> Rick, could you explain a little more what a peat pellet is?
> Is it just compressed peat? I don't quite understand.
These are 3-5 mm spheroids of highly compressed peat. The pellets are
fairly hard and do not break down even after soaking several months in
water. I expect the main advantage is that lots of air spaces are
created in the media due to the round shape. In practice, we've been
using 50% perlite/50% pellets in the pot, and top-dressing with a thin
layer of pure pellets for aesthetics.
> With regard to double traps on VFT's, my plants occansionally
> produce them. What is interesting is that the traps operate
> independently of each other.
Do you get a stable bi-lobed plant if you propagate one of the traps?
(...I guess I would have heard about it by now if you did :-)).
Pekka,
> What about your tiny little red vft Rick? Was the red part a leaf or root?
My tissue culture red VFT seedlings have all succumbed. I think the
whole plant was red, but it was hard to say as the biggest one only
reached 4 mm. (root + two cotyledons) I think that these plants were
chlorophyll-free, and so they died shortly after germination. All the
green plants did just fine and are now about 2 cm tall after 3 months of
culture. Most of the green plants have bright red root tips.
I do have a leaf cutting of an all-red vft. It has just struck, and the
little plant is 4mm tall. I plan to agressively propagate this plant,
and I'll let you know when I have some to trade.
> btw what is the best media for growing Pinguicula leaf cuttings?
> My _Pinguicula agnata_ got mechanical damage and I would try to take some
> leaf cuttings from it to save it. I have peat,vermiculite and sphagnum?
> Pure vermiculite?
Pure vermiculite doesn't have enough nutrients to support the cuttings
after the energy in the original leaf is exhausted. Once you get a
strike, you should start spraying with miracid. You could also try pure
peat if you don't keep it too wet. Once the rosette is nicely
established, move it to vermiculite and start a feeding regime. I've
found _P. agnata_ to respond quite vigorously to powdered egg-white.
Shing Lam,
It was good to visit with you on your vacation last week. I hope you
had a good trip back home.
> In the July issue of the DATZ magazine I found a few ads from mail order
> companies that are selling Torfgranulat (peat granules?). I don't know
> whether they will ship overseas or not. Replace the leading zero of
> the area code by the country code of Germany i.e. 49.
Thanks for the info! I'll try faxing for a quote (after I weigh my
box of Sera pellets and see if these prices are good in comparison).
BTW, what does DATZ stand for?
-- Rick Walker