Dionysia 2009

[Zdenek]

Hello Ger,
I know your alpine house and your Dionysias but your recent pictures have taken me breath, particularly your afganica. There is however another plant which I envy. It is your D. denticulata. I grow it for ages (it however lives about three years for me and I permanently keep it by cuttings) and I am not able to keep it compact. My denticulata is always too leggy. You know my alpine house and its surroundings. Can you give me some advise? Can it be so because my A.H. is too shaded by surrounding shrubs of hazelnut? The same problem I have with D. archibaldii whilst other my Dionysias are quite good.
I attach here a not too good picture of my Dionysia denticulata.
Zdenek

[gervandenbeuken]

Hello Zdenek,
so nice to meet you on the forum.
Your alpinehouse has an excellent place in your garden Zdenek. So this is definately not the problem.
The reason that we can't keep D. denticulata and D. archibaldii in caracter is a matter of climate and substrate.
I have discussed this many times with Michael Kammerlander and it seems that everybody has the same problems with these species.
Also all the cultivars with archibaldii blood have this property of things when they are getting older than 3 or 4 years.
The only thing you can do is using a rather poor mineral mix of course sand, perlite, pummice, tufa grit if available and a small part of good potting compost. So the best remedy is to keep your plants not longer than 3 or 4 years and take cuttings as many as you can.

Ger

[Zdenek]

Thank you, Ger,
I am trying to keep my compost very poor, of course. Nevertheless, after reading your reply I noticed, that I confused it. The picture of D. denticulata is not from your garden, but from Allan Newton, sorry.
Zdenek

[tonyg]

I recently visited Mike & Ju Bramley near Chesterfield UK.  They are good friends with Michael K and have Dionysia afghanica hybrids named after them!  (As Zdenek has also I think?)
They have a brilliant system for keeping moisture levels right, copied from MK.  Here are a couple of pics of the deep plunge.  A gravel layer at the bottom is seperated from the sand by a layer of weed supressing membrane.  Water is added down the small pipe and excess drains out into the large pipe which has a plug at the bottom.
The plants looked healthy including some tricky species.

Dionysia afghanica
Dionyisia bazoftica
Dionysia bazoftica Amethyst
Dionyisia 'Judith Bramley' - afghanica x