Pitcher Plant Repotting into DIY Hanging Pot

For many months, I have planted the pitcher plant in a glass container and left it outside on the window sill. It was growing well but recently due to the hot weather, the pitcher plant starts to dry up and turn brown. The pitcher plant still grows new leaves but the browning of leaves are at a faster pace than the new growth.

It is annoying to see this and I'm thinking of bringing the pitcher plant into the room and want to hang it on the window grills. I have done a DIY container before and wanted to make another one for this pitcher plant.

Today is a good day to repot the pitcher plant.

Pitcher Plant with dried leaves

I have some dried sphagnum moss that I bought last year. I took out some and soaked them into the water. Oops, I forgot to use distilled water and had used tap water instead. My mistake. You must remember that the pitcher plant needs distilled water instead of tap water. I think the minerals and chemicals in the tap water are damaging to the pitcher plant. I put the sphagnum moss into the container and pressed them firmly. But before I do this, I had punctured 9 holes in the plastic cap of the bottle. This will allow for drainage of excess water. Using my fingers, I had cleared an opening in the middle of the sphagnum moss for the pitcher plant.

DIY Hanging Pot

I removed the pitcher plant from the old container. I removed the excess soil from the roots and using a cutter to cut away all the dried leaves.

Removing the Pitcher Plant from the pot

I placed the pitcher plant into the centre hole and covered the top with more sphagnum moss. The repotting is done and I used some ropes to secure the container and made it into a hanging pot.

Trimmed away the dried leaves

Mission accomplished! DIY Hanging Pot

Pruned the avocado seedlings growing in water

I saw in one blog that when the avocado seedling had grown to about 6 to 7 inches, you would need to cut it the stem to 3 inches. This would allow the roots to grow well and develop strong and thicker stem. Well, I'm going to try this. I have pruned the seedlings which I have grown in water. One seedling was pruned with about 3 leaves left. Another seedling had its stem trimmed down with no leave on the stem. I'm going to see whether it will grow better or not.

Avocado seedling #1 (growing in water)

Avocado seedling #1 with 3 leaves left

Avocado seedling #2

Avocado seedling #2 - no leaves left

Growing Lychee from seed

Just bought some Lychee fruits from the supermarket. They were very green and yet sweet. Suddenly, I had an idea to plant some Lychee seeds. I saw that I had a container with dying nerve plants. I was not sure why the nerve plants had dried up because I had tried to water it but I think it was too late. Anyway, I was wondering what I should do to the container with soil. I removed the dead plants and loosened the soil.



Recycled pot

I selected two seeds to put into the soil. Some seeds have weird shapes and I don't think it will make any difference. The seeds were quite small and the fruits were quite big in size. This means that it has more flesh which is good.

 

Lychee seeds

I dug two holes for the seeds. I think the correct way is to place the seeds horizontally in the holes. It should not be in a vertical position, maybe I'm wronged but I think this is the right way. After that, I covered the seeds with some soils. I think the seeds are just 5mm below the soil. I water just a little bit to wet the soil.

 

Planting seeds into the soil

Covered the seeds with soil

 

Tillandsia Ionantha Air Plant Propagation

I bought one air plant, Tillandsia Ionantha one year ago. It had flowered about 5 times and produced about four new buds. After that, it has never bloomed, only once it had failed to bloom properly. You will know when there will be a bloom when the leaves turn purple or red.

I had propagated the air plant by carefully separating buds from the main plant. You will be tempted to remove many leaves and my advice is to stop doing this. Just remove the leaves that are brown or rotten. Keep the base of the bud dry. When you are done removing the unwanted leaves, place the bud onto a plastic water opening. See the photo below. I have cut the plastic bottles into halves and used the opening as a holder. In this way, when you spray water mist onto the leaves, the base of the plant will dry quickly. The base of the plant and the leaves must dry within four hours to remain healthy.

