As I write I'm just getting together a couple of videos, maybe more if it goes well... Allegedly AI can knock the videos up for you, at the moment it seems to be taking an age just to link for basic videos together, we'll see as I'm sceptical as to how good AI is.
Anyway that aside things have gone well, possibly due to the fact that it's been one of the hottest, dryest and sunniest springs ever and the early summer up to the first week in July was very good too. Since then, it's been more like a normal UK summer and July's statistically are quite rainy.
The Big News___________________________________________________________________
It looks like I've figured a way of getting better results out of the plants. I watched a video featuring a bloke in Florida and he advocated the following...
The plants go through distinct growing phases that can be repeated throughout the year several times if the climate conditions allow for it. Anecdotally, I think mine flower between 3-4 times a year.
The phases are...
(1). Post Bract stage - when the bracts either fall off or you can brush them off, at this point they almost look dead.
(2). The Green stage.
(3). The Bract stage - when they're in full bloom as such.
(1). Post Bract stage; The Bracts have stopped growing and developing and they start to drop. The plant seems to have larger fully grown leaves but not many of them and like the Bracts, they're spent and fall off easily. *Note I'm writing this on July 30th and my best plant is at this stage. This is how it looked this afternoon before I did any work to it...
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| Plant 2 |
Note the lack of green leaves.
Then looking at the plant I noticed initially that the Bracts if touched fell off readily and once they were all off, I then noted the fact that the mature fully grown leaves were in pretty much same state. So, everything was removed...
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| Plant 2 |
The same plant 5 minutes later.
What I'll do now is feed and water this plant to encourage new growth, you can see that among the Bracts, this was already starting to happen. I've also cut back the secondary stem, getting rid of any hard wood back to the green wood. I've fed it using "Empathy After Plant" Bio-active plant food for Ericaceous plants, along with some fish, blood and bone and
seaweed. Dependent on how warm it gets, I'll probably water this plant once a week unless it rains. The soil drains well and the majority of the water escapes from the pot in a matter of minutes, so I make sure it gets a good soaking. These plants survive in arid conditions where they go without water for long periods and then get soaked by torrential downpours.
(2). The Green stage;
Hopefully and theoretically, (Ive seen this indoors over the winter) the plant will produce lots of green leaves and start to grow over the next 3-5 weeks taking us into early Sept. The plant at this stage will develop good vigorous growth and will start to potentially make it's way if trained across the wall, which is the longer term goal. (No more feeding, just water). But to promote a high volume of bracts, what you do is cut back your new growth 3-4 shoots along from the end and in doing so the plant then splits into 2 new stems instead of one. Once these new 'Doubled up stems' are established you implent the next phase...
(3). The Bract stage;
What you do now is stop watering the plant and put it under stress. You allow the earth to dry out to the point where the plant wilts and then water it the next day. The plant responds to being stressed like this, by producing the bracts, once the bracts are established, you then return to watering normally.
That's the theory.
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| Plant 3 |
Here's another of my other plants. No.3 here with potentially 2 plants in the same pot as the plants seem to be at different stages.
You can see one seems to be in Bract phase and the other in the growing phase. I'm cutting the longer growth back a couple of leaves/nodes in a few days.
I'll put a link in here to the videos I've shot today which show all of the plants as they are as of July 30th.
At the moment the AI video thing is still goin on in the background, but I'm not optimistic, so it may be a few days before I post the links.
