gejala pokok | symptomatic trees

I haven’t updated about my seedlings for awhile, cause I reckoned they just need to be left alone to grow. But some of them have started to act a little strangely.

They’re all planted at the same time, are generally left to grow in the same place, with the same amount of watering, sun and air. So why is it that some of them are growing like crazy, while others just kinda hang about, looking depressed, stunted or dying?

Here’s the very first plant I grew from seed (minus the statice that didn’t survive transplanting), the celosia:

Look at their difference!! They were both transplanted at the same time, from the same initial pot, and have been left side by side at the windowsill. Haven’t added any fertiliser or sweet words to either of them.

I don’t know why one looks like it’s turning into a proper plant, and the other one is just stuck at first true leaves stage. Either way, it makes me smile lots when I see the happily growing one. Hopefully it’ll serve as some kind of encouragement to the other pot. I have one more flower box worth of celosia, transplanted from a different batch earlier on. It looks even more stunted than this one

Same story with the petunia. Came back after the weekend at Bali, and one of the three tiny pots seem to have grown lots. It looked quite a lot like the one on the left initially, but better in colour (not so bleached). Now it’s looking pretty bushy

My marjorams are the worst! Out of hundreds of teeny tiny seedlings, it looks like only one will survive. I’m going to give up on the one that looks like it’s about to cough itself into a dry death soon. Sigh… But at least the one that is surviving looks pretty damn strong!

Gosh, so embarassing… I am a bad gardener!
Next is my baby nepenthes, which is thankfully doing better.

It was in the studio under fluorescent light and a humidifier for a few weeks, and was generally doing well. Spotted it coming up with new leaves, and decided to take it outside. And yes indeed, a new true leaf has emerged into a pitcher! And I can see two more coming up. Yay!

Soooooo cute it is! Smaller than my thumb

The original bigger nepenthes on the other hand, still stubbornly refuses to pitcher. It keep shaving small tendrils that bulb out, but something is missing. Not sure what. Maybe it’s too much direct sunlight. Found some mushrooms sharing its soil too last week. Took them all out. Maybe the mushroom was just being greedy, sucking up all the nutrients. Hmm…

See. One little tendril struggling hard to be a pitcher. It’s pretty much at the same spot, but the smaller nep is underneath it, which means it doesn’t get direct sunlight for as long. Should try and move it to somewhere else…

And finally, the sunflower seedling that tukang kebun brought over - from the same batch that I killed but she managed to keep them going, even if they germinated belatedly - is very very super ultra happy. And it’s blooming! I could just see the bud today. So excited!! Can’t wait for it to slowly open up.

First plant to flower from seed

So we were in Bali the past weekend. Left the balcony garden and an empty apartment to a 21 year old (who’s 21st birthday happen to be on the same weekend!). Pokokpenyu left detailed instructions on 3 pieces of A4 paper on watering schedule. We were nervous, but what the heck! He is afterall pokokpenyu’s brother (we could always ____ him after). The same brother that got me my first carnivorous plant for xmas last year.

Came back late last night. No sign of parties (there’s some suspicions) , clean apartment and blooming healthy plants..

Drosera Burmanii

Drosera spatulata - doesn’t look too good. I saw specs of white tiny stuff on the stalk. I suspect its the mealy bugs.

Sarracenia - look what it caught!

Our first venus fly trap - perking back up after dormancy period.

Byblis liniflora - about 3 weeks old

Who would have thought obsession for plants would turn mukaketupat and myself into friendly, bordering on shameless people. After getting our venus fly trap from strange old Eneos that seems to sell every thing under the sky (including a car service centre in a mall), we got a little hooked on carnivorous plants.

Did some web search to find out more about how to care for our new baby, and found this awesome local site, PetPitcher.com.

Did some web search to find out more about how to care for our new baby, and found this awesome local site, PetPitcher.com.

I know we haven’t stopped raving about it, but it’s such a freaking cool place. Everyone’s not only really generous with info — which is a pretty fantastic nature of ‘forum-ers’ — but also with seeds, seedlings and more!