Yes, you need to water the air plants. A lot of people, including people who sell air plants, did not know that air plants need to be watered regularly. However, you need to keep the air flow moving around the plant to avoid accumulation of stagnant water. Stagnant water in contact with the air plant will harm it. I used an air spray to spray water directly onto the leaves. If you have forgotten to water or away on long holidays, you may want to soak the whole air plant into water for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, you need to remove the air plant from the water and shake the plant to remove excess water. Keep the plant ventilated to dry the water within 4 hours. Avoid doing this at night because the plant needs to breathe too. The three buds below were very tiny half a year ago, now they have grown bigger. 



Air plant buds

Pitcher Plant

I have managed to propagate my pitcher plant and now I have two pitcher plants. One plant is grown in a glass container and the other one is in a plastic bottle that I had D.I.Y. by myself. I have placed peat moss and perlite in a mixing ratio of 1:1. Then I added sphagnum moss on the top. I had cut a stem with about 3 leaves and then coated the cut base with rooting powder. I put the stem into the peat moss + perlite mix and kept the mix moist. I had covered the whole bottle and plant with a bag to keep it moist and high humidity. After a month, you will see new growth.

Pitcher Plant

When the pitcher plant is small, the pitcher cup is also small. I have hung the pitcher plant near the window and it is catching the western sun for a couple of hours. I think maybe it is not getting enough sunlight as the pitcher cups have dried up. I try to give the pitcher plant distilled water everyday. The excess water will be drained away at the bottom of the bottle. 

Besides water, you will need to feed the pitcher plant with small insects. The pitcher plant gets its nutrients from small insects that get trapped inside the pitfall traps. As the pitcher plant is mostly kept indoors, there are not many insects that can crawl into the traps. So, I assisted the pitcher plant by putting insects into the traps. Here is the trap with insects in it. I think I have placed a dead insect into the trap and ants may have been attracted by the dead insects and fell into the trap.

Insects in the pitfall trap

Avocado leaf tips turning brown

Recently, I noticed that my 2nd and 3rd avocado plants have leaf tips turning brown. It started from the tip of the leaves and slowly moved towards the stalk. Small patches on the leaves also turned brown. It occurred on all the old leaves as new leaves start to emerge from the pruned area.

Leaf tip turning brown

Leaf turning brown

It could be due to salt accumulation and under watering. I water the plants every three days and maybe it needs another watering in between. See SG My Life Is Good blog on the avocado seedlings.

I did a research on the internet and found that it could be due to the two reasons that I have mentioned above. One way to remedy this is to flush the salt away from the soil by pouring water over the soil continuously until water comes out from the bottom of the pot. I poured about 1.5litres of overnight water over the soil and ensured that the water drained completely from the pot. I don't think that it is due to the sunlight because the plants are placed near the window but there is no direct sunlight. There are no strong winds except when I switch on the ceiling fan to the strongest and it can be quite strong. However, I don't think this is the reason but maybe due to the winds generated from the ceiling fan, the water in the pot dries up quickly. The browning of the leaf tip may be due to insufficient watering. I plan to water more frequently, so I'm going to water the plants every two days instead of three days. I may plan to place the plants under direct sunlight to see whether this will give better results but I doubt so. Since 2nd and 3rd avocado plants have leaf tip turning brown problem, I will take the 2nd plant and place it under direct sunlight in the weekend to see whether the browning slows down or stops completely.

New bud growing from base of avocado leaf

New buds are growing out from the bases of the avocado leaves. It has been one month since I pruned the avocado seedlings. The cut area has healed nicely and the seedlings are doing well. I rotate the pots occasionally to let the leaves expose to the indirect sunlight. See my other post on the leaves bent towards the sunlight.

The third seedling is growing faster than the second seedling. I can see the leaflets forming distinctly in the third seedling. The leaves are not drooping and straighten up. I will need to do more research on how to prune the new buds. Maybe I will prune it when there are 3 leaves and snip away the tip when the time is right. Stay tuned to see the progress of growing avocado plant indoor.

New bud from 3rd seedling

New bud from 2nd seedling