Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Keeping the Bat Alive, 1 by MollyMc

MollyMc wrote:
Good morning,

These will be my first pictures and comments on the bat babies.

Having bought a whole bunch of them I can say at this point, I'm looking at 25% fatality rate. All the ones I've lost, were my own doggone fault. I drowned them and they turned to mush. Now that being said, here's what I did.

I put most into 4 inch pots with regular potting soil. I have given them all 1 meal of compost tea.

The survivors have all grown some new roots, and many have grown new tops. At this point I am tempted to cut their tops off and force them into some more root growth. I'm sure this is probably the best thing to do, but I haven't the nerve yet.

I have had some bloom stalks that were too heavy for the plant to hold up, so I unpotted all, amended the soil with bone meal and repotted them again. (This took me two days of working in late afternoon to dark.)

I am pretty well following The Sleepy Oaks website when handling these plants. I figure you have to find one information source, stick with it, learn from your mistakes and keep on keeping on.

Here's a picture of one plant with a fallen bloom stem and 1 new leaf stem.

http://www.sleepyoaks.com/tacca_chantrieri_bat_plant.htm