Major update to my how-to repot and divide page – take a look!

   

As promised, I’ve just posted a major update to my page on how to repot Sarracenia and set them up for the seasons ahead. The revised version is more practical in focus and features pics of how to do everything. There is also a section featuring rhizomes behaving badly, showing what craziness rhizomes can get up to and how to fix the problems they can get themselves into. You can see the update here:

http://thepitcherplantationaustralia.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/depotting-division-rhizome-maintenance.html

I will also be going through the popular How to grow Sarracenia to perfection pages over the next little while and doing some more updates, as it is already five years ago that I wrote them.

I hope this helps. Email me if you want to see something in particular covered off that is not on there or needs amendment.

Happy growing!

Bog garden finished–and it will be Drosera binata central!

Yay! I managed to get the last bog garden all planted up, way ahead of schedule! It contains a couple of Sarracenia leucophylla and mixed varieties of S. flava. Here’s how the Sarracenia growing area looks now everything is done:

Bog garden filled ahead of schedule!

I got a lot more done today than I expected – the bog garden is now filled with soil and resting. But I was not counting on getting it to this stage because of the weather forecasts.

For the past week, the Australian media have been hyping a low pressure system, dubbed the “Antarctic vortex” or “snowmageddon”. Despite forecasts predicting heavy rain, damaging winds and even snowfall here in Canberra, it was pretty much a non-event. We had a brief storm out of it that dumped hail for 15 minutes or so (see the white slush inside the trailer) and that was it. Although I have to say it was bitingly cold outside today (at least by Australian standards). When I saw it was actually pretty clear outside this morning, I got to work. The last things needed before filling with soil were a filler and an overflow. The fittings I used for the first bogs were not great, so I wanted to get them right for this last bog. So off to Bunnings (= Lowes)…

Bog # 4 in position, ready to fill – if the weather permits

This weekend, a vigorous series of cold fronts are sweeping across south-eastern Australia, so I did what I could towards the new bog garden before they arrived.

This meant laying some more gravel to level up the garden’s base. When I placed out the other two, I deliberately left enough room to put a fourth garden in the middle of them – or so I thought. The last garden was about  20 mm out of position, so I need to build up the gravel under where the fourth garden will go to fit it in. Fortunately, only the lips of the three ponds were overlapping, so its no big deal. I managed to get the gravel in and the pond levelled just in time for the first showers ahead of the front arrived. Seeing as the weather is likely to stop me doing further work this weekend, I half-filled the pond and will leave it settle until next weekend, when I will make any final corrections and start filling it with peat.

Progress on the new bog garden build

Yay - I managed to find some time this weekend to start building the fourth bog garden. I went for the largest size prefab pond I could get so I would have some spare room for new plants.

When I made the bog gardens last year I found myself rushed due to, well, life. This meant some things were not done the way I would have liked at the time – such as getting the overflow right. While I sort of fixed some of the issues with retrofits, they are probably still less than optimal. I also figured out how I could do some things better.

So this time round I am taking my time to make sure I get things done right first go. Here is progress for this weekend: