Succumbing to French Roast Pressure . . .

[BigBella]

awesome progress! how many coffee doses did the villosas recieve from may until now?

Thanks. They received monthly treatments throughout the Summer; so too the younger seedlings . . .

 

[mylesG]

you have given me hope for my itty bitty villosa it is about the size of your group back in May..would love to see anywhere near the growthrate you have achieved.

 

[Favian]

Here is my Lowii x truncata "wide Peristome" I'm pointing at the leaf size it had when I acquired it in May. You can see now the two huge leaves its made since the coffee treatments Huge difference!

 

[BigBella]

Congratulations -- and even further support that I haven't been smoking dope in terms of results . . .

 

[Favian]

Congratulations -- and even further support that I haven't been smoking dope in terms of results . . .

L0L*

thanks!

 

[hcarlton]

Don't have any pics to share, but I have noticed rather quick reactions to diluted coffee just added to the pot without flushing the next day or so. My baby N. rajah just made the biggest pitcher I've seen, and plants that weren't doing great have had an exponential increase in size.

 

[divaskid]

In your first experiment on this thread, do you have pictures of the control to put side by side with your coffee treated plants? I read through all the pages but didn't see a picture comparison between the two.

Of course I am on my phone which makes for hard Internet surfing, so forgive me if I just missed it.

Awesome plants by the way!

 

[kevnep]

I have started giving coffee to my plants every two weeks with orchid fertiliser in between. I only started this month but my friend has been doing it a long time and his plants look great!

 

[BigBella]

In your first experiment on this thread, do you have pictures of the control to put side by side with your coffee treated plants? I read through all the pages but didn't see a picture comparison between the two.

Of course I am on my phone which makes for hard Internet surfing, so forgive me if I just missed it.

Awesome plants by the way!

Keep in mind that there was no formal experiment involved, primarily for the reason that the seed for each species involved were extremely rare and scarce in terms of number; and that the "control" group was as small as the experimental and neither number of seedlings were statistically significant. That being said, those that were treated with coffee, during that period, were generally more than a third larger than their counterparts; some of which could be attributed to the coffee treatment, and some to the natural variability of seed.

Also, many of the plants involved have since changed hands; so I have little way of further documenting their progress. Here is one younger plant that began receiving the treatment in late March of this year:

Nepenthes sp. 14 November

 

[BigBella]

Here is the last update for 2012; even though Nepenthes possess no dormancy seen in temperate plants, they do slow a bit by Winter. The hell that is Polytrichum, though, requires biweekly trimming . . .

Nepenthes villosa 30 October

10 December

Some other seedlings continue to get the very same coffee treatment; and they appear happy enough:

Nepenthes sp.

 

[cp777]

Fast little seedlings....

 

[Heli]

wow! Everything looks incredible! Those eddie seedlings are really promising.

 

[Wire Man]

I just coffee fed my Neps this week. We'll see what they do in about a month.

 

[hcarlton]

I wish I had a camera to post pics with, but I have recently (within the past 2 weeks) given a number of my neps seedlings some old coffee (unknown type), and my N. jacquelineae seedlings have double in size.

 

[n bicalcarata]

wow your rare neps are so amazing i would "kill" for a villosa or a macro or eddie like that

 

[BigBella]

Highland Nepenthes, as most growers of them are aware, have a peculiar tendency to "sulk" from time to time and do little to nothing for months on end; but with the most recent application of coffee and, perhaps, the arrival of temperatures in the single digits (centigrade) in Northern California, these somewhat older plants have begun to throw out a host new larger pitchers and leaves . . .

Nepenthes hamata (Lamut and Katopassa) 20 December

 

[Safety Shears]

Well, I've been treating a Ventricosa x sibuyanensis for three months with bi-weekly Folgers-flushes. Preliminary results are mixed, the plant started sulking when the seasons changed (as usual) and the pitcher size shrunk a bit. However, the leaves are about 20% bigger (okay, that figure is mostly crap. but whatever), and the tendrils are freaky long. That's what I find most interesting actually. Has anyone else had freakishly long tendrils after treatment? I'll post pics once it's put out a few more leaves, just to strengthen the comparison.

 

[cp777]

That hamata is so nice! -the coffeefied sphag makes it look amazing!

 

[mcmcnair]

So I decided to coffee my neps and this has been the best example of the results. This is my N. ampullaria Tricolor seedgrown.
Before coffee treatment:

IMG_4342 by SarraceniaMutation, on Flickr

After coffee:

IMG_4341 by SarraceniaMutation, on Flickr

 

[BigBella]

Here is the progress of a seedling, from just beyond the cotyledon stage -- still visible -- in March of 2012; to its progress by June; to this morning. The coffee was initially added to the compost, via a pipette, in a vain attempt to boost the seedling's growth without also encouraging the ubiquitous Polytrichum. Those that I hadn't treated with my morning dregs, remained significantly smaller, by easily a third. I had neither the patience nor the wherewithal to feed the minute pitchers with fertilizer with the use of hollow deer hair, as had Bob Sacilotto in his ICPS paper (http://www.carnivorousplants.org/cpn/samples/Cult331NepSeedlings.htm).

Sometimes, you just gotta roll those bones . . .

Nepenthes edwardsiana -- 1 March 2012 - 1 February 2013