These cute little blooms opened up today. Look how adorable they were just before they opened:

They really do smell a bit like chocolate. Had this plant for almost 2 years now and it's finally showing its love.

Looking for the wisdom of the more experienced. I have what I think is pest damage on my alocasia. I was suspicious of spidemites, but haven’t visualized any pests on the plant. I have been showering it and treating with insecticidal soap. The last leaf came out facing upwards and bowed, and it’s working on a new leaf now. It’s been next to another alocasia (that I’ve also been treating), but I’m not having issues with it. I also did accidentally let its water reservoir go dry. I don’t think that helped anything, but I don’t think it was the cause.

I bought a banana tree in August of 2021 and never thought it would actually fruit. I was walking by it the other night and saw something purple/maroon out of the corner of my eye. Popped my head between some leaves and was greeted by some baby bananas!

I converted into a GIF, but somehow the file size increased from 4 to 120 MB 🥴
So, here's the video :)

I have a bit of a conundrum. Twice now I've seen fairly large mealy bugs in this ping's dish. ordinarilly I'd dunk the whole plant (roots and all) into insectidal soap for 30 minutes. With pings though I worry the leaves are too sensitive.

Has anyone ever successfully treated pinguiculas for mealy bugs or other soft bodied pests?

Luckily it's in my quarantine so it hopefully won't spread to my whole collection. Below is a closeup of the culprit, along with the plants in that room (mostly newly bought pings...)

I even got it on video! How can I share it here?

She's growing wild on her windowsill. Need to add new earth soon, this is going to be interesting since she already threw a small branch towards me when I turned her for the photo 😬

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.myserv.one/post/19408154

The Calamansi…

The citrusy calamansi is native to the Philippines and parts of Asia. This particular calamansi plant has been thriving in the eastern US for decades and even bears fruit in the winter. How so? It’s in a pot next to a big window and never leaves home past September. It’s flowers have an intoxicating aroma reminiscent of another Philippine native- the sampaguita.

Currently, this beautiful plant is on vacation at my friend’s front porch as I repaint my living room walls. In exchange for caring for the calamansi plant, my friend was gifted with fruits and made her own calamansi juice albeit heavy-handed with the sugar. She has used it to top off her pancit and received many likes on her social media accounts for the calamansi photos she posted.

If you would like to learn more about the calamansi plant, Wikipedia has a page dedicated to this Philippine native.

This is my second try. I got a bunch of seeds from a hobbyist and put them on LECA first. Most of them got washed away, and those that stayed, died a pretty quick death.
I had to try a different method.

Gladly, I found some leftover CP substrate (peat + perlite) in my parents garage and placed it into a petri dish.

Now, about 3 weeks later, they germinated.

I transferred them into living sphagnum moss now and hope they will survive 😬 Update will follow soon! 💪

Here are the tiny leaf pullings of my Pinguicula agnata and P. moranensis.

The main substrate is LECA, with a top dress layer of living mosses.

The moss samples were foraged from parks, concrete, and more, then transferred to propagation boxes to get a clean sample, and then sprinkled on top of the substrate.

Right now, I use a mix of different species with different growing condition preferences, because I wanna see which ones thrive and which not.

Pings grow on rocks and trunks in nature, where they often anchor in mosses, which gives them steady moisture.

Why?

• Because they look neat
• Because they give my GF the signal to NOT water with fertilizer when I'm out of house. I plan to at least top dress ALL my carnivorous plants with moss in the future.
• Because the LECA is often too airy (big gaps between the balls), and Pings root very shallow, so they often dried out
• To give them a place where the leaves can rest without salt residues
• To support more microfauna, like springtails, which act as "infant food" for the sticky leaves
• And because it looks neat, did I already say that?

It will probably take a month or two for the mosses to sprout again and cover the surface.

As soon as I see any progress, I will update y'all 👋

I've never seen this before in my life! Fuzzy black petals? Chalice like stem? Very cool and very mysterious.

