Last winter I tried overwintering a Red Caribbean Habenaro plant without success. This year I tried a different approach and need some advice. I have two Reapers and another Red Caribbean that I brought in and the question concerns one of the Reapers.
First a little history on these two plants. I foolishly took the advice of a local nursery on the soil in the beginning of the season, then after researching a bit more, experimented with one of the plants. I amended the soil of one plant with Kelp meal, stone dust, Perlite, worm castings, Azos, and Mykos. This plant took off like crazy, but I believe it had to much nitrogen and never produced one pod during the growing season. It did flower like crazy and produced one pod just as the season ended. The other plant only grew about half the size but eventually got a bunch of pods late in the season.
When I brought them in for the winter, I cut the larger plant back to about 15 leaves and left it alone. The smaller plant had a bunch of pods left so I left it alone to see if they would ripen. They are in the basement with insulation board under the pots to block a little of the cold from the cement floor. I'm going to say the temp where they are stays about mid 60's. They get full morning sun and for the hell of it, I supplemented that with a 70MH with a completely wrong spectrum (20K) from one of my old aquariums. Surprisingly, it seems to be working out pretty well so far. I did have a bout with Aphids which put a hurt on both the Reapers which I hadn't noticed until things got pretty bad. The cut back plant lost almost all of it's leaves while the other had a lot of damage to the leaves, but they didn't fall off. The aphids were defeated.
The smaller plant has shown no sign of any growth while the larger plant which was cut back has a lot of new growth. This is the cut back plant with it's new growth.
And finally for my question, should I do anything with this plant, or leave it alone and wait until I put them back out in the spring?
l]
[/URL
Thanks for any advise.
First a little history on these two plants. I foolishly took the advice of a local nursery on the soil in the beginning of the season, then after researching a bit more, experimented with one of the plants. I amended the soil of one plant with Kelp meal, stone dust, Perlite, worm castings, Azos, and Mykos. This plant took off like crazy, but I believe it had to much nitrogen and never produced one pod during the growing season. It did flower like crazy and produced one pod just as the season ended. The other plant only grew about half the size but eventually got a bunch of pods late in the season.
When I brought them in for the winter, I cut the larger plant back to about 15 leaves and left it alone. The smaller plant had a bunch of pods left so I left it alone to see if they would ripen. They are in the basement with insulation board under the pots to block a little of the cold from the cement floor. I'm going to say the temp where they are stays about mid 60's. They get full morning sun and for the hell of it, I supplemented that with a 70MH with a completely wrong spectrum (20K) from one of my old aquariums. Surprisingly, it seems to be working out pretty well so far. I did have a bout with Aphids which put a hurt on both the Reapers which I hadn't noticed until things got pretty bad. The cut back plant lost almost all of it's leaves while the other had a lot of damage to the leaves, but they didn't fall off. The aphids were defeated.
The smaller plant has shown no sign of any growth while the larger plant which was cut back has a lot of new growth. This is the cut back plant with it's new growth.
And finally for my question, should I do anything with this plant, or leave it alone and wait until I put them back out in the spring?
l]
Thanks for any advise.
