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Tools of the trade

PlantAKiss

Moderator Schmoderator Fluorescent fluorite, Engl
Me again. Sorry...I'm in a posty mood.
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As I was recently potting up some new arrivals, I was looking at the mess I had in my kitchen and I noticed that I had a rather odd collection of utensils for this work. So I was wondering what other people used...if anyone had some interesting/unusual (and perhaps helpful) objects you use to care for your plants?

I was using a fork, a grapefruit spoon, paintbrush handle, a cake tester, an assortment of kitchen scoops, a set of vintage miniature gardening tools including a tiny little rake and tiny shovel, a pair of surgical scissors and a magnifying glass. I also make frequent use of those disposable plastic Gladware containers.

Am I the only one using some weird stuff for caring for their CPs or other plants?

Suzanne
 
.............................it sounds like you got a dentist office in there, i use my good ol' hands.Yep get the plant, put the soil in, make a hole for the plant, add soil as you put the plant in, then you make it look pretty, thats how i do it, seems to work fine!
Kevin
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well to plant them up i use my plan old hand. but, do have a pair of beard snipps to cut the dead leaves off and a razer blade to make the cuttings when needed. o but,i do use a 1 gal pot to dig the mix out of the bags thu. also i do all my work out side so less of a mess to clean up.
 
I use all sort of 'kit' in the pursuit of this hobby. Much of it is from my profession as an entomologist; surgical scissors, very fine forceps, very good quaility hand-lens, petri-dishes etc.
I also use standard gardening equipment such as  mini garden tools, pots, trays etc

I also make use of just about anything else that's lying around the house if I need to:

Food Processer - for milling live sphagnum
Microwave - to sterilize peat
Sieves - to strain water out of sterilized peat
Pots (stainless) to wash sand.

But the wierdest piece of equipment that I have ever used is a battery-powered nose and ear hair trimmer (don't laugh, wait until you get old&#33
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. Let me explain what I use it for and why. Last year I borrowed a tuning fork (an oldish one)from a musician/music teacher in my village in order to release pollen from my Byblis gigantea flowers (they only release pollen when vibrated, they are pollinated by bees in nature). Afer a few months in my greenhouse it wasn't in quite the same condition as when I had received it, I cleaned it with WD40 and things and it wasn't too bad. This year I was a little reluctant to cause further damage to the tuning fork, so I tried various other means to get the stamens to release their pollen and the only thing I had that worked was the vibrations from the nose-hair trimmer. You have to be careful though, or you will trim off the stamens (I did on a couple of occasions).

Anyone beat that for a wierd object used with CPs?

Vic

(Note: all nose and ear hair removed, but occasionally looks like he's been sniffing bright yellow cocaine! must clean the trimmer when switching uses&#33
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I have a few dissecting items I use:
12" long soft forceps for grabbing insects and feeding them into pitchers/VFTs
Several short 6" forceps with blunt & fine points (they are great for planting napkin sprouted gemmae)
Scalpels
Utility work knife/box cutter to slice through thick vines
Small blade long handle sciscors, superfine point sciscors
Variety of probes and other tools that come in handy from time to time.
I don't know if anyone else sterilizes inbetween working on each different plant but I learned my lesson about plant viruses with my Brassia (orchid) hybrids which ALL ended up with black spot virus by my not sterilizing. Now I always dip the tools in isopropyl alchohol and set the cutting edge in a candle flame to burn the alchohol off. I do the same whether I'm working on CPs, orchids or any other plant, no sense making the same expensive foul up again!
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Nose hair scissors... Fine tweezers... Hmm... I use a juice box straw too... I put it over fungus gnats, jiggle it around, get them crawling up the straw (plugging the other end with my finger), carry it around, and blow it out onto a sundew or ping... Uuuum... I have some probes and stuff to poke around at stuff. I have a little container I use to get bugs in... Its from a sample of Jam... Wut else... Um. Das all the weird stuff I guess.
 
Hmm, gotta have a large bowl to mix my peat and perlite in. I use a large spoon to scoop wet sphagnum and smooth out the surface. 1 chopstick to dig the hole. A dropper to squirt a mixture of water and sphagnum down the hole to fill up the empty spaces that the roots don't occupy. And lastly, several kinds of tweezer for picking off leaves, bugs, and digging up plants.
 
fine forceps are fantastic, use for planting small seedlings, removing leaves for cuttings, pulling off dead leaves & pests etc. a good pair of sharp surgical scissors are a must. bonsai scissors are the best for pruning sarracenia, very sharp and can get right in to the crown (vine scissors very good for this too). an old desert spoon or a 'widger' is most frequently used by me for planting.
 
now that i think about it, i do you alot of things!
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I use my hands, plastic pots, trays, (i use the tray water method for my sarrs.) i use some small very sharp scissors to cut off dead pitchers, a bowl to mix peat, sand and perlite. Samll forceps for feeding my cp's bugs, a microscope, (i once did an experiment where i had a sundew leaf under it, and i watched it off and on dissolving a gnat.A thermomiter to measure humidity and temps., and a table to put my sarrs on!That is all of them!(i think)
Kevin
 
  • #10
now that i think about it, i do you alot of things!
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I use my hands, plastic pots, trays, (i use the tray water method for my sarrs.) i use some small very sharp scissors to cut off dead pitchers, a bowl to mix peat, sand and perlite. Samll forceps for feeding my cp's bugs, a microscope, (i once did an experiment where i had a sundew leaf under it, and i watched it off and on dissolving a gnat.A thermomiter to measure humidity and temps., and a table to put my sarrs on!That is all of them!(i think)
                          Kevin
 
  • #12
Ooooh, turkey baster for the Darlings!
 
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