We contacted the site owner, David, to ask where we could get hold of some sundews, and in a true gesture of solidarity obsession, offered us one of his pots of D. spathulata to us. Yay!

So we called him, got directions, drove to his apartment, I saw a part of Klang Valley that I don’t usually go to, took the lift up……

Wasn’t hard to figure out which place was his. There were creepy-crawly plants greeting us immediately at the grill Pushing aside tendrils, we walked in and gasped at the beautiful, gorgeous terrariums in one corner.

picture from petpitcher website

After greedily gobbling up the sight, he showed us his storeroom that also housed another larger (maybe 6 feet?) terrarium. Whoo0 whee! So many many many many different kinds of carnivorous plants basking snugly under the glow of florescent lights. Mukaketupat brought her camera, so she snapped away. Here’s some of his little beauties.

A partial view of the terrarium

Baby venus’ fly traps in a row. The ‘mother’ is the one right at the back, second from right. Halfway through the tour, I realised that CP (carnivorous plants) enthusiasts do not speak in generics. It’s all genus and species, right down to the hybrids. So if I want to understand this world at all, I have to brush up on my Latin or Greek I think. So yes, Dionaea muscipula all in a row

When he saw us practically drooling all over his D. muscipula, he offered us one! Yippee! Now we have TWO pots of D. muscipula - one green and one red (I promise I’ll figure out the actual sub-species names soon).

Ours sitting happily on our balcony now. Though the new one seem to have some kind of bugs on it, not sure from where. Probably our dusty studio. Doesn’t seem to harm the plant though, but to be safe, getting some pesticides today. Did a whole search on aphids and spider mites from a list of stuff that might harm CPs. Not sure if it is either, but live and learn I guess

One of his Drosera brumannii (species of sundew). We said “yes, please!” when he offered a pot of baby D. brumannii to us. I feel like a greedy, out-of-control, mad woman! *blush* Can’t wait for it to grow layers and be as pretty as his. It’s already growing a fair bit since we got it a couple of nights ago. Mmmmm……… so very very cool!

This one I am SUPER excited about. It’s a byblis, also a kind of CP. Look at the sticky secretions coming out from its hairs! And all the bugs caught on their leaves. And best of all, I have seeds! Thanks to David of Petpitcher again I can’t wait to plant them and wait for germination. Have to learn more about how to cultivate these, but found an article that might help. Not sure if it needs cold stratification etc, but will print out and read. Dammit, wish we had the Savage Garden book! Must go Kinokuniya soon…

I don’t remember the name for this CP, though it might be a bladderwort (Utricularia). It lives in water, and you can’t really see it, but there are tiny traps at the end of the leaves that acts like a vacuum to suck small aquatic animals that unwittingly goes by. Sometimes it sends out shoots of pretty flowers over the surface of the water. And it’s also native to Malaysia

Okay, many species and close peering later (including with a magnifying glass), David showed us his Nepenthes collection. And geez, he’s got a LOT. Mostly hanging near the window, but he’s even got some teeny tiny super cute ones in his terrarium. I almost died.

The pictures didn’t turn out, so we can’t show you. But there are just so many different species (I hope I’m using this word correctly). One with pitchers that look like they are wearing viking helmets, some with fangs on the pitchers, and a cuddly pot of Sarracenia outside one window. Nice

We went and got some more sphagnum moss and looked for perlite - the medium that CPs apparently thrive on. Except the packet we got from Eneos (Uncle Sam from Cameron Highlands) says ‘pelite’. It looks ad feels like what perlite is supposed to be. Hope we don’t mess up by accidentally adding rat poison or something!

Anyway, YAY!

