lite formula. There is enough Ca I think, much more than oyster can give to your plants.

Another thing is distribution in time, after reading your article carefully, I decided to give fertilizer to my plants not sequentially, but with every watering, difference is that I give it to my plants with weaker cc, cc is with TDS meter is 100 ppm, total. ( I use always RO water, TDS is around 10 ppm). Results are surprisingly good.

I don't use oyster shell any more either. In general I'm phasing out calcareous pot ammendments. I believe in the good old days that excess potassium caused symptoms of calcium deficiency, and this species is known to come from limestone rich areas. So people (including myself) assumed that this species had a special calcium requirement, and were adding lots of oyster shell or lime to "fix" what appeared to be calcium deficiency symptoms or low pH symptoms. And as I noted, it didn't work:wink:

Your strategy for more increased frequency of very weak concentrations is the way to go. Especially for sensitive Phrags that like lots of water. I think you could see even better results by cutting the TDS amount in half again.

 

[Shiva]

Nice! Waiting for the bud to open.

 

[dodidoki]

Update:


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[eteson]

Congrats, dodidoki ! Nice plant!e

I got about 25 plants of "besseae" 2 years ago. and I started growing it with my other besseae plants. Surprisingly all the plants started to die slowly...
Only when one of the remaining plants started a new spike I notticed that the plants were not besseae but andreettae. Inmediatly I changed the remaining plants about 10 to a new potting mix 40% spagnum and 60% fine-medium bark and coverer the surface with spagnum. I put the pots sitting in water and the change was almost inmediate. I saved 8 plants and some of them are growing quite fine.
As dodidoki said a good practice is to put wet sphagnum moss close to the new developping growths... but then, the main problem is that the new growths trend to develop 2 or even 3 inches above the old one... hard problem to solve for me!

About the point of adding Calcium or not to the potting mix... I do not add Calcium to any phragmipedium (with the exception of kovachii). Andreettae comes from the south of Colombia and my guess is that it does not come from a carbonate rich area (I have not yet been able to visit the natural habitat).

 

[eaborne]

Well grown plant!

 

[cnycharles]

nice and nice info. so, it seems that andreetae prefers neutral to acidic conditions? is this any different or the same as schlimii?

 

[dodidoki]

I took this pic because two new growths begun to become faster....


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It is strange because I fought for its life 6 months ago....