Guest Post: Carnivorous Plant Growing Guide

At some stage I will probably write some posts about how I grow carnivorous plants.

Unlike most of this blog, the following is not my work.  The following is a guest post written by Beauze Menzies.
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Media & Materials:

 

Carnivorous plants as a general rule need low nutrient soils based on sphagnum moss products such as peat or long fibered sphagnum which is often used for orchids. Using distilled or RO water is important unless your tap water is under 100 ppm (this number varies by species i.e. nepenthes can tolerate higher ppm).

 

For plants like pinguicula (pings or butterworts) using a soil mix low in peat that is well draining is important and mixes containing no peat have been used successfully. For pings, it might be of interest to try mixing your own soils based on cactus soil recipes that don’t require any real soil (so a rock based soil).

 

Bog CPs like Sarracenia can grow in a wide variety of soil mixes from pure silica sand to pure peat. However, a combination between the two ingredients is often used and is a safer bet than using peat or sand straight. This is also true of flytraps, but currently using long fiber sphagnum is a popular choice for growing them well. However, long fiber sphagnum is very light and dries out quickly, and when wet again, it can become a soggy mess.

 

Proper aeration seems to be key for all CPs.  To maintain aeration, peat is often mixed with course silica sand (free of contaminates) and/or perlite. Perlite has an annoying tendency to float to the top when watered and doesn’t look good. Another way to make sure nothing literally gets “bogged” down is to let the water tray dry out for a day or two between watering. This will allow air to get back on the soil and keep the bacteria down and can be beneficial for some CPs.

 

I use standard black plastic nursey pots placed in 1020 heavy duty nursery trays for most CPs. Flytraps have long roots so they benefit from taller pots. Many people use Styrofoam cups for this reason for their flytraps but it doesn’t look good obviously. For Drosera capensis I plant them directly in a 1020 nursery tray or similar tray and water them directly or place them in an even larger tray for watering. Getting white pots or somehow painting the pots white would be highly recommended if the plants will be outdoors.

 

Flytraps:

 

Venus Flytraps need full sun outside, tall pots, and whatever humidity you got naturally. Don’t stick them in a humidity dome! In hot areas they can be kept full time in a tray of water but a taller pot should be used so the soil at the top doesn’t become waterlogged.

 

Flytraps can be propagated clonally by divisions, leaf pullings, and nonclonally by seeds (Seeds do not need stratification but must be surface sown so not buried). 

A leaf is simply pulled off and floated in water under a light for a few weeks until a bud forms at the base. However, if the leaf does not contain a small section of the crown it will not take so you cannot just cut a leaf off. You can cut a young flower stalk off though and treat it like a leaf pulling and it will also form plantlets.

 

Sarracenia:

 

Adult Sarracenia should be grown full time outside. During the growing season they are kept in a tray of water, but some sarracenia such as leucophylla do not like having constantly wet feet so it is important to let the soil dry slightly between waterings which will help prevent rot too. During dormancy they are often brought into a protected area like a basement to protect them from sudden freezes. It is important to watch for rot in the crown and for mealybugs that live in the roots.

 

For large Sarracenia displays, many people build water tables which allow viewing from eye level and hold water. However, since the water can get stagnant this can also promote rot since it’s essentially a giant tray… and the rot can spread very fast with so many plants sharing the same water. Having the water table slope slightly and having the water constantly being pumped up and filtered will prevent this stagnation. This constantly flowing water could possibly also reduce the need for drying out times between waterings but this needs experimenting.

 

Sarracenia seeds need four weeks of moist stratification before surface sowing. Young Sarracenia grown from seed can be grown indoors and can skip their first year of dormancy. These young plants will need a grow light such as a T5 fluorescent or Marshydro 300 LED (see Darlingtonia). While these lights can be costly but using them correctly (16 hour days) can drastically improve juvenile Sarracenia growth rates. Another way to improve their growth rate is by using Osmocote pellets about an inch under the peat mix (https://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/feed/sarraceniasoil) . In addition, many people foliar spray or fill the pitchers with ¼ strength Maxsea. One thing to remember with Sarracenia seedlings is that they will need repotting and more space as they get bigger. So, if you are not planning on culling heavily, be prepared for sarracenia overload.

 

Drosera:

 

Drosera can be grown outdoors or indoors depending on the species. If indoors they will need a grow light such as the ones recommended for Sarracenia seedlings but keep in mind that a purple LED will make viewing your Drosera difficult. South American Drosera are often picky about growing conditions and need high humidity. African species vary from capensis, which is considered the easiest CP to grow, to D. regia which needs porous soil and literally needs fertilizing. North American and European species tend to need long dormancies since they’re from cold climates (filformis and tracyi not so much?) but there is easier to grow forms such as the Hawaii form of D. anglica and the rotundifolia cultivar: “Charles Darwin” (If you can find this cultivar!).  Australian species…. No idea really except for binata which is easy to grow – the other Australian species look awesome though.

