I have a question, that is probably for Allison, but any of you can help. I have been looking at all of the photos online, mainly the leaves that have been set down. And I can see that Allison keeps all of her pots in the plastic shoe boxes, and she has them all wicked. My question is this? Do you set the pots down in the shoe boxes with the wicks in them and pour water into the plastic shoe boxes? Or do you set the pots up higher somehow? I have all of mine in the little 3 oz. plastic cups now and they all have wicks in them. I just need to know what to do next. Thanks
JesseK
Where to place leaves
jesse...i think the answer is some do and some don't....think the original wick idea was to have them sitting above some water with wick going down...but others are more precise than i can be....am sure you'll get the right answer...is there a help to this in Sticky?...can't remember....i know in the older books i have they have them sitting above the water...sometimes on an inverted pot thats in container of water...
You don't want the pot itself sitting in water or your soil will get waterlogged :-)
Sharon
I'm pretty sure Allison combines wicking with bottom watering... Her pots sit on the bottom of the boxes, and she pours warm water into the boxes, lets them soak up as much as they can in a few minutes, them pours off any excess so they don't sit in the water. I suppose the wicks help the pots take up the water more quickly and may hold a little extra water in the pot also, but I'm not sure they are strictly necessary with bottom watering like this -- but it's certainly hard to disagree with any methods that produce the results she shows & shares with us! :-)
I don't wick leaves anymore. They all do sit in plastic boxes keep them organised and from tipping on the light shelves. I just pour water I use hot/warm on them.
All my plants well 99.9 percent are wicked. I use a long wick and coil it several times on the bottompf the inside of the pots and bring it to the top of the pot. This help the water to go toward the top for roots better.
My wicked plants on stands are on big trays small pots together and so on. Large plants are on their own saucer or maybe 4-5 together on a large tray. I try to not have anyone touching. On tables and shelves I keep several plants on cute containers , saucers , so on. Most of them are just given drinks when dry enough to drink in 15 mintues to a half hour.
The plants on trays war/hot pant food is poured into tray few inches. After half hour the extra is dumped off . When the pot is light , wick dry their watered again. Once a month or so I water from the top.
I never let them sit in water. Sometimes you may thing a plant is dry on top and can be soaked in the middle. My plants never get over watered, they never have cold wet feet Av's hate and they never dry out. They are evenly semi moist :))
Okay, I think I got it now. I was mostly talking about the leaves in the pots. So I do not wick these, add warm water to them in the shoe box, wait 30 minutes and then pour the rest out. The pots with plants that are wicked are given water for about 30 minutes then the rest is poured off. So if I understand this correctly, most things, even with wicks, are given water and then after about 30 minutes the excess water is poured off.
I have been using the trays with the 72 different compartments. I was pouring water in the bottom and letting it sit. This is the reason that I got the algae, because mine stayed wet all the time. So this time I am not going to do that. I am switching to the little 3 oz cups, now that I finally found them. I think that this will work much better for me.
Thank you so much for all of your help. I think I am finally understanding this now. I can hardly wait until I get some babies of my own. And thank you all for being so patient with me. I really do appreciate it.
One more question if I may. If the leaves measure 6 inches across, then you put it in a 2 inch pot? Is this correct? Most of my pots are 2¼, 2½, and 3 inches across. I want to make sure that I put them in the correct pot size. And if the leaves measure 4 inches across I put it in 1 to 1½ inch pot. That is really small for them to sit in. What gets me about the small ones are that I can't keep them from falling over. How do you all deal with this? So this is sort of opposite of what I do with my succulents and cacti. The AV will be a lot wider across the pot than my other plants are. This will take some getting used to but I will make it work. I want to be a great AV mom like you guys are. Here is a photo of an AV that I bought today, one of my favorite ones.
JesseK
Jesse dorry to be confusing this may and may not work for your but have givin me thousands of babies !
I know longer wick leaves down growing babies. I water them from the top when needed .
My plants I wick and give them enough to drink 15 mintues to half hour. Some of them do have wicking well I give them a little bit but sometimes let them well dry out for a rest.
Jesse, sometimes I'll pot up to a cup/pot that's closer to half the diameter of the plant, so a 4 inch mini might go into a 2 inch pot, especially if its roots are growing out the bottom of the 1 inch cup. The main thing, I think, is to avoid potting up into a pot that is significantly larger than the rootball, or else you end up with too much wet soil around the roots and too few roots to absorb the water (the "wet feet" that AVs hate). So I put suckers of standards into 1 inch pots and pot them into successively larger pots as they fill the pots with roots (until they're at least 8 or 9 inches across & into a 4 inch pot).
I know the rule of thumb is pot diameter = 1/3 plant diameter.... but sometimes you have to adapt that a little, or at least that's what I do.
As far as keeping the little cups from tipping over, the ones that aren't nestled together in trays (where it doesn't seem to be much of a problem) are generally in their own little containers or saucers, often with a little fine gravel, and that seems to keep them upright.