I envy your location in New Orleans. As you know, you are well placed to
explore fantastic CP areas.
> I'm interested in knowing more about the natural growing areas of CP.
>In several books I've read they mention the areas that these plants grow
>and say things like the soils is always damp etc. What I was wondering
Ron:
The N. American CP tend to grow in places with permanent moisture, as you
noted. I think that growing plants in trays is a pretty good way of
doing things, at least with most CP. The problem you are encountering
is because the water is getting anaerobic and you get all sorts of
nasty putrification. The way around this is to fill the trays with
water, and then let the water level drop over days so that for
the last day the pot is not standing in water. Air gets in, and all
is happy. This is what I do, and it is successful.
Another tray method is to set up watering tables (table-sized trays).
Once or twice a day you use a timed pump to inundate the tables, then
let them drain. This waters the plants, but avoids standing water. This
method is a bit more hardware intensive.
Barry