 

The larger forms of Drosera binate (marston dragon, multifida, etc.) do not flower often. To force flower them you can take them out of their water tray and only top water them occasionally. This will make them dry out a lot and they won’t be too happy. Just give them enough water so they don’t die. This took about a month for me. They should produce flower stalks at which point you can water normally again. If you want seeds, you’ll need to lightly rub flowers from different clones together to cross pollinate them. Interestingly, doing this did not get my smaller T-forms to flower so I am uncertain whether they are unaffected by this procedure or if they are were too small. If it matters, which I don’t think it does since I rarely chance the light’s timer settings, the binata started flowering in Autu

 

Drosera can be propagated easily by leaf cuttings which, unlike the flytraps, can be simply cut at the base and thrown in some water (https://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/propagation/DroseraLeafCuttings).

 

Most Drosera species do not need special care if being grown from seed unless it’s a North American Species which will need stratification. Tuberous sundews need to be set outside to germinate since they will only sprout if the day length is right so it can take some time. Germination for common species like capensis will take two weeks normally but can take longer. Drosera also need to be surface sown like most other CPs since the seeds are so small. This also makes it important to make sure the seeds won’t dry out so covering the pot with a plastic bag is common practice until the seedlings have a few leaves (on all CPs actually). To make sure you have good soil to seed contact you could use a thin layer of pure peat on top of whatever peat mix your using and then put the seeds on top of that. This is a good idea if your normal peat mix contains lumpy bits of perlite.

 

Baby Drosera will need feeding. The best way is to rehydrate bloodworms by dipping them in water (the dew will not rehydrate them) and placing a tiny piece on one leaf of each baby drosera. This will take forever, and you’ll need tweezers and possibly a magnifying glass. I was able to get very fast growth rates on baby capensis that were planted in long fibered sphagnum by top watering them often with Drosera pretransplant tissue culture media (from phytotech) without sugar or agar. The seedlings did not suffer negatively from the fertilizing at all which makes sense because drosera in sterile tissue culture grow just fine on that media.

 

The Darlingtonia in both pots are the same age and from the same seeds. The only difference is the larger one is potted with S. leucophylla and has osmocote. Photo taken December 19^th – smaller Darlingtonia went dormant Oct 17^th.

Darlingtonia:

 

Darlingtonia need good light, a light soil such as live sphagnum, and a steady supply of water in their tray. Having the water be recirculated by a pump probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. However, the biggest problem with Darlingtonia is the fact they die in any sort of heat especially if the roots of an adult plant get hot (young plants are slightly more tolerant of heat). There is an easy solution to this though and that is growing them indoors with AC under a good grow light such as those recommended for Sarracenia seedlings. The annoying purple color of the Marshydro LED is something to consider when deciding which light to buy. The T5 is widely used, produces some heat, but I have no personal experience with it. COB LEDS come in daylight colors and could be an excellent compromise.

 

The darlingtonia will need a winter dormancy so make sure to decrease the light’s daylength at the same rate as the daylength outside as winter approaches so the plant can prepare for dormancy.

 

Propagating darlingtonia can be easy since they produce rhizomes which can be cut and used to grow new plants. More difficult if by using leaf pullings. Germinating seed is easy and while I used a six week stratification, it may not be required for fresh seed. Darlingtonia naturally produce seeds earlier in the year like flytraps which would suggest they too don’t need stratification and can sprout right away. http://sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/2382/darlingtonia-house-2015

 

Shortly after the darlingtonia seeds sprouted I had transplanted one of the darlingtonia seedlings to a pot that contained S. leucophylla seedlings and possibly some Osmocote. I have not given this individual dormancy yet unlike the other darlingtonia seedlings which are now in the fridge (not cold enough outside where I live). Before I put the other seedlings away though I decided to check if they were the same size as the seedling with the leucophylla. Surprisingly, the one darlingtonia with the leucophylla was double the size. I am not sure if this was because of the Osmocote or if the Sarracenia seedlings were beneficial in some way. If I had realized that transplanting the one to the leucophylla pot would speed up the growth rate so much I would have paid much closer attention to the details, but I had thought nothing would come of it.

 

Pumpkin growing roots in weird places

For a few years I have been growing a pumpkin called "kaempw melon rilon".  I quite like it.  It is productive, tastes good, and is usually very vigorous.

It has two down sides, firstly the pumpkins are a little big for my liking.  Secondly it has a thin skin.  Thin skin means it is easy to cut and the skin is soft enough to eat, but it doesn't store as long as thicker skin varieties of pumpkin.

Unfortunately the last few years have been very dry.  This means my plants don't get much water.  When not watered well the flesh tends to be thinner than it otherwise would.

After being dry for too long, when we do have any rain the skin tends to crack and the cracks fill with cork.  When the skin has cork like this is makes it more difficult to cut and while the flesh is still nice it renders the skin inedible.  The easiest way to remedy this is give the plant regular water.

Kaempw melon rilon has a lovely habit of setting down roots along its stem where a node touches the soil.  This means the plant gets more water and nutrients than it otherwise would.  I wish all my vegetables would do this.

Sometimes a pumpkin vine sprawls over onto the lawn, it throws down some roots and collects nutrients and water that otherwise were unobtainable.  What a great trait for a pumpkin to have.

Last time my pumpkins fruited something strange happened.  Can you see it in the photo below?

Have a closer look at this pumpkin.  At first I wondered why this pumpkin was so heavy, then I realised what was really happening.  It grew roots on the pumpkin stem! 

