Growing avocado in water - Mid September 2015

I have started growing avocado pit in water a few months back. They had sprouted and grown quite well for a few months and lately something happened.

The pit started to turn colour and I guessed they are rotting and drying up. It has not affected the growth of the seedlings and I'm not sure whether the pits are needed for further growth. The seedlings that are grown in soil after the initial germination in water had the pits still intact. Only one seedling in the soil has half of the pit turning colour. I tried to search in the internet for information on the pit turning colour and rotting but did not get any meaningful answers.

I will try to document in the blog on the colour change and possible rotting of the pits.

The pits were still in their usual colour even when the seedlings had grown to about one feet. I'm not sure whether it is due to the air-conditioning that the plants have been subjected to since the haze has come to Singapore. The seedlings were kept inside the room with the air-conditioning turned on for a few weeks already. I hope this is not the reason.

Avocado growing in water

Avocado growing in water

Avocado pit rotting

Pit rotting and drying up

I tried to move one of the small seedling to the living room where it was not subjected to air-conditioning at night. Only one half of the pit has turned colour and dried up. The other half is still in it's usual colour.

Avocado growing in water

There are new roots appearing even when one half of the pit has dried up. I think it is going to survive. I'm thinking of transferring the seedling to a pot with soil soon. But I'm still thinking whether I can still keep it in water.

Avocado moved to living room to avoid air-con

The below pit has the tallest seedling but the pit has turned colour and possible rotting. There is no abnormality in the root system and I hope that even without the pit, the seedling can continue to grow. I'm also not thinking of transferring it to a pot with soil soon. I will monitor this for a couple of months. So, now it is mid September 2015. I will update the status in mid October. Stay tuned!

Avocado pit rotting

The root system still looks ok. There are more branching on the roots and I have changed the water regularly every week. Currently, I have moved the seedling to a room without air-conditioning at night to see whether there is any effect on the seedling.

I will need to prune the seedling too. I hope the pruning will not affect its health. The rotting of the pit may have been stressful to the seedling and the pruning may add further stress.

Avocado root system in water

Mushrooms growing at Goodview Garden

I Yesterday morning, I walked past the garden and found some mushrooms among the small little plants. The little plants were newly planted and maybe some spores might had landed on the new soil and the conditions were right for the mushrooms to grow. I wonder what kind of mushrooms are these and whether they are edible.

 

Mushrooms

 

Mushrooms

Mushrooms

When I past by again in the late evening, the mushrooms had withered. I think that the conditions were optimum in the morning for the mushrooms to grow but as the temperature got higher and surrounding became warmer, the conditions were not good for the mushrooms to survive.

Mushrooms have withered

The next morning, new mushrooms start to appear among the little plants. Those edible mushrooms that I have seen will probably last a week. I think either the conditions were not right or they are not edible. Anyone has information on these mushrooms?

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