Giving your Neps a coffee treatment

[dvg]

Kain, thanks for your input about your experience with MaxSea and the N. alata cutting. As I stated previously, all of these fertilizing experiences and experiments are equally important and valid, be they judged good or bad...they all provide more data and more pieces to the puzzle. And as was mentioned by a very experienced grower in the post below yours Kain, cuttings and MaxSea probably don't mix all that well...again something I didn't know until I was notified of that fact both by youself and Nepoholic.

Nepoholic, it's very good to see you back on the forum and it's also great news to hear that you are ready to start growing again. You were and are a strong advocate for soil fertilizing and using Maxsea fertilizer. Your success with this has inspired others to try the same. And i'm looking forward to seeing more of your plants and even more of your cultivation input here.

dvg

[mikuláš]

Another small observation: I gave most of my plants the coffee treatment recently, and one of them (maxima x TM) has made 2 pitchers since the coffee treatment. The first pitcher immediately after the coffee was twice the size of the previous pitcher. The second pitcher, however, was not nearly so big -- a little bigger than the pre-coffee pitcher, but noticeably smaller than the first post-coffee pitcher.

I use RO water in most waterings, and I grow most of my plants in completely inorganic mix (screened Turface, which is calcined clay granules, akin to the burnt earth of some SE Asian growers).

I recently started using DynaGro Foliage Pro 9-3-6 fertilizer (no urea, ALL the micronutrients) at 1 tsp per gallon, and I added 1/4 tsp of white vinegar to the fertilizer water and the regular water to bring down the pH a tad. So far the newest leaf of the maxima x TM is turning out broader than the previous several leaves (which were all roughly the same size, despite differences in pitcher sizes). I'll be curious to see if the pitcher also turns out larger. Of course since two variables changed (the fertilizer and the solution pH), I can't be 100% certain which one had the greater hand in making the leaf grow larger.

A poster on a thread about Maxsea & DynaGro on pitcherplants.proboards.com speculated that one of the primary benefits of the coffee treatment might be its lowering effect on soil solution pH. He believes that the pH of many people's water might be too high for the liking of Nepenthes,which results in slower growth, and so the lower pH of the coffee might be the factor that is most responsible for the growth boost.

I wonder if the well-draining-ness of my medium means that the "coffee effect" is lost more quickly. Turface has a pH of about 6.2, but the pH of the liquid you pour into the pots is a lot more important in determining plant performance. I'd love to measure my soil solution pH, but that means buying a pH meter....regular pH paper doesn't work properly in water; you have to buy pH paper specifically for water or low-buffered solutions (wish I had known that sooner...), or an electronic meter.

Anyway, just more puzzle pieces

[rainforest]

First off, I am a bit concerned why you have chosen a fertilizer high in micronutrients to begin with. Nepenthes while do grow in areas of specific micronutrient overdose may not need other micronutrients foreign to it. For example, iron, too high and other elements too high for a daily doze.
As for pH of water or requiring acidic is somewhat a myth. My water supply is very high alkaline because of their contact to coral in the ground water. Plants grow well without the addition of coffee or other acid producing agents to the water. Having a media high in organic matter should already produce an acid atmosphere for the plants.
From growers who have healthy well grown specimens that simply fertilize their plants, no concerned thought of creating an acid regiment is ever a consideration when fertilizing, watering or even media is practiced. The use of fertilizers (mostly liquid soluble) has been given to nepenthes for quite some time now and without concern for acidity and the results are evident.
While coffee may be one of those unique additives for better growth, I believe you can obtain similar or better results from just plain liquid fertilizers. My favortism is the additive of Superthrive to the mix as I have seen this work well for me. Even the mere spraying of Superthrive diluted in a mist bottle on wilted plants have shown remarkable results for wilted or newly acquired plants. So this is not just a fluke.
I would like to stress that a media, enhancement for acidity will cause root problems and media break downs than if we just left the balance alone. We need to focus more on nutrients via liquid flow than keeping the media acid, or providing acid base water to believe that it is better for nepenthes.

Michael

[mikuláš]

Michael,

DynaGro is not "high" in micronutrients, it just has all the micronutrients, in appropriate ratios. All plants need micronutrients, even Nepenthes. The issue with Nepenthes growing in nutrient poor (or "nutrient compromised" as you once said) soils is that they are more sensitive to their absorption, so having large amounts of nutrients available over prolonged periods leads to over-absorption and thus toxicity. "Regular" plants can control their nutrient absorption better than plants adapted to nutrient-poor environments, which allows them to avoid the toxicity that can occur in plants like Nepenthes. Hence the flushing after you fertilize -- Nepenthes need nutrients, but they can't just have an abundance of them sitting around in the pot all the time*. If that were the case, I could grown them like my Passiflora and just fertilize them with Miracle Grow at every watering and never flush them out.