While this may never win a beauty contest I don't care.  I want productive plants that are simple to grow.  Having roots like this right next to the pumpkin meant that the pumpkin grew faster and had more flesh than other pumpkins produced that year.

If you are a seed saver you should grow this pumpkin.  I sell seed through my for sale page, but if anything happens to my stock then I worry that I can never get this variety back again.  I am running low on seed and this year my plants are not performing very well as I don't have enough water for them, this variety needs more seed savers taking care of it.

Growing string of pearls succulent in water UPDATE

Back around August 2018 I started some string of pearls (Senecio rowleyanus) cuttings in water.  I removed the lower few leaves (pearls) and put the stem in water.  I normally grow cuttings in soil, but thought I would give water propagation a try to see what happens.  You can read about it in my previous blog post. 

Being a succulent I wasn't sure that growing them in water was a great idea.  As it turns out my sting of pearls cutting grew roots pretty fast.  That made me wonder how long it would survive like that.

I then left it in the water, it was just water, nothing else. I top up the water when it is low, and keep the cutting by the window, that is all.  I thought it is time for an update as it is December 2019 and the cutting has been growing for about 16 months.

As you can see below, it is still alive - who would have guessed?  It is growing far slower than the cuttings I grew in soil, but is is growing.  I assume the low growth rate is due to the lack of nutrients in water.  It has not rotted like I thought it would.  I am really surprised that it has survived this long in nothing but water.

The only thing that it seems to be struggling with is the lack of sunlight.  You will notice that the newer parts are decidedly less green than the older parts.  I also bruised the stem when I got it out of the water once to inspect the roots, but it seems to have survived that pretty well.

I am expecting this cutting to die at some point if it is constantly kept in water like this.  I think I will leave it in water at least a bit longer, once it starts to decline I will probably try to pot it up into soil and see if I can revive it.

I do sell string of pearls plants and cuttings through my for sale page.  Rest assured, none of them have been kept in water.  They have all been grown in pots of soil.

String of pearls cutting after 16 months of growing in just water

You can see where it started to grow roots on the left, everything to the right is new growth

Venus Flytrap from seed

I haven't grown venus flytraps from seed in years.  I used to enjoy it, so I gave it another go recently.  Growing Venus flytraps from seed takes more patience and time than just getting a mature plant, but the seedlings are so cute.  Each seedling is genetically unique so you can end up with some interesting looking plants.

Venus Flytrap not too long after germinating

Days to germinate Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula)
Seed planted             13/03/2019      Day 0
Germinated              08/05/2019       Day 56

I had one seed that was even slower!
Seed planted             13/03/2019      Day 0
Germinated              21/09/2019       Day 162 - over six months

At this size they catch fungus gnats

From memory, it usually doesn't take this long for Venus flytrap seedlings to germinate, and it certainly doesn't usually take this long for it to produce carnivorous leaves.  Slow germination can be caused by a few things.  Older seeds take longer to germinate (or don't germinate at all), but I don't think that was the issues this time.

Colder weather slows the germination process considerably, I think it was just too cold for fast results.  I suspected it was too cold before I planted the seed, but I was too impatient.  I got some seeds and just couldn't wait to plant them.


Edit to add: I planted some more seeds in warmer weather.  They germinated a bit faster but still took six weeks:
Seed planted             30/11/2019      Day 0
Germinated              11/01/2020       Day 42



WARNING: do NOT buy venus flytrap seeds from ebay.

Many ebay seed sellers are thieves.  They may be local, have 100% positive ratings, super low prices, large numbers of seed per packet, and incredibly fast postage, but it means nothing.  Almost all seeds for venus flytraps on ebay are not real, they will send you seeds from some packet of cheap flower seeds.

Never buy seeds for blue venus flytraps because they don't exist.  They will not even send you venus flytrap seed, they will send cheap seeds for some type of garden flowers, by the time they have grown and you realise something is amiss it will be too late to leave negative feedback or get your money back.  You will have lost your money and supported thieves.  Blue venus fly traps don't exist, the people selling seeds of them are thieves and liars. 

If you think blue venus flytraps are real (there is at least one very aggressive ebay thief who claims they do exist and says horrible things about buyers who claim they don't) then send me one, or send me seeds, or even send me a leaf pulling or a cutting from a flower stalk.  I will grow them, and photograph them, and link back to you, so thousands of people will see them and many will buy from you.  Seriously, thousands of people will see your amazing plants and I will link to you so you can make a fortune selling them.  None of these thieves will ever take me up on this offer because blue venus flytraps don't exist and they never will exist.

For a full list of vegetable days to maturity (I know that flytraps are not really vegetables) please click here.

Dahlia from seed - the first year

My daughter grew a dahlia (and a bunch of other flowers) from seed last year.  She was proud of herself, I was proud of her too.  We left it in the soil where it was overwinter and it started to grow again this Spring.

Dahlias used to be a South American root vegetable with pretty flowers.  Somewhere along the way people stopped growing them for food and focused on flowers.  I have no idea how this one tastes, next winter when this plant is dormant, if my daughter is not looking, I may sneak a little taste.

I can hardly wait for it to flower again this year, such a lovely little plant.

