Sunday, June 6, 2010

Complete reverse of last time

No dead leaves so far besides what the plant arrived with, plus I've witnessed several new leaves start and become fully formed and green. I never got any growth with the last plant, so this is a definite improvement. I'm also trying an air layering technique by Arjibuh of miracletaste.com with one of the lower branches. It still looks pretty sparse, but if it continues to grow new leaves that shouldn't be a problem.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Got my plant!

It arrived! Hooray! A little later than I expected but still in good shape. The plant definitely had less leaves than my first one, but about twice as thick a stem. There were a few dead leaves but nothing too bad... Something interesting I noticed is that the leaves had a much different texture than my first plant... Maybe from being in high humidity?

I also saw that some roots were trying to leave the bottom of the pot! It IS a pretty small container, but I'm not sure if I should transplant it just yet. I didn't find any flower buds and I'm not sure why. My first plant definitely had some when I got it and it was about half as old.

I got four stakes and stuck them in the soil and put a plant humidity bag over the whole thing, being careful that the leaves didn't touch the sides. I have a little tray with pebbles and water in the bag next to the plant to try and up the humidity a little more. It's by an east window with a T8 4ft cool light fluorescent about eight inches above it, and I also have a fluorescent compact rig I can put next to it if It's not enough.

Plant in its packaging


Unpacked!


In its new home, hopefully for more than a few months!


As comparison, this is my previous plant.


I was wondering if anyone could help me with this... A few leaves had these round circles, and it kind of looks like a disease. Does anyone know what they are?

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

update

The larger miracle fruit plant has lost all but two (two!) of its leaves. It's in 100% humidity right now. I'm trying to revive it, but I don't give it very good odds. I have one seedling left and it has about eight leaves and a pretty thick stem. It's currently in a bottle terrarium.

I want to start over growing a larger plant, this time not shipped halfway across the world. I just ordered one from Mark of black river nursery. Looking back, I really didn't follow the common growing instructions. It often got cold, I couldn't provide high humidity, didn't get enough light, and the PH was too high. I'm better equipped now. I have plant humidity bags, a grow light setup, ph tester and sulfur granules, and a small plant heating pad.

I'm determined to do better this time.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

It has been freed.

Today, finally, after six months I freed my larger plant from its plastic bag. Since I've gotten it, it has lost about 50% of its foliage and shown pretty much no improvement. In the hopes that this will help it, I've cut away the bag and will just spray the leaves several times a day.

Interestingly, when I picked up the pot the roots were trying to climb out of the bottom of the pot. When I first planted it, the root ball filled about a third of the pot. That's quite a bit of root growth for zero foliage growth. Maybe that's where all its energy went?