Some handy sites found:

• Carnivorous Plant Care Guide — Bugbitingplants.com
• Some info on Venus Fly Traps and other CPs — pitcherplant.com
• Coastal Carnivores
• How to sow carnivorous plants seeds
• A tutorial on Venus Fly Traps with a whole bunch of FAQs
• International Carnivorous Plants Society (!!!)

no pictures for this post ’cause i left my camera somewhere else. but thought i should jot down what’s been happening anyway, garden log style

1. sunflower seedlings
tried to revive them by taking them away from the scorching sun on the balcony into the studio under florescent lights. then made chamomile tea as an natural fungicide and poured them on all 4 pots.

also had a brain fart idea that they might be under-nourished so tried putting a diluted transplanting fertilizer solution on one of the pots (schultz starter plus — which i am sure is actually not meant for seedlings and i am an idiot). all i did was accelerated the dying process (DO NOT DO IT!).

took a couple back out to a shady spot on the balcony. nothing worked. they all just died. at different rates. the cotyledons yellowed, shrank and dried up, followed by the first pair of true leaves.

the only one that’s still kinda surviving is the one i placed under a florescent lamp, 24 hours a day. and i think all i’m doing is just slowing down its impending death. so i am letting it out to the balcony today, to enjoy some real sun, and finally letting go. *sob* *sob*

on a brighter note, i now know a little more about natural fungicides and pesticides. going to try a new batch soon. and going to take some of heathrjoy’s and ecrane3’s good advice, and hope, hope, hope for the best!

2. transplanting the petunia
decided to transplant the petunias on sunday cause they were flopping over one by one. not having good garden vibes last week. not sure what the problem was, but think it is probably a mixture of over-crowding and lack of proper soil (used a horti ’soil-less’ seed starting mix). don’t think it’s damping off, because the stems look alright, but i might be wrong.

they’re the tiniest little things and a real bugger to transplant. not possible to dig underneath with a fork, ’cause the fork is just waaaaay to big. so i resorted to using my fingers and pinching them as lightly as possible near the leaves to tease them out of the soil.

wish i had a picture to show you, but maybe another day. it’s a real nightmare, and i think i killed as many as i managed to transplant. they’re now in small metal pots, with more space between them. just had a check on them, and a majority of them seem to be fine. going to keep fingers, toes and knees crossed!

3. sundew is on the way!
turned out i was having a dyslexic moment, and took down the wrong number despite checking 3 times. david from petpitcher rang back, and we’re going to collect the little plant and byblis seeds today. yay! can’t wait

meanwhile, i have a tray of wheat grass on the go for my mom. a little late for mother’s day, but hope it turns out fine. don’t think i did the pre-sprouting preparation for enough times, but the tray has been a seedling charm. wish me luck!

i’ve been reluctant to transplant the celosia since i read in various places that they don’t handle transplanting very well. but since it was my second attempt at growing from seeds, i messed up quite a fair bit.

instead of mixing the peat moss with the soil, i put about 2 inches of peat moss on top of the soil. which means that the seedlings are probably not getting enough nutrients after germination. it took forever to grow true leaves — more than 3 weeks after germination. germination also took quite long (well, longer than the statice, which took only one day — celosia took about 3 days or so).

i bought some transplant starter-fertilizer thing, and misted some on after the leaves started to look a little yellow. BIG MISTAKE. made is worse, and after some advice from naturemitch in garden web forum, i left it alone and thinned one pot. it was alright for a bit, but now it’s getting overcrowded again.

since naturemitch said he’s transplanted celosias without having them die suddenly, i thought, why the hell not, just give it a go. by this point, i’ve transplanted the sage, phlox and balsam okay (even though not all of them are surviving, but a majority are fine), so feeling a little less clunky.

mixed the usual soil with a little bit of peat moss and a little bit of vermiculite, put them in a flower box because i haven’t got the small cell things, and i am hoping that they’d just be happy in the flower box until they all grow up and make weird blooms. watered from top — flower box doesn’t allow for bottom watering — as gently as i could with a ‘rose’ spout watering can. plonked them under florescent light, near a fan for 2 days.

they looked okay as of last night (day 2):

a couple didn’t survive… and i think i saw a spider hanging out near it. hope it’s the good kind, and not the kind that’ll just eat them all up.