Are Spider Plants Edible - Chlorophytum comosum

Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum) have a bunch of fun names including hen and chickens, airplane plant, ribbon plant, spider ivy, St Bernard's lily. In Puerto Rico they call this plant "malamadre” which roughly translates to “bad mother”, I love that name.

Spider plants are interesting, they send out flower stalks that sometimes have flowers but more often just have baby plants instead. These baby plants can be potted up and grow into more plants. The flowers are small and uninteresting and can set seed, but it is these baby plants that are the main reason people grow spider plants.

When I was a child our house had a spider plant in a hanging basket. It didn’t get any direct sunlight, it never got fertilised or repotted, it rarely got watered, and when it was watered it was over watered and left sitting in a saucer of stagnant water. That plant grew for many years and flowered and sent out flower stalks with baby plantlets at the tips. As far as I know it is still alive.

Not many plants are so well adapted to the harsh extremes of being a house plant.

My little variegated spider plant starting to develop roots

There are several varieties of spider plant, some of the better known ones are: variegated, which has green leaves with a white stripe down its center. Reverse variegated forms have a green center and white edges on each leaf. Full green forms have leaves that are entirely green and presumably grow faster than variegated forms. There is even a curly leaf variety which is variegated and has curly leaves.

Recently I got a tiny variegated spider plant baby. I put it in my pocket in the morning and forgot about it while I was at work for the day. When I got home I found this bruised thing in my pocket and remembered what it was, I didn’t have time to do anything so I put it in some water and forgot about it again.

A week later the leaves had picked up and it had started to grow roots, so I planted it in a pot of soil. It was winter so it didn’t do very much, then when spring hit it started to grow pretty fast.

Again, I can’t think of many plants that will survive that kind of abuse.

Spider plants apparently don’t like too much water or they will rot. I am told to let them dry out between waterings. From my experience they seem to grow ok if I just keeping them watered all the time.

I just grow mine in a pot of soil, I assume potting mix is far better. I protect mine from frost as I think frosts would kill it. Spider plants grow thick fleshy roots, at times they also develop larger storage roots that help them survive through times of little water.

I have heard that spider plant is edible, but there are a few plants with the common name of spider plant so I did some research in peer reviewed papers using its binomial name, Chlorophytum comosum, and found a few interesting results.

Spider plant potted up and ready to grow

Most of the papers I found were comparing the yield or chemical composition of different varieties, some were to do with animal fodder, but others were for human consumption.

Apparently the leaves of spider plant are edible, but few people eat them. What I found interesting is that in a few countries such as Iran and India the roots of spider plants were eaten by people. I am assuming that they were eaten cooked in stews or similar, but the papers were unclear.

Perhaps, much like many ornamental plants, the spider plant was once a vegetable? They are certainly simple to grow. I decided to eat one to see what I thought.

My little spider plant growing larger

I ate some leaves raw, they didn't really taste of anything much. It didn't taste unpleasant, it didn't taste of anything at all that I could notice.

They were crisp and took some chewing, perhaps younger leaves would be softer. The leaves were not fibrous, but they were firmer than most things I eat. As they don't really have a taste they could be put in a salad and whatever else is in there would be the star of the dish, but I think the texture would take some getting used to as it is unlike anything else that I eat. Then again, if it cut finely and mixed with other tastier leaves it may add interest to a salad's texture. When my plant is larger I will give it another try.

When it is time to repot I may try to eat a few of the plump storage roots. I will probably eat one raw, and I should try to cook one. If I remember I will try to write a blog post on how that goes.

Who knows, perhaps this is yet another easy to grow perennial vegetable, or perhaps they taste horrible, I will find out soon enough.

If you have a plant and decide to eat one please do some research first, and only try a little to see if it disagrees with you. If you begin to vomit uncontrollably I take no responsibility, that is on you.

Spider plant, growing larger every day!

Spider plant sending up a flower stalk

I hope that my little plant flowers soon so I can try to grow them from seed as I think that would be interesting. Apparently short days and long nights induce flowering, so perhaps I could make it flower. If I can track down some of the more unusual varieties I would love to try crossing them and seeing what interesting new varieties I can create.

At some stage I will likely have extra spider plants, but it won't be for a while yet. When this happens I will try to list them on my for sale page.

Persian speedwell - my lawn is buzzing

My lawn is buzzing, but only in the morning.  Then it is silent.

Persian speedwell (Veronica persica) is one of the many flowering weeds that grows in my lawn.  It grows by itself and has lovely blue flowers in Spring.  Honey bees, hover flies, and other insects love the flowers.

Each morning the bees collect pollen and nectar from the flowers.

Persian speedwell has pretty blue flowers

There are so many bees on the Persian speedwell early each morning that my lawn hums.  You can hear the lawn from quite some distance because it is absolutely filled with foraging bees.  While honey bees dominate, there are also some hover flies and a few other little insects collecting nectar and pollen.

Once they have emptied all the flowers they leave and my lawn is silent again.  The following morning new flowers will open and the humming will begin again.

Honey bees and hover flies seem to like the flowers

The Persian speedwell started out as a few small plants in among the lawn a few years ago.  I allowed it to spread, and now it covers a considerable amount of the front lawn and is starting to pop up around the back.

It is usually only there for part of Spring, then it sets seed and dies. 