Having a media high in organic matter should already produce an acid atmosphere for the plants

As I was careful to mention in my post, I am growing in 100% inorganic medium. So I cannot rely on break-down for acidity. And break-down is the reason for my choice of medium -- I like the idea of a medium that will last 20 years, as opposed to +/-3, with no compaction.

My water supply is very high alkaline because of their contact to coral in the ground water.

I can certainly see your reasoning, but until you measure your water pH with a reliable measuring device, you don't actually know this -- it's just an educated guess. And actually you'd have to measure the water that drains out of the pot to know the pH of your soil solution -- the medium components could affect the pH.

Regarding water, about a decade ago I grew a Miranda that grew unbelievably fast, using only rainwater. This past year I grew a Miranda using the same medium as before (perlite + LFS) and distilled and RO water. The plant did not grow as big or as fast as the first, even though they both started at roughly the same size -- and the second plant had much better light! From this very limited sample size, I surmise that water may have at least something to do with how your plants grow. Both were grown in grow chambers indoors.

I would like to stress that a media, enhancement for acidity will cause root problems and media break downs than if we just left the balance alone.

You're right...if you're using organic media. I'm not trying to make waves and say that all growers need to start worrying about the pH of their water/soil solution. I'm just doing something a little different with an inorganic medium, and I'm trying to tweak to get optimal results from my plants, that's all.

Personally I get frustrated sometimes by the theorizing about acidity/alkalinity without measurements to back it up. I've read where people talk about acidity or alkalinity before, but no one takes measurements to verify what they say about their water or soil solution pH. People have grown beautiful plants using fertilizer -- the results speak for themselves, and I agree 100% that Nepenthes need fertilizing; I'm not disputing this. Rather, I'm just trying to understand more about the details of what's going on, what's factual and what's speculation, what's true and what's "myth". Rob Sacillotto (sp?) wrote a well-documented article on seedling tolerances for pH and nutrient concentrations, but I think there's a lot missing from the picture he paints. For that reason I want to know my water & soil solution pH, not just speculate about it, if only to contradict Rob's assertions and prove what others have been saying all along to be true.

*This is my speculation, an analogy from what is known about acid-loving plants: The problem with acid-loving plants is that they cannot control calcium absorption, so growing in more alkaline environments (often rich in calcium) leads to toxicity and poor health -- they absorb way more calcium than they need, which causes chemical imbalance. Acidic environments tend to be calcium-poor, so their inability to turn off absorption is fine in those environments. I suspect Nepenthes have a similar relationship to nutrients in general.

[boris]

Apr 27, 2010 9:42:06 GMT -10 mikuláš said:

Regarding water, about a decade ago I grew a Miranda that grew unbelievably fast, using only rainwater. This past year I grew a Miranda using the same medium as before (perlite + LFS) and distilled and RO water. The plant did not grow as big or as fast as the first, even though they both started at roughly the same size -- and the second plant had much better light! From this very limited sample size, I surmise that water may have at least something to do with how your plants grow. Both were grown in grow chambers indoors.

Rainwater gives me some mysteries. We got quite good rain again here. This fresh rainwater had a conductance of 140 mikrosiemens whis is really astonishing compared to the 20-25 mikrosiemens we got before of rainwater. I've to admit that I didn't cleaned the rainwatertank before. Maybe it was caused by this. But more I think it was the volcano smoke in the air of the eruption in iceland. You see rainwater is very variable and maybe you fertilized your first xMiranda without knowing. So still I think it's much more important to measure the conductance than the PH value.

[mikuláš]

You're right, boris -- rainwater is a mysterious thing, and I may have indeed inadvertently been fertilizing my plant. I have photos of it, but they are really bad, and I'd have to scan them to show, which might only make things worse...Interestingly, I never fertilized the plant, only fed it Campanotus ants.

until you measure your water pH with a reliable measuring device, you don't actually know this -- it's just an educated guess.

Not to sound pompous by quoting myself , but just a few minutes ago I learned something that surprised me: I know that the pH of pure water is 7. So I assumed that my RO water, being pretty pure, had a pH of around 7. BUT it turns out that pure water, after being exposed to air for a while, drops to a pH of about 5.5! The reason is that CO2 mixes with the H20, resulting in carbonic acid, which lowers the pH of the water. So you see how just reasoning things out ("The pH of pure water is 7, so my RO water must have a pH of about 7") can lead you to the wrong conclusion! Hence my annoyingly anal-retentive insistence on measurement

[rainforest]

I did measure the pH a while back and from that measurement, I do know for a fact that it is alkaline. Someone else (from Honolulu region) also got a measurement report of 7.8-7.85 from a card from the BOWS (Board of Water Supply).
Other alkaline enhancement that goes unnoticed is the use of cement pots for growing plants from orchids to bromeliads and even nepenthes in.

