new ceph next to old ceph

[thez_yo]

Sorry about the bad quality photos -

my hummer's giant (just came in!) - on the right:

the pot on the left of that last shot - here's a closeup of my "regular" ceph. It has that one big growth point at the top of the pic from one root system, and another four off of another root. Those four tips came from a sliver of root that was the only thing left of a rotting plant that I rinsed clean (I lost the third root system RIP), cinnamon'd, and planted with its top right at the soil line about 4 1/2 months ago.

And yes, they're window sill plants

 

[Clue]

Lookin' good. Watch out for the jump in size from immature to mature-sized pitchers, one of these days they'll pop up out of the blue.

 

[thez_yo]

Mhmm, the "regular" one was described as 3 years out from flowering age when I bought it, so I expect mature pitchers in two (or three?) years I guess. The Hummer's Giant was a leaf pulling from 04/09 so I guess that one might take a bit longer.

Need some advice though - when do you think I should repot the Giant without stressing it out too much from the shipping? Apparently it's in a mix of 3 parts milled sphag, and one part each charcoal, perlite and silica sand. The mix looks pretty damp and I'm worried about the amount of moss coming out of the top (crown rot worries). The other one is potted up in 1peat:2perlite and appears to be happy, but I'm happy to take other suggestions (specially if they contain the elements I have lots of: chilean sphag, canadian peat, coarse perlite).

BTW Clue: nice avatar! What is it, N.mira? N.raff?

 

[Clue]

Well, if the Ceph seems happy, it probably is. Transplanting would probably stress the plant now more than ever. If you're worried about crown rot, don't leave water in the crown itself. I've never run into problems with my windowsill Ceph.

N. rafflesiana.

 

[w03]

Nice cephs!

BTW: I can tell exactly where you got those (yellow/red tags + dark green pots... hmm...)

 

[amphirion]

hahaha. you managed to get the moss off better than i did. how did you get it completely off? flip the pot over?

 

[RL7836]

Mhmm, the "regular" one was described as 3 years out from flowering age when I bought it, so I expect mature pitchers in two (or three?) years I guess. The Hummer's Giant was a leaf pulling from 04/09 so I guess that one might take a bit longer.

Never had consistent flowering at any age but mature pitchers taking multiple years?? I've had plants go from cutting to mature pitchers in ~6 mo (although I've also had them take a year). If it takes 3 years to get mature pitchers, I'd suspect that something was less than optimal....

 

[thez_yo]

RL7836 - Hmm, well I've never grown them before last year August-ish, so I had no idea it goes so quick! The smaller one I have got disturbed pretty hard when I got it because its potting mix looked pretty mossy/slimey and I didn't like that, so it got washed squeaky-clean and then potted up so that's probably why it's taking its sweet little time getting up to size.

amphirion - I got it even cleaner yet, and put it in a different pot because the one it came in wasn't completely full anyway, so the roots didn't get the full height and the rim was shading the plant from the angle of the sunshine it is supposed to get. Up to the picture taken at the top of this thread, flipping the pot on its size and tapping on it a bit - though the potting mix/root mass slid out a little, but I figure it probably got vibrated around a bit during shipping anyway. Then for these next pictures, I aim wasn't to get the green moss off but only the milled sphag, but the green stuff came off too - a combination of flipping upside-down to slide the old pot off and slide the new one on (didn't get any more moss off), tweezer-ing some moss off (inefficient), and paint-brushing the last little bits off (the most useful to get the sphag *and* the green stuff off actually):

(I love cephs!!!!!)

w03 - thx! Also, I use/reuse all sorts of pots and tags, so as to minimize my plastic trash creation because growing these plants while also killing other plants with garbage dumps and trash heaps is a little...