gejala pokok | symptomatic trees

it has been hot for the past couple of days, and then a sudden short storm last night. took most of my seedlings in, but left 3 out of 4 pots of my sunflower outside. big mistake.

this morning, had a closer look at the seedlings, and i think they’ve got some kind of diseases! almost every true leaf has a blackened tip, with a yellowy patch. what’s going on? what can i do? is it a fungus? is it something else? shit shit shit.

i’m really panicking. hope someone at the gardening forums can help me. only just this morning i was feeling really good about how they survived the transplant.

now this

can’t seem to find anything on the web. maybe they’re black spots? or one of these many, many different kinds of sunflower diseases? or a list of these common houseplant problems?

really hope against hope that someone can help me!

In desperation, i posted a cry for help at gardenweb.

Posted by mukaketupat Malaysia (My Page) on

Sat, Apr 28, 07 at 10:16

Hi everyone,

I hope someone is kind enough to help me. I got a pitcher plant for a gift for christmas. It was in a small pot with about 4 pitchers. I left it hanging on the balcony, gets about 2-4 hours sun everyday. All the pitchers dried up in less than a week. I mist it at least twice a day and kept the soil moist. Spray it with liquid organic fertiliser once in two weeks.

Its been 4/5 months, the leaves are twice as much, but no pitchers at all. I’ve just repotted it last night with a mix of sphagnum and moss, and theres a lot of baby leaves coming out from the roots.

So i dont know what this means? At the end of every leaf, theres like a small hook that looks like it could potentially be a baby pitcher, then it turns brown..

So what should i do next? Where do i go from here?

Here’s the respond that i got..

Posted by mutant_hybrid (My Page) on Sat, Apr 28, 07 at 12:58

Hello mukaketupat,

I take from the description it is an Asian Pitcher Plant of the Nepenthes genus? What exact species is it?.. Was it from a hardware store, bought from a nursery, or ordered online? Some species are more difficult to get to pitcher than others.

1. Light: Nepenthes like a lot of light, but can do with partial light, like what they would get under a tree. Some shade. Full sun is not necessary, but good partial light is. Without enough light, the plant will not make pitchers.

2. Humidity: When Nepenthes are first bought and taken from higher humidity to lower humidity, they loose their pitchers. If you had a higher humidity, or the same as what the plant had to start with, it would have kept it’s pitchers. It will have to get used to your humidity, which it should have done by now after 4-5 months.

3. Water: Make sure the plant gets distilled, rain, or reverse osmosis water with all the minerals extracted. Hard water of over 50-100 will harm the plant and eventually kill it. Make sure the soil remains moist, but never dry or waterlogged. Do not keep the planter in a tray, let the excess water drain out. You can catch the excess water to use on the Nepenthes later, in a couple of days, thats no problem.

4. Soil: Nepenthes like their soil loose and with good drainage. The sphagnum peat moss is good, but you might want to add some perlite or orchid bark and coconut husk to it to give good drainage. About one third peat moss with two thirds perlite or one third each of peat moss, bark, and coconut husk would be good. There are other soil mixes you can use that would work just as well. So long as the soil is acidic, what the peat provides, and drains water fast and gives air to the roots. Make sure none of the ingredients you use in the soil or water have fertilizers, minerals, or salts added.

5. Fertilizer: While it is possible to fertilize Nepenthes, it should be done by weak foliar feed wiped on their leaves with a damp cloth or cotton swab in a 1/4 or less solution of orchid blood meal fertilizer once every two weeks or once a month. It is very easy to kill a carnivorous plant by fertilizing, so less is better. Never add fertilizer to the soil as that will weaken and kill the plant eventually. Sometimes growers will use fertilizer on the Nepenthes leaves when they loose their pithcers as this helps to stimulate pitcher production. Once it makes pitchers, stop fertilizing and the plant will catch it’s own insects.

Some problem areas to consider are that Nepenthes are allergic to copper, so any chemicals or water sprayed in the soil or on their leaves should not contain copper or any other minerals like calcium or magnesium or potassium salts found in hard water. Copper sprayed on their leaves, like in copper based fungicides, would inhibit pitcher production. If you use pesticides use pyrethrines, and if you use fungicides on the plant, only use sulfur or neem oil based products. There are some other ideas for fungicides, but the idea is to make sure no dangerous minerals or fertilizers get on the plant.

You indicated that baby leaves were growing from the roots, this tells me that your plant is getting ready to vine. It will send up several new shoots and start growing longer. It might be saving energy to vine so it might not produce pitchers while it does this. As long as it makes new leaves and grows, it is ok. Keep giving the plant what it needs and it should start pitchering in a couple of months.

Thank you so much for the word of advice and recomendations. Took some photos for mutant hybrid this morning…maybe more info will help.

A wide view of my pitcher plant

Fertiliser - 100% organic, that i’ve been spraying on the leaves of my pitcher plant once every two weeks. Nothing dodgy in any of the ingredients, i hope..

Seen on almost all the leaves. Just a tiny bump of something, but no pitchers so far.

How it looks last week…

Now it looks like it…woah, its a forest out there!

And i’ve really been bad with this. I haven’t been doing anything. But it grew and grew…

I’m a little unsure when i should properly plant this. Its been 4 weeks and it still looks fragile.  I think i should wait a couple more weeks…i don’t think i’ll be able to take it if it suddenly dies when i transplant it in soil.

there’s something about the bodyshop that creeps me out a little with their “buy a candle and stop domestic violence” etc. thingies.

dropped by it today (okay, not that creeped out that i stopped going altogether, my bad!), and saw a sign that says “adopt a seed”, which of course perked me up. it’s some action around global warming, and calling for potential customers to pick up small brown packets of seeds to plant them at home. no instructions or details about what seeds they are, but here’s a visual clue:

i asked the shop assistant what it was, and she said it was a yellow flame tree. sounds cool! she said i had to boil the seeds for 2 hours before planting, which makes sense because tree seeds has quite long dormant periods. but uhm… does anything about this exercise strike anyone as a little weird?

anyway! i can’t wait for an over-population of yellow flame trees all along the streets of PJ and KL :D. i wonder if i can manage one on my balcony ;p

i’m going crazy. i used to have a life. blissful hours of vegging out in front of the telly, going places, seeing people - all the things that makes a person normal.

but the past few weeks, all i’ve done is spend hours, hours, checking on my little seedlings, getting all stressed out and turning into an anxious wreck, panicking over transplanting needs.. even my web search habit has changed drastically.

i used to read socio-political blogs, blogs on poetry, arts stuff, news. but now? all i read are gardening blogs. all kinds of gardening blogs. gardeners who rant, gardeners who rave, gardeners who love their gardens, gardeners who hate other gardeners… it’s a mad, mad world. and it’s not even been a month yet since i started this obsession.

now i have more than twenty pots of seedlings in multiple sizes needing light, shade, water, coaxing conversations, all kinds of attention. i’m really afraid that i might not get out of this bubble. and i’m so totally, crazy in love with this.

oh dear.

so, back to more important things

my sunflowers are doing great! there’s true leaves showing, and none of them have keeled over or died yet. which is super cool. here’s a latest picture.

they’re still under florescent light in the toilet, and i think i might have to invest in some table lamp thing soon. i can’t keep one toilet occupied by pots and trays forever. also a little worried that they shouldn’t be under constant light, so i’m going to give them a rest tonight and switch it off. hopefully they will still be happy and standing tall tomorrow. please, please, please…

so since the sunflowers are alright, decided to transplant the balsam and the sage as well ’cause they were getting a little leggy. also the phlox, ’cause it doesn’t look so healthy sitting in that big pot.

same exercise: take out the gardening mat, mixing up the soil (regular hummus mix, with a little bit of peat moss and vermiculite, and layering the bottom of the pot with coconut fibre), putting it in the pot, carefully pricking out the seedlings with a chopstick, then spoon, then fork (works the best if seedlings are quite tiny), putting them in new pots with more space between each one so that they can grow, tamping down the soil around the roots and stem gently, water from below, and under the florescent light they go (just for the night).

very, very anxious that they might suffer the same fate as the statice, but this morning, they seemed fine! no flopping over, no looking like they’re shriveling up slowly but surely, no signs of impending death.

yay!

the phlox, as of an hour ago.

the sage with new leaves still growing fine. though this particular one suffered from my clumsy fingers. one of the cotyledons snapped off when i was trying to loosen it from the soil. but with a lot of hope (and pillow talk :|), hopefully it’ll turn out fine.

and finally the balsam. notice the one that also suffered from my clumsy fingers - with more dire effect. i snapped off not only one of the cotyledons, but severed the other one as well. boo hoo! may the others survive in lush-fullness.

that took more than 2 hours and a very cramped back. ah well, they’re worth it

we were doing our usual late night runs to the hardware shop to get some soil and pots when suddenly…. there’s a bunch of venus flytraps sitting there with their mouths wide open!

it’s amazing! we haven’t seen this anywhere in the country before, and even though it was a little bit pricey (45 ringgit), we just had to get our hands on one.

here’s our little ‘gigi’ (teeth in Malay, i know it’s really weird that we name all of our plants…).

cool huh?

we have no idea how to take care of it, and did some major midnight web search and reading up on our 5 different plant books. apparently they need warmth, light and lots and lots of water, preferably rain water. and we can feed it insects once a week, or raw meat (!)

we bought a packet of sphagnum moss, which was what it is potted in, but only realised about the absolute “no!” about watering it with tapwater this morning. crap. it’s a little tough trying to collect rainwater from our apartment, even though it’s been quite stormy recently. hopefully distilled water or RO water works just fine.

now, all we have to do is catch some ants. nyeh nyeh nyeh…

• more on venus flytrap
• video on how to care for a venus flytrap

18 - 21 August 2007
Sarawak Tourism Complex, Kuching
Sarawak, Malaysia

This look totally awesome! Sarawak is always always so so kool! Can’t believe there’s even field trips, book launch, artworks… Wahhh, this is out of this world even for someone like me. So jakun la me.

So the question is..to go or not to go?

For more - http://www.wildborneo.com.my/conference2007/

A few questions that i hope someone that help me with..

1. How do i make my pitcher plant come up with pitchers?
   When i first got it for christmas, it had at least 3 pitchers, then they started to get all dried up and die. So i pruned them. Since then, they’ve been very healthy with many many new leaves. I just repotted them last night with sphagnum and moss with some soil. Can someone help me on how i can make them have pitchers?
2. How do i keep the new flower buds on my impatiens healthy?
   So i’ve been fertilising my impatiens religiously every 2 weeks. Its been many months, they still didnt flower. It gets partial sun everyday, very healthy and happy, but…nope, no flowers! Went to the nursery and consulted the owner. He told me to give it full sun and once they bloom, bring them back in the shade. So i did. Today, i saw two new small flower buds! Yahoo! So now, how i keep it healthy and happy? It’s also been raining everyday.

Ok that’s it for now……Will be back!

ps: we just got a new baby venus fly trap! More soon!