Fred's Carnivorous Plants and other oddities

[ranunculus]

Stunning, Fred.

[fredg]

Thank you Cliff.

A different angle to show the pink bracts on my 1983 clone.

[fredg]

The trial with the air pumps has been a bit of a let down. The first pump is great and is still pumping away in daylight. Pump #2 lasted a week after installation so I replaced it and pump #3 lasted for about 3 hours. Both of these are en route to Amazon for full refunds. I have decided to go with water pump #4 for Darlingtonia tray #4 and the existing air pump will go into a Utricularia tray.
Considering that I can buy 3 water pumps for the (new increased) price of an air pump it's no contest.

[fredg]

My Darlingtonia House in May 2015. At least the top half of it anyway. Flowering on the older colonies hasn't been as good as last year even though I thinned out all three trays. There are new clones flowering though which all helps with the enjoyment.
The three solar water pumps are all still running well and the seedlings appear to be growing very well indeed.



Just to show that I don't just grow Darlingtonia, here's a selection from some of my other carnivorous plants.

[fredg]

The video update of the solar air pump trial.

[fredg]

Update
 
Water pump No.4 is now in operation. It has replaced the sole surviving solar air pump in the initial, now abandoned, air pump trial. I found a much cheaper supplier for the T connectors (and the L connectors) but the diameter was slightly larger. I fitted the tubing by heating in boiling water to make a good tight fit. I then discovered that with the larger diameter I could make the spray bars from giant chunky drinking straws (they come in packs of 30). They're very cheap and easier to work with than the tubing so another bonus. I should be able to easily adapt the narrower diameter T connectors to take these when spray bar replacement is needed.
As I had a base already made for a solar panel as supplied with the air pump I adapted the design to fit in the water pump panel. This I feel is superior to the ones already fitted to the other three panels so I'll probably replace all those at some stage.
Tray No.1 was the only one with the pump station in direct sunlight and this did lead to a need to clean out thread algae this week in the gap between the two rearmost inner trays as it was beginning to affect pump efficiency. I made up a plastic cover to restrict sunlight to prevent this in future. A second cover is over pump No.4 as that will develop the same problem if prevention is not applied.

[fredg]

The Darlingtonia update for June ( and anyone else who wants to watch it)

[fredg]

My specialist house on Darlingtonia was turning into a Blog so I may as well go the whole hog.

Drosera regia.

I was asked to supply an update on another forum so here are the plants so far this year.

[fredg]

Utricularia - Or - What ever happened to the solar air pump.

I finally finished planting up the pond baskets with terrestrial Utricularia that I'll keep in the trays I'll add an airstone each to powered by the air pump.
I have the one pump left out of three I trialled so I'll just split the supply with a T junction.



Dionaea muscipula

A very quick look at some of my Venus' Flytraps. They're all budded up and ready to bloom. Many sources advise to remove the inflorescences as flowering and seeding will kill the plant. I think my response to that is quite evident

[fredg]

The Utricularia reniformis are still throwing up leaves and of course more buds are open on this inflorescence.



No air supply to these but the other species in the trays that do have an air supply do show very early signs of enjoying their new conditions.
Such a pity the solar air pumps are so unreliable, get a good one and they're great The sole survivor is now supplying oxygenation to two trays and the supply is so good I'm going for a third when the triple regulator arrives.

[grackle]

Hello Fred
Those are wonderful Utricularia blossoms.
I'm wondering about their markings. Do the yellow bands shrink to stripes with fertilization or are they just quite variable?
grack

[fredg]

They're variable grackle.All three flowers so far have different markings. What's annoying me is that I didn't start growing these plants many years earlier. They're a lot hardier than I thought. No heating required over winter here last year, which is the first I didn't protect them by keeping them under lights in the cellar. I took just the one pot out of five down and the leaf growth on the four left in the cold (and I mean cold, vents and louvre open all winter) greenhouse has been the best ever.

[grackle]

Ah, OK. Utricularias didn't have a strong need to be much weirder.

[fredg]

A little update on the Utricularia trays connected up with an airstone from the solar air pump.

This is Utricularia livida, a small terrestrial Utricularia. On the left is the portion I planted up last week and on the right is  a portion I planted up a couple of months ago from the same pot . The oxygenated water is certainly looking beneficial.

[fredg]

The  three airline regulator arrived today. Quite impressive, six days from order to delivery and it came from China.
I fitted it immediately and it's working well so that's another set of Utricularia i need to get into pond baskets.

Temperatures are a little high today . I checked in the Darlingtonia house at 4pm and i had an air temperature of 30.5C and on root temperatures I had a couple of the trays reading 34C (93.2F) which according to the "Old Mystics" should have killed the plants. I have been taken to task for my attitude to the "Old Ones" of the CP world for simply saying they got it very wrong. I'm afraid if plain John Bloggs get's it wrong or Dr John Bloggs or even Professor John Bloggs gets it wrong it's just the same , it's wrong. Besides, he never sent me any plants.