M

[rsivertsen]

There is SO much more to water chemistry than just the pH measurements! In my place, it's the toxic content of copper ions in the water from all the copper pipes! Well, along with ALL the other killer salts and dissolved mineral salts in my tap water.

One day I had to run out of my house in a hurry to get to work on time and didn't notice that I hadn't shut the shower nozzle off completely and left a small drip, which was only about a drop every minute or so, but by the time I got back home about some 10 hours later, that slow drip had produced a visible blue-green streak on my shower floor from all the dissolved mineral copper ions in the water, which is toxic to plants. Imagine all that copper ions getting into, and accumulating into the pots of all my plants which was given only my tap water?!

I switched to distilled water, and after that, I have never had any problems with my plants since.

- Rich

[jgriffin]

I just found this on a site:

"Rain water is naturally acidic due to carbon dioxide which partially reacts with water to give carbonic acid (H2O + CO2 -> H2CO3). When we talk about acid rain we mean the ENHANCED effect which is caused by other gases released when fossil fuels are burnt."

All those blokes with their rain barrels are on to something, I guess(well, with Sarracenia, etc, for sure.)

Isn't the rain "dusty" when it's the first rain after a dry period?
Or am I confusing that with the fact that rain pushes all the dust and matter on the surface, before soaking in?

[boris]

Apr 27, 2010 15:33:35 GMT -10 jgriffin said:

Isn't the rain "dusty" when it's the first rain after a dry period?
Or am I confusing that with the fact that rain pushes all the dust and matter on the surface, before soaking in?

yes you're for sure right. I haven't thought of this. Also lots of flowering has started and lots of pollen is floating around. For example the big cherry tree near to the watertank.

[mikuláš]

Michael--
Thanks, that was helpful information. And regardless of the instrument you used to measure pH, the BOWS statement corroborates that.

Rich--
Absolutely. However, if you use RO water, or if you live in a region with relatively "good" water, then pH is one of the few water issues we have left to talk about I've never had any of the streaking you mention, but you do make a good point. It sounds like even before you noticed this your tap water caused your plants problems?

As for rainwater dissolving/reacting with CO2 (and perhaps other things) as it falls, that makes me wonder if installing an aquarium air pump in my water tank would mimic that effect. Completely unnecessary, of course, but just fun to think about.

[rainforest]

I also believe that Joel (Nepenthesaroundthehouse) also just uses water directly from the tap to water his plants and if memory serves me well, he hasn't had much adverse reaction or detriment to them. I think that too much self righteous-literature has been written about nepenthes care with little actual hands-on cultivation by writers. Water even from natural regions usually have high concentrations of acid and even other chemicals in the air from construction and development that this also makes even rainwater impure/tainted. In my area rain smells like asphalt.

M

[Dave Evans]

Well, probably it has to do with the level of care as well. Flushing the soil is a very good idea, but may not be practiced by all growers. Tap water can ruin the soil in the pots of regular house plants, so while a lot of tap water is good, some tap water sources will have a negative affect on your plants. If you have good tap water, consider yourself blessed.

[dvg]

Apr 29, 2010 12:59:49 GMT -10 Dave Evans said:

If you have good tap water, consider yourself blessed.

...Blessed, hmmmm.....

Anyone ever water their plants with Holy Water that was blessed by a priest or other spiritual practitioner? I wonder how that would work. Now, before I get accused by some of being a blasphemer, there are studies that have been done showing the healing affects of prayer. Double blind studies have been done on surgery patients. Surgery patients that were prayed for, even without their knowledge, were shown to recover faster from their surgeries than patients that were not prayed for. I found that interesting, because there might be a few things we don't knoiw about the complexity of human consciousness.

But getting back to the plants and the Holy Water, apparently I wasn't the only one to think this up.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10054116/

It might have been interesting to see the actual results of the tests, before some scientists became concerned about their reputations.

dvg

[mikuláš]

I think flushing is essential if you want to avoid a gradual up-creep in the amount of salts accumulating in your medium, provided there are salts in your water to begin with. At least you can hold the salt-level of the soil closer to the level in the water by flushing.

Having done more reading, I think another reason Michael grows his plants rapidly is the amount of wind he gets (I know, it's been said before). The increased rate of transpiration ultimately sucks more water up through the roots, pulling more nutrients with it, which increases the rate of nutrient absorption and, given good temps to keep metabolic rates primed, leads to faster growth. Or at least that's the mechanism as I understand it.

Haha, Celestial Drops...who'da thunk it....now, if only the makers of the water would have funded the study!