geez, with the slowly dying sunflowers and dead statice, i’m starting to think i’m not cut out for this. maybe i should give myself some timelines to quit, so i won’t be responsible for bringing more things into life just to die. *gleep*

but on a brighter note, finally saw some full-grown cockscomb of the ‘coral floral’ variety at a nursery on tuesday. it looks pretty damn strange! can’t wait for my little babies to grow and start blooming

pulled these off the internet. it’s fluffier than the one i saw, but still wicked. like a cross between brains and corals and something entirely wonderful

got some great advice from heathrjoy & ecrane3 on dave’s garden forum again

first, i was led to this really comprehensive page on ‘damping off‘ (which is going up on garden jargon soon). checked all the signs and symptoms, and it doesn’t look to be the issue.

then i went a little crazy on my web search, and found all kinds of stuff that could happen to sunflowers. it’s a little like reading up on medical websites; suddenly it can seem like you’ve got the symptoms for all kinds of stuff, inevitably going towards cancer. not a good thing to do, trust me. here’s a couple:

• i kisan - sunflower disease management
• sclerotinia in sunflowers
• field problems affecting sunflowers

several agricultural and crop websites later, i gave up, and just decided that i really don’t know what’s the issue.

luckily, ecrane & heathrjoy passed on some actually realistic and usable information. decided to cut back on watering, and bought some chamomile tea — which works as a natural kind of anti-fungal, as does peroxide & cinnamon — boiled a huge pot, and watered them onto the seedlings.

too soon to see if it’s working yet. so far, one of the seedlings has its leaves (cotyledons and true leaves) pretty much chomped off, but the rest seems to be hanging on.

gah….

hope it keeps up the good fight!

one of the less badly affected seedlings.

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

After worrying like crazy over the floppy sunflower seedlings, I took some good advice from heathrjoy & ecrane3 from dave’s garden forum, and from mscratch at the gardenweb forum and decided to bite the bullet, and transplant them.

I was really nervous, ’cause the last transplanting experiment I did totally failed. But decided that if I didn’t do anything now, they’d just get worse. So here’s a inch-by-inch account of this second attempt:

1. Did a web search on transplanting sunflowers specifically and found these:
   • What seedlings really want - some basic information about growing seedlings.
   • Found this cool video on how to prick out seedlings.
   • Repot at your own risk - *gleep*!
   • Transplanting sunflowers - pretty handy and quite detailed. The advice was based on the assumption that I’d be transplanting from a germination site to the garden. Since the only ‘garden’ we have is a balcony, I can only transplant from small pot to bigger pot. but I reckon the information should still stand, except the only wild animal I have to worry about is the cat!

   

   Who, me?
   

2. Bought soil (organic hummus mix), new pots, and a packet of new seeds in case this fails terribly.
3. Washed the pots with soap and water. Set up the mat and mixed the soil with a little bit of peat moss and some vermiculite in a bucket. Loosened them with a small garden fork thing, then added them into the pots, close to the top. I did have a sieve, but wasn’t sure how to use it *blush*, so I just used my hands until i found a big, fat earthworm in the soil! After that, it was the fork and gloves for me…

   

4. Next is the scary thing. Trying to get the seedlings out from the original pots without killing them, and repotting it. First I used a chopstick, but the soil was not really budging. Then i tried with a small plastic spoon as a spatula, and thought I felt some roots breaking (!). Finally, resorted to my hands, and gently eased them up in clumps.Instead of trying to loosen the soil from the roots like I did the last time, I potted them with the clump of soil together. And there were a couple that were very close together and I didn’t think I could separate them without doing some serious damage. So I just potted them together. These were easier to handle than the statice because it was just so much bigger and the root system was already quite advanced! Quite amazing really… considering they’re just short of one week old.