I took these photos a little while ago, most of my lawn is now brown and dead.  There are still a few patches of Persian speedwell about in sheltered positions.  It will die off soon, then the seeds will be ready in the soil for next spring.

Persian speedwell feeding bees and spreading slowly

I am not sure if Persian speedwell is edible or useful in any way.  I don't really care.  I don't water it, I don't plant it, I don't collect its seed, I don't tend it, it just grows when it is time and feeds bees and other beneficial insects. 

Persian speedwell and other weeds in my spring lawn

Persian speedwell is only low growing, so when I mow the lawn I often only take a little off the top and it is able to flower not too long afterwards.

The main down side to Persian speedwell is that it is only ephemeral and not there for much of the year.

I am glad that there are little flowering weeds like this around, and I am glad that I now live in an area where things like this are able to survive.  I wish I had more little flowering lawn weeds like this.

How I Grow Saffron - it is easy

Saffron (Crocus sativus) has a beautiful flower and a lovely spice that is surprisingly easy to grow.

Saffron is expensive, both the spice as well as the corms are expensive. Saffron is really well suited to growing in the backyard and is really low maintenance. Saffron grows such a pretty flower, the flower smells nice, bees seem to like them, and the spice is lovely and so easy to collect on a small scale.

I am surprised at how few home gardeners grow saffron. More people should grow saffron at home.

I used to be told by home growers that saffron is simple to grow but difficult to get to flower. The high price and the reputation for difficulty getting a crop made me put off growing saffron for years. I eventually paid a lot of money for a handful of tiny corms and discovered that growing saffron was really easy.

I was given good advice by knowledgeable people and did lots of research when I started growing saffron. I find saffron easy to grow and it flowers well for me.

Saffron threads ready for harvesting

Saffron flowers are pretty, smell nice, and produce saffron threads

Saffron only flowers once per year, and each flower only produces 3 threads, so you want your corms to flower each year and you want multiple flowers per corm.

Although I say that each flower produces 3 threads you will notice that some smaller flowers will only produce 2 threads. From what I have seen they only do this when the plant is exhausted after they have already produced a number of flowers. It is like the plant is giving one last push to get out as many flowers as possible but it lacks the energy to make a full sized flower with 3 threads. This is nothing to worry about. An extra 2 threads is better than nothing.

Some of the biggest mistakes people make are not removing competition, and not allowing them to have enough sunlight or decent soil. Competition, either from being planted too close or from other plants nearby will deprive the plants of energy and they won’t flower.

Saffron also needs full sun to flower. If something is shading them they are in the wrong spot and may not flower for you. I grow some in pots and some in the soil, they all flower equally well. Once they have finished flowering you need to leave the plant alone, if you cut the leaves they will not capture enough sunlight to feed the corm and you won’t have flowers next year.

Saffron corms only flower when they are large enough and have enough stored energy, small corms will not flower no matter how well you look after them. Many growers measure the circumference of their corms and consider 7cm to be the minimum circumference they will reliably flower.

My 7cm corms always put out a few flowers, but I get more flowers out of my larger corms. Smaller corms can flower in future years, so look after them well and they should grow fatter and divide and you should have multiple plants flowering next year.

Some saffron grows the flower before the leaves, others grow leaves before the flowers

Saffron is as pretty as ornamental flowers - why isn't it grown more often?

I am told by people with a lot more experience in saffron than I have that in order to initiate flowering saffron needs a hot summer, a cold winter, and for the corms to be planted surprisingly deep.

The cold winter thing makes sense, a lot of flowering bulbs need cold winters in order to flower. The winter here is cold and my saffron always flowers well. I am told that unlike things like tulips that you should not put saffron corms in the fridge. Apparently they need heat while they are dormant. I am not sure if this is true as I have not experimented with it, I store them in the garage where it is hot, or I leave some in the soil over summer where it is also hot/dry, and they flower well for me.

The planting depth is really surprising to me. Normally you only plant corms and bulbs to a depth of two or three times their width, saffron corms need to go a lot deeper! Even though the corms are really small they are meant to flower best when planted 15 to 20 cm deep. I don’t know if this is true or not and I haven’t messed around with this, I plant mine at least 20 cm deep and they reliably flower well.

It seems odd to say that I have not experimented with any of this, but the people who gave me the advice really knew their stuff and through following their advice my saffron has flowered reliably. Most people I know with saffron don't have great success, while I have great success, so I keep doing what I was told would work. If it works then there is no reason for me to mess around with it.

As saffron completes its growing season it tends to divide into new corms. I am told that saffron corms can increase anywhere from 0 to about 15 new corms every year. Higher numbers sound great as it means you would have plenty of new plants, but if they divide into too many then most/all would be too small to flower. It is probably best for them to split into fewer corms and for most of them to flower the following year.

I am told that planting at 10cm results in many tiny corms and no flowers. I haven't played around with this, I plant deep and get a lot of flowers. Perhaps I should plant a couple really shallow next year to build up numbers.

Saffron - I removed the weeds before they grew too big

For some reason, maybe the depth I plant, maybe the cold winters, maybe something else entirely, mine tend to divide into 2 large corms and they both usually flower the following year. I am happy with this as I end up with two corms that are flowering size from each one that I originally planted.

Sometimes I get more and sometimes I get a few smaller ones, but for me they mostly divide into 2 flowering sized corms. This means I essentially double my saffron investment each year.

I don’t have huge amounts of space to grow things, or to be more accurate I grow huge amounts of things. For this reason I sometimes alternate growing saffron and vegetables in the same garden bed, when saffron is dormant I grow vegetables, when they die down I plant saffron.

Saffron is dormant over summer, and it likes to be dry when dormant. If you have wet summers then dig the corms up and put them somewhere safe. I just use a mesh bag in the garage away from direct sunlight. If the soil is pretty dry over summer you can leave them where they are. I dig some and I leave some, it depends if I need that space to grow something else. If you grow them in a pot of soil it is easy to keep them dry over the dormant season.

I am not sure if saffron suffers any pests or diseases, I haven’t had anything bother mine yet. While pests don’t appear to like them, beneficial insects such as honey bees appear to like saffron.

I am told that bees collect nectar as well as pollen from saffron, and I often see honey bees work the flowers early in the morning. I don’t grow much saffron so I am sure it makes very little difference to the bees, but if everyone in my street grew saffron it would make a difference to the local bees.

I grow saffron in several places in the garden, this year I also grew some saffron in a large pot. These corms grew foliage first, then flowered. Just like all the others, each corm produced multiple flowers.

The pot was filled with cheap potting mix in the top and guinea pig manure/straw underneath, these corms grew large, the largest was about 18cm circumference. I wonder how many flowers I will get from a corm this large!

Saffron starting to grow

Saffron flowers - I had already harvested the threads from the open flowers

Saffron plants gathering energy prior to going dormant - I planted 3 and you can see they have already divided

Saffron does not grow from seeds. If someone is selling saffron seeds they are a thief, keep well away from them and don't buy anything they have for sale.

Saffron is a sterile triploid that does not produce seed. Saffron does produce pollen and can (with difficulty) pollinate some of the wild ancestors, but that is a story for another time.

Saffron grows from corms, to get corms you must divide existing corms. Some varieties are evidently more potent or better than others. I am not sure how these varieties arose or what variety I have.

I am told that saffron corms with a circumference of 7cm or larger should flower. In my limited experience this appears to be true. Saffron corms are not perfectly round, they are odd shaped and have rounded parts and flat parts and various bumps, I guess this is why I am told to use circumference rather than diameter. To measure the circumference I wrap a piece of string around the corm and then measure the string.Very simple.

I sell saffron corms in Australia when they are dormant through my for sale page. I don't sell any that are less than 7cm circumference so they should flower for you. I don’t have large numbers and they reproduce slowly for me, so I never offer many for sale. If you are overseas and are sure your country will allow them in then I could also post to you. I can’t guarantee the corms that I sell will flower, but I only sell corms that are large enough to flower and in my garden would produce multiple flowers.

True potato onion seeds Australia

We have so few varieties of potato onion (Allium cepa var. aggregatum) in Australia, they used to be grown in every home garden and now they are increasingly rare. For a few years practically nowhere sold them, I am happy to say that this seems to have passed and a few places now stock potato onions to sell to home gardeners. They only appear to have one or two varieties, but it is a great start!

Potato onions are perennial vegetables that are great for permaculture gardeners and kitchen gardens. They are simple to grow, they reproduce by them selves, they return decent crops, but they are too small for my liking.

Potato onions usually don’t flower and the flowers usually won’t set seed, so there are no serious breeding efforts aimed at increasing their size. To remedy this I needed to make my plants flower and produce seed.

A few years ago my potato onions flowered and set viable seed, not many seeds but a few. It took a bit of work but I got a few seedlings from them. All of these displayed a high amount of genetic diversity and every seedling was unique and distinct from all the others.

Oddly enough my seed grown plants showed an increased propensity to flower and a good number of their seeds were viable. Breeding potato onions then became not only possible but also pretty easy.

Seed grown potato onions from the same batch display a lot of genetic diversity

Then a grower friend of mine generously gave me some potato onion seed that were descended from the rather impressive "Green Mountain" potato onions. I grew these and got some nice seedlings from them.

I allowed all my plants to open pollinate, planted a lot of genetically diverse seed, and culled hard. As I now had flowering potato onions from diverse genetics I was able to select for larger onions of different colours. I quickly made a lot of progress, I selected based on size and colour. What I didn’t do was think this through.

After a while I had large onions that did not multiply and had little storage ability, much like many onion varieties that already exist but with less storage ability. I moved house and lost the majority of these ‘potato onions’.

In hind sight I am glad that I lost them, they grew fast and were very large and looked really impressive, but they were a step backwards.

Some seed grown potato onions - highly variable

I still had some of the parent stock that can set seed, and I still had some of the Green Mountain seed that was getting old and losing viability. So I started again, but this time I am putting more thought into it.

This time I have less space and less time so progress is painfully slow, but I am taking a more strategic approach so should get a better outcome.

I still want larger onions, current potato onions are too small to be worthwhile growing and the larger size is the entire point of growing potato onions from true seed. I also want a few more colours, the current potato onions are lacking in this regard. This time I am also selecting for their ability to divide, and for their storage ability. It is these last two criteria that differentiate a regular onion from a potato onion, losing these traits just makes another variety of regular onion.

The ability to divide is one of the most important traits. The whole point of potato onions is that they are perennial and divide so you never have to bother with saving seed.

All these seeds were planted the same day, some are big and some are tiny

Allium seeds tend to have a short life and viability of seed tends to drop off rapidly after a year. Each year I produce more true potato onion seed than I can sow, and rather than waste this I thought I would offer it for sale in Australia to people who are interested. Who knows, perhaps someone will grow something amazing from this.

I plan to sell mixed true potato onion seed from the original stock as well as from the lines I am trying to develop. Some may contain genetics from the improved Green Mountain onions while some will not. This seed is produced from potato onions that divide in my garden and have reasonable storage.

Some of the parent potato onions

Various potato onions

White potato onions multiplying

This has been open pollinated, so I have no way to know what unique genetic combinations will exist. I only grow perennial onions and it may have crossed with any or none of these. This is open pollinated seed and each seedling will be genetically unique. Any plant that is perennial is a new variety and you will be able to share it around and name it as you wish.

Every seedling will be unique, some will produce large bulbs, others will produce small bulbs, and some may not bulb at all. Some will divide like mad, and others will not. Some may grow top sets but most will not. Most should be perennial but there is a small chance that some may be biennial. There should be a nice range of colours.

Potato onion flowers - should produce a lot of seed this year

Honey bees like potato onion flowers

Being open pollinated means there are no guarantees of anything other than diversity. I only collect seed from plants that have reasonable sized bulbs and divide well. Having a decent plant as the female parent increases the chances of growing something good.

As onion seed generally has a short viability I only sell seed that is less than one year old. My potato onions are flowering right now. If you are interested in true potato onion seed it will be listed on my for sale page when it is available.

Controlling cabbage white butterflies naturally - Pteromalus puparum in Australia

My daughter, much like many kids her age, loves butterflies.  Butterfly kits where they send you a chrysalis to hatch are very expensive.  Native butterflies have a hard enough time as it is so I would prefer my daughter just watch them in the garden and we didn't collect their chrysalis.

My vegetable garden, much like many organic vegetable gardens, has cabbage white butterflies.  There are canola fields less than one kilometer from my house, spilled canola seed on roadsides acts as a breeding ground for these pests, and they flutter over my fence all summer long.  I often collect pupa or caterpillars from plants and feed them to the chickens. 

I have heaps of caterpillars, and my daughter wants butterflies.  Can you guess where this is going…

I collected some cabbage white pupa and put them in a jar for my daughter.  She got to watch a few butterflies emerge.  We also caught a few adult cabbage white butterflies and put them in a little enclosure to watch them flutter around.  It was heaps of fun.

Later in the season when I collect cabbage white caterpillars off my plants I plan to give them to my daughter to grow into butterflies.  She should enjoy that.  Cabbage white butterflies are an introduced pests, so catching these is not a problem.

Everything went well and my daughter was proud of her butterfly farm.  Then something strange happened to one of the pupa.  It turned the wrong shade of brown, a small round hole appeared in its side, and a bunch of tiny pteromalid wasps emerged.  My daughter was horrified and thought they were ants.  The truth was far more horrifying when I explained it to her, they were little parasitoid wasps and had eaten the pupa from the inside. 

Pteromalus puparum photo from - https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/264352-Pteromalus-puparum

These parasitoid wasps presumably mated and laid eggs in the other pupa that were in the jar.  Eventually I had a jar full of tiny parasitoid wasps and dead hollowed out butterfly pupa.  We gladly released these wasps into my vegetable garden.

These wasps appear to be Pteromalus puparum.  They are a pupal endoparasite of several butterflies, they search out pupa and inject venom and eggs into the host.  The number of eggs they lay in a host varies depending on the size of the host.  Once the eggs hatch they eat out the host from the inside, then they pupate and emerge as adults who mate and look for more hosts in which to lay eggs.  They have been used overseas to help control numbers of cabbage white butterflies.

I am unsure when these wasps were introduced into Australia, but I am assuming it was not terribly long ago.  These tiny wasps were once sighted in VIC, WA, and northern QLD.  Many references state it was introduced in Australia but its establishment is uncertain.

Following some incredibly bad advice from Jerry Coleby Williams and Gardening Australia I planted land cress (Barbarea vulgaris) to help control cabbage white butterflies.  It didn't work.  These parasitoid wasps, however, have been proven to reduce the numbers of these butterflies and have been introduced here and several countries in an attempt to combat these pests.

This is incredibly exciting, if these parasitoid wasps can establish a background population in my area they may help to control cabbage white butterflies.  Don’t be fooled, they won’t ever eliminate these pests for me, but they should help to lower their numbers.  Lower numbers of pests means less damage to crops.

I grow everything organically.  If I spray insecticides, even organic insecticides, then these tiny wasps will be the first to die.

What size are skirret roots

Skirret (Sium sisarum) is the best root vegetable I have ever eaten.  Skirret is a perennial vegetable that is well suited to being grown at home, it is one of the best permaculture vegetables, and even though it is more delicious than any other roast vegetable you will likely never see this for sale in the markets. 

I grow skirret in Australia organically and it never has any problems.  I have seen some photos of skirret that is riddled in root knot nematodes, but mine have never shown any signs of this.

It is simple to grow skirret organically, I have written a few blog posts about how I grow skirret to help give people an idea of what to do.  I am suggesting that what I do is prefect, I am merely saying what has worked for me.  You may find better ways to grow skirret.

People often ask me how big skirret roots grow.  Skirret roots seem to grow different sizes depending on the soil, the age of the plant, the weather, how much water they receive, how much sunlight they get, competition etc.

Usually my skirret grows pretty long with a good amount that are fat enough to bother cooking.  The photos below are of my plants grown in NSW.  Skirret roots can grow longer, and they can grow shorter, but these are some that I dug up this past winter for dinner.

Skirret roots - we washed, cut, and roasted these

Skirret roots are not the fattest root vegetable in the world.  They make up for this in how great they taste, how many meals they can be used in, and the sheer number of roots that each plant can produce.

I sell skirret offsets and skirret seed through my for sale page.  I am one of the few people in Australia that sell skirret and other perennial vegetables through the post.

If you do buy from me please note that I am not selling large plants, I sell seed or offsets.  Larger plants tend to suffer transplant shock and need a lot of water and some shade to recover, offsets are usually planted so their leaf tips are just below the soil surface.

While offsets are small they transplant well, they grow fast, they flower and provide seed in autumn, and their sweet white roots are ready to harvest in winter.

Typical skirret offset - note how tiny they are

Skirret plant, this is what a tiny offset grows into in one year

Skirret offsets are around this small, sometimes a bit larger

Buckwheat

I have often considered growing buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), but never got around to it until recently.  I enjoyed growing buckwheat, I saved a little seed, and I plan to grow it again.

Buckwheat seed is eaten by people, animals can eat the leaves, it apparently grows well in soils lacking fertility, people grow it as a cover crop to increase soil organic matter and biological activity, and bee keepers overseas often rave about buckwheat.

This year has been another dry year, so I decided to plant some things to help my bees leading into winter and decided to add buckwheat in the mix.

I know what you are thinking, growing a few square meters of flowers won’t make a lot of difference. That is true, it won’t make a huge amount of difference, but making a little difference may be the difference between starvation and having my hive just making it through. Feeding sugar syrup is good, feeding sugar syrup plus planting extra flowers is better.

Buckwheat starting to flower

There was not much time before frosts came so I needed something that grows fast. I have heard that buckwheat can flower in as little as four weeks. That sounds unrealistically fast, but I thought I would give it a go. I had a few garden beds that would be empty until spring, I planned to dig compost and manures through them in winter, so they were perfect for autumn planted buckwheat. I am told that buckwheat produces large amounts of both nectar and pollen. My bees need both of those. As my hive was pretty close to the buckwheat, and the next nearest hive was about a kilometer away, my bees should collect the vast majority of the resources.

I planted some buckwheat seeds, I wasn’t sure what density would provide the largest nectar yield, perhaps spacing them too close would make them grow slower and have less flowers overall, perhaps planting them close would mean the same number of flowers per plant and more nectar per square meter. I don’t know, so in one bed I planted them thickly, and in the other they were planted further apart.

The more dense planting appeared to provide more flowers overall and oddly enough more flowers per plant.

Buckwheat cotyledons low planting density

Buckwheat cotyledons high planting density

The seeds germinated in a day or two, which was faster than expected, the cotyledons were odd shaped little things. Then they started to grow true leaves, these were heart shaped and look similar to fish mint. At first I stressed that my fish mint somehow invaded these two beds, smelling the leaves quickly dispelled my fears. There was no doubt, this was certainly not fish mint.

I keep hearing how fast buckwheat grows, and how quickly they flower, but mine didn’t look like they had done much after germinating. Two weeks after sowing seeds most plants only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were not very tall. Then I looked closer, even though they only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were only about 2 inches tall they also had flower buds! How can such tiny plants have flower buds forming? How remarkable.

Apparently they begin flowering when still tiny, and continue to flower as they grow. This is perfect for my bees as it means they had extra resources to forage on leading up to winter. Not only will they have extra resources, no one else is growing buckwheat nearby so it increased the diversity in their food. I have no proof of this but I think giving bees diversity in food helps the colony stay strong.

Buckwheat with heart shaped leaves

The frosts killed the plants before they got a chance to set seed much, so this crop was mostly for the bees and as a green manure to feed the soil. Next time I will try to plant earlier so I can also save more seed and will never have to buy seed again.

White flowered buckwheat

Light pink flowered buckwheat

Mixed colour buckwheat flowering

My buckwheat grew a mix of white, pink, and red flowers. Most of the flowers were white, but I prefer the pink and red ones. The pink or red flowered buckwheat tended to have red stems while the white flowered ones had green stems.

I only saved seed from the darker pink to red plants. I would love to stabilise a variety of pink or red flowering buckwheat, but to do that I would prefer to save seed from a lot more plants.

Pink flowered buckwheat producing seed

White flowered buckwheat producing seed

For now I don't sell buckwheat seeds, perhaps one day I will have stabilized a pink flowering buckwheat variety and will sell seeds from them. Or maybe I will sell mixed buckwheat seed that has a high percentage of pink flowering types. If I ever do sell buckwheat seeds they will be listed on my for sale page.