Some other H Australis from Seed

I did one last one in a clay pot with just hoya mix...

I then placed them in a few different spots in my house. Starting with the grow light table where they have been growing already. The ones in the coffee cups are the hydroponic ones....

Then one on my hoya table where the other hoyas love it....

And one on a popular window sill where I have started several hoyas from cuttings...

So now only time will tell what will happen next. But I'll let you know if they live and grow or if they decide Idaho isn't the tropics and life isn't worth living here now that they are out of their dome :))))

~Brenda

I just found this, brenda......................I can't believe you have done this from seed............I love the bio domes and sponges, etc..................never even thought of doing anything but cutting flowers with mine..............I still have many bio domes and lots of sponges, etc..........

Will anyone please tell me where to order seed for hoyas.........dying to try this..............I am visualizing success (LOL).....................

From what I understand the hoya seeds are very hard to come by as they are only viable for a few days after the seed pod bursts open! That's why I was stunned when I received a pod with my cuttings and I was trying to give it away, I was afraid of ruining something so precious!! So far so good but we'll see if they now survive outside the domes!

I'd sure try some gessie seeds in the sponges and domes though. You probably have a bunch of those still, it would be a great experiment!

~Brenda

They all look wonderful, Brenda! You're doing such a great job with them!

I'm having a ball watching the roots of my plants spread as they grow. It's just so fascinating! Try a Kohleria in a clear cup sometime...those rhizomes look really neat!

I'm anxious to see the results of how they grow in each method. Do keep us posted on which ones you think do best. Don't you just love experiments? ;o)

I just put my Kohlerias under glass where I have taken the cuttings......thanks to your suggestion Rain..............

I love that you are trying some in hydroponics, I have 4 hoyas now growing that way, 2 variegated carnosa, linearis, and cv minibelle, and they are all taking to it like a duck to water. ( I am getting the feeling that linearis will do better in hydro than it does in soil! )

I have been wanting to try hydro ever since following the thread about it! With these babies I'm keeping the water level about half way up in the coffee cups, does that sound right?

This topic too may have been covered but....did you start some cuttings that way or did you wash the soil from the roots of a larger plant and transfer it over? I have more clay pellets and would like to experiment more with it. Thanks for any help or tips.

~Brenda

Brenda, I got advice from someone here to just start fresh cuttings. A few of mine went into pots specifically made for hydro, with the inner pot, outer pot, and water gauge (fool proof!) First I put the cuttings into water to get them started with some roots, then potted them up into the clay aggregate. I used more water than normal to encourage more roots, and boy did they form fast!!!

The hydro pots are nice, but expensive, and I have read about alot of people who grow hydro but don't have the special pots, they use what they want. The way I understand it is that the clay aggregate holds alot of moisture, and the plants roots should not be completely immersed in water, they should be getting the moisture mostly from the clay, and a few bottom roots that reach down into the solution. If you use too much water, then you are basically just growing in water, not hydroponics...if that makes sense. But it is ok in the beginning to use the extra water to get the cuttings going, once the roots are really growing, they will reach for the water at the bottom of the pot. Do you have the hydro solution with the nutrients that you need to add to the water? I am not sure how much you need to use with seedlings or small plants, or if you need it at all when they are that young. It is also a little pricey, but lasts a long time....I still have 3/4 of the same bottle I bought about 5 or 6 yrs ago. If you want, I could send you some.

I have never tried to transplant a plant already in soil into hydro, so I don't know about that. It can be done, I think the most important thing is to make sure you get every teeny tiny speck of soil off of the roots first. Alot of hydroponics forums go into the best way to do it.

Good luck, it will be neat to see how everything does with all your different methods!

I see what you are saying about not using too much water or they would just be growing in water, that is interesting and makes sense.

I tried using the clay pellets in the bottom of self watering planters but found that it did not transfer the water up to the plant well that way at all!! Which is why I was thinking I needed to have a bit more water, at least enough to be touching a good part of the roots. I obviously need to do more research on hydro...LOL

Right now I am just using the same Eleanor's VH 11 water with the hydro pots as that is what they were used to. I do have a source in the city where I can find the proper nutrients but I appreciate your offer. This store also carries the inexpensive black baskets such as the ones I used here. You just need to find a container that the various basket sizes would fit in. I'm not a big fan of the coffee cups I'm using right now :)) but it's what I had available.

So far everyone is looking happy in their new homes, no major wilt or shock showing. I should go measure them all so I can keep closer track as (if) they grow...

~Brenda

Brenda, I can't pretend to know the mechanics of how those clay pellets work, but I know that they wick moisture from one to the other, and the closer you get to the bottom the wetter they get. If I dig into one of my pots below surface level, the roots seem damp all the way up to the plant, even if the pellets around them seem dry. I think that once the plants get some good roots going, they take care of the water distribution from the bottom up, so that is why in the beginning it is ok and probably best to put some extra.

There is a store here that is about 40 minutes away but it also has a website if you want to see what they sell as far as outer pots go - not sure of the address, but you can probably find it by looking under Interior Water Gardens Surf City NJ ...and Doris, whose website is on the hydro thread from a month or so back here at DG sells some pots too. (she also has alot of good hydro tips on her site) The outer pots I have are pretty standard white plastic. Someone else I met online somewhere got very creative with all different kinds of containers, and she didn't use an inner pot, she just used one pot, usually clear or semi opaque so that she could see through it and keep track of water levels. What I am looking for is hydro hanging basket pots, since that is how I like to grow most of my plants. I guess you can rig any pot to be a hanging pot, but I would like to find some specifically made for hanging plants.