Refuses to give me more leaves but at least I get pretty flowers 🤷‍♀️

They progressed from stars (lower right) to jelly fish (upper right) over a couple hours

I honestly didn't think it could take down prey that chunky but clearly the plant had other plans. Good riddance too, that fly was buzzing around the bedroom last night.

Too much water / not enough water / something else?

I've had this plant for a while in other countries, and it was always very easy going. But after the last time I moved the sapling I took with me has started struggling.

The picture is not a perfect illustration, but you can see new leaves coming out turning black in the ends, and eventually drying out and dying. This already happened with a lot of leaves that I cut off, but now it's repeating itself with the new ones.

The plant has been in a relatively bright spot and I think it has received enough water that it shouldn't be the problem. The black parts are completely dead. Does anyone have any idea what can be done? :)

I'm sorry the picture is not more illustrative.

I've already made a few posts about my small carnivorous plants collection a while ago and decided to do another one :)

I already did a lot of research about mineralic/ inorganic substrates and hydroponics in regards of CPs, but found basically nothing. Most people grow them in peat and consider it essential.

I wanted to prove it otherwise, because I find peat unethical and also largely prefer to cultivate my (house-)plants without soil in LECA.

Remember, my plants aren't old (<1 year, many even just a few months), so consider this as experimental observations, not as guide! I don't know how they will perform long term!

Nepenthes

They are doing absolutely great!

Somehow, I originally thought they don't need much light, so they looked pretty miserable the first months. One has even completely lost its roots...

But now, I've hung them in my brightest window and WOW.
The red one is starting to bounce back, and the green one is thriving. It is growing lots of pitchers and has formed quite a few new waxy leaves.

I fertilize it by filling the pitchers with full strength nutrient solution almost to the brim, because I noticed they drink up most of it in a matter of days.

The substrate (100% LECA) is watered with RO water only, but I add a bit of regular nutrient solution about once a month to speed up growth.

They can both absorb nutrients through the pitchers AND roots, but if you overdo it with root fertilization, they are fully fed and will stop producing pitchers.

I'm also feeding one pitcher with dead insects, and the other one with said nutrient solution, because I wanna see how they react to each.

Pinguicula

Pings in nature often grow on limestone rocks and wood, so many CP enthusiasts cultivate them on mostly inorganic media like pumice.

And what shall I say, it works! I took quite a few leaf cuttings, and look how cute they are! ☺️

I started cultivating moss recently, and I'm currently in the process of adding a layer of live moss on the surface. It looks cool, holds moisture (pings have shallow roots that are prone to desiccation) and harbours microfauna like springtails, which can act as first food for baby pings ;)
It also helps decomposing dead flies.

This one is my P. agnata

And this my very newly bought P. moranensis

Drosera

This one is by far the hardest for me and the exception.

In nature, they are bog plants, and they need peat to survive.

Here's my Drosera alicae, which I tried to repot into hydro conditions:

It didn't even survive one month in there.

(Ignore the sphagnum moss, I added it way too late.)

And here's the same plant, but kept in its original substrate, but with living sphagnum added later on

It even started flowering!

Sarracenia

Not a houseplant, but still carnivorous. It requires bog conditions, direct sun and chilly winters to survive.

It lives in my newly built bog bucket on my balcony. The bucket is filled with concrete as a weight to hold a pole, and then I added a few centimetres of leftover lava rock/ LECA.

I've had the Sarracenia in way too dark conditions for too long, that's why it looks so miserable.

Now, since it recieves more light, it started forming new pitchers. I also added a bit of living sphagnum a few weeks ago.

Sphagnum/ moss farm

As I said in the beginning, some CPs can be grown on alternative substrates, but some require very acidic, completely mineral free media.

Peat is one of them, but not the only one.
It's made out of dead sphagnum mosses, so why not just use those instead?

I made a post about that a few days ago, but here's a quick recap.

I got a bit of live sphagnum moss from a neighbour and put it into plastic boxes with some moist LECA as substrate.

I want to grow as much of it as I can and then use it as a substrate for the obligate bog plants.