   

5. Then I dug a deep hole (with fingers again), and with the help of mukaketupat, eased them in and added soil around the root clump and the stem. I planted them a lot deeper than they were in the original pots, but not quite to the top ’cause the new pots are not tall enough. Watered them really generously from top and bottom. Wasn’t sure if I should stake them at this point, so I tried one.Ten seedlings (and one whole hour) later, this is how they look:

   
   Still kinda floppy, but can you believe it, it’s much better than before!

6. The only florescent lights we had was in the toilet, so I plonked the pots on top of a step ladder so that they can be as close to the light as possible. Left them there the whole night with lots of prayers…And this morning:

   
   They’re actually starting to get straighter!

   
   This is the one I tried to stake with a chopstick. It was totally keeled over before, but now it’s looking quite good.

So I think I’m pretty happy Will move them out to the balcony tomorrow for some proper sunlight. Hopefully they’ll keep getting stronger and stronger, and then I might start thinking about transplanting the other ones!

Yay!

okay… maybe i jinxed my seedlings with over-optimistic post yesterday. today, my sunflowers are flopping over, and i saw at least two of my celosia that completely keeled over. what is going on???

my sunflower seedlings

is it the cat? i caught him trying to eat the sunflowers today, and shouted at him a lot. he hid under the rug the whole day after that. maybe he hurt the stem? maybe it was me? i totally forgot that i wasn’t supposed to touch the stem cause they’re so big. i tried to readjust them, but maybe i made it worse?

help!!

they grew so fast. germinated within a day, yates ‘yellow empress’ variety. i’m really upset. i don’t want them to die. hope someone from the garden forum would be able to help me.

haven’t had a chance to post up pictures of the marjoram, balsam, petunia & sage that germinated early last week. took some photos today, they are looking strong and good and getting taller and taller!

these are the balsam. they’re growing a little leggy. i borrowed some of tukangkebun’s horti seed and potting mix for this. doesn’t seem to have that much difference from the soil mix i used. but i wonder if this means i’ll have to transplant them since it’s a ’soil-less’ mixture, meaning no nutrients for the plant.

the petunias are growing mad. i think they’re the spreading kind, which means they need more water than the usual. i used the same horti mix, and now really regret it because how on earth am i going to transplant such teeny-tiny little things?? apparently they grow quite slowly, and take some time before true leaves show. so i’m going to take the time to figure out this problem.

marjoram. just marginally bigger than the petunias. i mixed a hummus-y soil with some peat moss and vermiculite for this. which hopefully means i wont have to re-pot them cause they’re soooooo tiny also. they’re a little crowded i think. but it might be too soon to thin them. not sure. but they seem happy..

there’s ‘true’ leaves coming out! the sage was actually slower than the rest in germinating. used the same self-mixed soil, and it’s growing a little leggy also. crap. but maybe i can re-pot them soon.

more little phlox popping up! the fine hairs are actually from the cat, who was trying to catch a mega huge ant crawling around the pot. i hope he’s learnt his lesson about not chomping on the plants or digging them up. he’s been quite good so far, except for the lipstick plant incident =|

and the latest addition, the “yellow empress” sunflower! sown on 19th april, and looking very very happy. except i might have burnt them by putting them on the window ledge where they’ll get direct sun. keep forgetting that they’re only tiny. put them back in the balcony now, where it’s more shade than sun, but still light enough. as long as no more storms come along.

i think i might have to add some soil to the balsam and sage, cause they’re getting really long and a little wriggly, trying to reach for sunlight. but i’m not sure if that’ll suffocate the roots. hmm… another question for the forum.

oh, and balcony was getting way to cramped for new seedlings, new pots of plants etc. so had to try and sort out some spatial problem. got this trolley from ikea (i know i know…), but it was not super expensive (RM45) and can be pushed around to catch the sun or avoid the rain. quite handy

also bought my very first gardening book, “an encyclopedia of garden plants & techniques“. this is quite scary, considering i just started this whole plant thing on 1st april. help, help…. but i’m loving this!

oh, and found a handy tripod site by a malaysian gardener! awesome if you want to plant cactus here, this is where you want to go: kh man’s cacti & succulents site.