So it's time for an update!! It has been a month since I potted up the first of my seedlings.....I left the shorter but healthy and normal looking hoya seedlings in one of the domes together and then I put all of the strange little mutant ones :)) together. They continued to grow and I just did pot them all up this past weekend.

The ones that I potted up in various ways a month ago and left under their grow light have done the best. The couple that I put into windows are fine but have stayed the same size. None of them have grown a lot taller, maybe 1/2 to 1 inch but the leaves have gotten bigger and I can see the roots growing in the clear cups. The two that I did semi hydroponicly are looking good too. I can't claim true hydroponics with them as I left the bio sponge on all of these....

Lets start with a nice shot of the roots coming from one of the hydroponic pots...

~Brenda

Here is a shot of two that I planted together in a clear cup, the leaves are looking good!

The roots showing in the clear cup on those two...

Here is a shot of the little mutant guys that had still been growing in the dome from Sunday....

Another shot with a tape measure in it for size reference, not a lot of growth at all in the last month with these....

A close up of the real odd ball that came out of no where!!

The "regular" guys that had been left to grow in the dome until they were butting their heads on the top by this weekend....

Their roots had really taken off....

So I did one "mutant" alone.....

And the others in a couple of groupings....just to see what happens.....

And the regular guys in some groupings and singly too....

So here is everybody that was potted up this past weekend now tucked into my new little greenhouse. I have hung the light that is in there now and they also get some nice afternoon sun through the top shelf.

The original group is now just getting natural light as I needed the grow light for a new project. I will keep a close watch on them and figure something out if I think they need more light. They had already been totally weaned from a humid environment so they are now just in front of a window all on their own.

We shall see what the next month holds for all of these now...

~Brenda

The plants look great Brenda! I found out that on mine the more room I give them to grow the faster they grow and take off. I put four of them in a six inch pot with a two foot bamboo trellis, and the seedlings are now winding around the trellis and are about 10 inches tall. They make a very hansome plant when put into a larger pot and grouped like that. My seedlings have now out paced the parent and are bigger than the cutting that the seed pod was harvested from.

Doug

Brenda...what a great grower you are!!!! And the pictoral voyage is great too!!!

I would really be interested in getting some of those small ceramic marbles...anyone know of a good source????

Carol

Pictures Doug, I need pictures!! LOL

I'll let these new guys settle down for now but maybe I'll take the original ones out of their cups and give them some room to spread out...and a trellis.....going to go look at the pots I have available.............

~Brenda

Thanks Carol, me and my camera ........ or else I don't remember a thing!! LOL

I bought the clay pellets at a hydroponics store....do they have some of those in HI? I'd hate to pay shipping to buy them online but I'm sure you could....

~Brenda

growinhydro.com sells the clay aggregate by different bag sizes. Doris, who is a member here gave me their information - I believe "growinhydro," which is in Kentucky, sells her products here in the states. At least her pots, anyway. (she is in Canada) Also, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some hydroponic stores near you. I just found two of them pretty close to where I live.

The little plants look great, Brenda! You have done a great job. If I had them, I would finally do a fertilizer experiment with four of them and decide once and for all what works the best, the beer fertilizer, that Eleanors everyone raves about, plain ol' Miracle Gro, or just water!

Ok, so Doug got me to thinking about the more room thing with how big his hoya seedlings are getting already.......

So I decided to rat on myself with another little experiment I had been playing with. When I originally potted up the first seedlings I had done the ones in the single cups and in the hydro but I also had done one big communal pot as I had read about "growing vibes" that little plants send out and how they will grow better together! :0) I felt a little silly doing this (thus didn't share the pictures) but hey I had a lot of seedlings so why not.....well I can tell you that the ones in the big pot have done better than the ones I potted up in the little cups.

The seedlings that I took out of the cups had some nice roots but nothing like the ones took out of the bigger communal pot....and yes I have pictures...here is the big pot I did on the 30th of August. It is in this bowl as I had another bowl on the top for a little while. I did a layer of the clay pellets and then perlite and then a light hoya mix...

Now here they are on the 30th of September, you can see that the roots have grown too...

They needed better support and more room so I dug them up carefully to re pot them. I can tell you that these root balls your looking at are much bigger and better developed that the ones in the cups. And they do love to have their roots clinging to those clay pellets if they get the chance!

A close up of the biggest one...

So here are all of the first batch of seedlings re potted with trellis's and I am putting them into the greenhouse because I have sorely abused them with all this transplanting and want to make it up to them :) The small pots are 4 1/2 inches and I have three seedlings in one and two in the other. The big pots are 7 1/2 inches and I have 6 seedlings in each of them.

So now in a months time I will check in again and we'll see how both these first seedlings in their new pots and the second batch that I did over the weekend are doing.

~Brenda

This message was edited Oct 3, 2007 7:41 PM

What a great experiment potting them all up in one pot!!! It is so important to experiment, push the envelope, see what else works!!!! Good on ya.

Carol

Hey Carol be looking for a flat rate box full of clay pellets coming your way....probably arriving on Monday. If anyone can do some good experiments with it it will be you!

~Brenda

Whoa...I don't know what to say...thank you a million times, Brenda!!! I can't wait. There are a few hoyas I would love to try in them...H. hypolasia for one....H. caudata is another one...I hope that mixed with black cinders, I will have no trouble growing some hoyas outdoors in 160" of rain...avoiding root rot etc. I am really excited!!!!

I am 'gobsmacked'.... thank you so much!!!!

Carol

Well H. blashernazie is getting set to bloom for the second time in two months and my h. verticillata has 6 blooms forming as I write and that's not to mention the seedlings here that I'm having so much fun with.......I appreciate those facts!!

~Brenda