Nymphaea Cultivation Hazard!

[Vertmorpheus]

Gday guys, there's a few stray lily threads around but this seemed noteworthy enough to get its own thread...guess if its not it will sink into oblivion at least for those like me that just ride the "new posts" button. Also seems plenty of threads aruond about ID, wildcrafting flower parts, preparations and effects... but little about small scale cultivation? I can't work out if everyone has a box of em, or noone does... I find theyre a lovely thing to point out to people who say "wow. um. you must really like cacti?"... "yeah, those and aquatic plants...see the bucket there?" and watch their mind turn itself out.

Maybe everyone grows em so nobody mentions it, or maybe most rely on just pinching them from ponds in the warm weather ...still a great way to get em, isnt it funny how theyre always twice as far from the edge as they seem from a distance away though... or maybe ordering dried material is easier in the long run than pissing about with a big tub of water. Anyways, cultivation and care tips, here!

Right... the hazardous part... if you grow any kind of water plants, or have any standing water in the yard...whatta you got? Mozzies... which is ok for us, not much of a malaria zone, but heartworm is a bummer for pets. My lily tub (a 60 or 70 litre Esky, black, white on the inside,northfacing wall) sits in full sun, I try not to overfeed them, and it gets a 50 percent water change every week...still gets mozzies... and the dogs bed is a metre away. So, being the gentle soul I am, I pyrethrum them... and damn near killed the plants.

I used Yates brand pyrethrum (i htink with piperonyls, most are), the ROA for spraying is 20ml per litre... which came to much much more than seemed sensible to add to one small box of three lily plants... and it was more than I had in the bottle... so I added 10mls... literally. SFA by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. Id used homemade pyrethrum blends in lily tubs before and it worked a treat, no worries just dead wriggliers. The Yates gear is from a bottle approx one year old, or a lil less, theres about half gone but ive always shaken it real well before use and its been stored properly. No other agents at work in the water, just my secret fert blend that has worked wonders so far.

This stuff just about nailed them... any parts above the soil immediately started browning, yellowing, went slimy, it looked like salt toxicity or frost damage. Any parts that were unfurled at the time of appliation were mildly fucked, even the flower that was on em (been out for two days by then) looked like it had been force dried... intact, but papery rather than silky. The bubby leaves have since grown some, and the bits that were rolled up at time of app are healthy looking. So I worked over all three lil clumps with snippers and offed all the nasty bits. (I find deleafing encourages flowering, as long as you keep the nutrition up and cut back the flushing rate).

I think it was the surfactant added to the product rather than the goods themselves... even after adding 10ml I gavve it a stir, let it sit for 15 mins then did a double size flush (say, 30 percent change at once) which I did when I used natural extracts... so it wouldve gone from 10 ml to 70 litres to 6 ml or so...thats fuuuck all. And it nearly destroyed them. Frantic flushing when I noticed the damage produced a SHITLOAD of "suds", very regular hexagonally arrayed bubbles rather than a "foam".

I don't know if it fucked with oxygen solubility, fish poison style...which then did the leaves in as theyre there to provide o2 as the roots cant find much under a bunch of compacted silt. Or it fucked with salt uptake, burst all the cells and dehydrated them... could explain the papering and the leaves were that fucked, on anything else they would have been crispy and almost cured to smoke

With some nursing, a 100 percent flush, new food and a bloody good haircut, they seem ok for now... get back to you on that one though.

In good health I get say 4 flowers the size of your palm, per flush from a "medium" sized plant (say a foot tall, leaves the size of your palm) and the quicker you take one, the quicker the next in line seems to come up. I hear you can snip stamens perpetually but that seems a bit nasty somehow . Flushes are about two weeks apart, can kind of forceit down to a lil over a week apart if you keep pulling leaves off but that sounds a bit nasty too.

The ability to correctly culture a plant that can turn foetid silt and slime into a scent like that always puts a smile on my dial....very privilidged! Mine are nouchali var. capensis, pinched clumps from a natural waterway...help the planet and get herbs at the same time, woo hoo.

So... take care of your lil plantlings, maybe it was a one off (its the last half of the bottle) but the speed with which it fucked what are fairly hardy plants once you get the right setup had me stunned.

VM

Edited March 14, 2008 by Vertmorpheus

[shruman]

Get urself some goldfish or even better...Betta's they can breathe air too which means less waterchanges. for the wrigglers & an overall better environment probly save on ferts too unless u hust piss in there I've heard that works well.

Something I would like to try in the future.

Edited March 14, 2008 by shruman

[Lachy]

Get urself some goldfish or even better...Betta's they can breathe air too which means less waterchanges.

Or if you live near a waterway that contains them... net some mosquitofish (Gambusia spp.). Hey, they're an introduced pest, so we may as well put them to use, right? ;)

[coin]

anyone tried neem emulsion?

[Monk]

Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis - Mosquito Dunks!

They'll work with the fish and won't kill anything but the mozzie larvae. Get some. Go. Now Get some biological warfare on those suckers.

[planthelper]

pretty much most of those small fish you can find in our creeks, will eat mozzie larva, catching them youreselfe is the best part. just take a bucket and scoop it into a promising location (where aquatic weeds grow).

hopefully you will catch some freshwater shrimps or/and some crayfish aswell, as they will keep your water quality up!

i saw my lilly ponds as mozzie controlling structures, and not as breeding grounds...

[Guest Øskorei]

isnt it funny how theyre always twice as far from the edge as they seem from a distance away though...

And almost always in crocodile infested waters

I often wonder about companion gardening, in this case some chrysanthemum species in pots that might form a barrier around your esky. Would the presence of these plants provide an impenetrable shield against mosquitos, or does the pyrethrum need to be extracted and concentrated for effectiveness.

While on the subject, (and apologies for the thread hijack), anyone have ideas of companion planting to deter the dreaded red spider mite chewing away at my datura collection ?

[planthelper]

While on the subject, (and apologies for the thread hijack), anyone have ideas of companion planting to deter the dreaded red spider mite chewing away at my datura collection ?

datura does not often get infested and anyhow it's an annual or perenial plant so it doesn't matter much...

brugmansias however is another story, but as i don't get bored of saying again and again, mite and other infestations mostly go hand in hand with malnurishment, so fert more and than just spray with water, or with pyrethrum or neem.

daturas are heavy feeders aswell, a well nourished datura will not suffer much if infested by bugs, but a starved one, wcould even die. fert, fert, fert!

[Guest Øskorei]

Sure PH, I didn't say they were killing my plants, I just don't like seeing the lovely foliage as a sandblasted canvas. They certainly perform in many other areas, and are far from dead, in fact otherwise quite happy with the care given. Interestingly, I have four young potted brugs in the very same area, and the mites never touch 'em.

[Teljkon]

asdf

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon