Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 11:07:35 -0800 (PST) From: William Tsun-Yuk Hsu <hsu@tlaloc.sfsu.edu> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg4159$foo@default> Subject: Re: Water for CPs
David Collier mentioned water quality in San Francisco,
so I thought I'd share my relatively limited experience.
My housemate and I generally use SF tap water run
through a Brita filter for our CPs (mostly sarracenias
and drosera, a few nepenthes, cephalotus and
darlingtonia). A month or two ago, I got tired of
watching my nepenthes degrade, and switched to distilled
water just to see what might happen.
Most of them started looking better about a week after
the switch. Instead of losing old pitchers that were
there when I bought the plants, I'm getting some new
baby pitchers.
The improvement could be because of other factors of course,
but the only major thing that I was doing differently was
the water. For reference, the nepenthes involved are
gracillis, x mixta and x coccinea; I'm growing them in
a sunny heated room (65 to 70F), live spagnum, misting
once or twice a day. (I know I should be sticking them
in my covered growing tray for higher humidity, but
they develop fungus spots when I do that. The other CPs
in the covered tray don't get fungus though.)
However, all our other CPs are doing fine with the Brita
filtered water.
Bill
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