PBS Forum

It probably only works in English, but -

NPK - shoots, roots, fruits (fruits can only be formed after flowering).

I like to start growth with just water, then a high nitrogen once started for just one or two waterings, then high potash for a couple of waterings during growth, then a low nitrogen as they go dormant - Chempak 2, 4 and 8.

Exceptions (not bulbs) - Proteacae, whch dislike nitrate, so really need urea as a source of nitrogen, and citrus, which do far, far better using commercial specialist citrus fertilsers.

Many thanks all.
I very vaguely remember using the bunch of stamens in tweezers method, but on what and when, with what degree of success................. I had certainly forgotten all about that, so my OP contains a white lie.

Early this year, I had numerous L. a. in flower over a couple of weeks so just used the brush every few days between as many flowers that "appeared ready" as I could be bothered with. I did not check for pollen on the brush or receptiveness. It was curiosity as much as anything as the very few Lachenalia that I had previously, had never set seed, but I did expect at least a few seeds.........

I wil pay more attention this next time around (they are around 5-10mm above the top-dressing currently).

Lachenalia are indeed easy from leaf cuttings, as are Eucomis, or the very few that I have tried are.

Ledebourias - I had two L. luteola in flower at the same time and one appeared to have a partial seed-set after just wiping one spike over the other a few times, but we then had a week or so of scorching weather (35+C in the greenhouse even with a fan running - it was (very) high 20's outdoors), and any seeds that had formed, perished.

I have searched, but cannot find....................

I have never bothered to try previously, with any plant (unless shaking some Philadelphus flowers from one plant, against flowers on another, counts), but last year I decided to try on some Lachenalia aloides (pollinated by a vaiety of creatures in habitat but particularly sunbirds); not one seed was set.
I used a reasonably large, fine-bristled paint brush several times, pushing the brush as far inside the flower as reasonably possible.
I suppose that it is possible that the whole potful is just one clone that has offset innumerable times over years in cultivation in the UK.

So, what are the rules?

Spider repellant? I doubt that there is such a thing. If there was, somebody would have made a very large fortune from selling it, given the number of people that are spider-dislikers, and worse.................

The optical denisty of the webs is probably not great, despite what you see, as defraction makes the webs look white, rather being close to transparent, which they are.

In good weather, your natural light levels may well be far in excess of what plants need, so loss from "shading" by the webs may well be irrelevant.

The healthy human eye can see perfectly well between something like 10 lux and well over 100,000 lux because we have an iris, so what we "see" in our brains, after processing by our software and our irises, is a long way from how the world really is.

If curious enough, buy a cheap lux meter - $20-30 - and experiment.

Quote from: Bern on August 27, 2023, 03:37:15 PMI'm surprised as to its apparent lack of availability. It might have been a passing fad a few years back.  Perhaps it is just too difficult to keep going.

If the few comments that exist online are correct, it would only ever survive long term in the UK as a greenhouse plant and what appears to be a huge tuber would demand a very large pot, which would make it a plant only for a specialist that fell in love with it, probably as an oddity, or as something challenging to grow.

I would suggest droping Nhu Nguyen an email as the photo's are his.

I have not searched in this case, but in the past I have successfully searched for local seed suppliers in S America, who may not have a list online that Google can search, if any online list at all.

I have no idea how helpful he may be, but you could try a mail to Dr P Christian at Rare Plants UK as he seems to have a near endless knowledge of anything with bulbs, corms, rhizomes or tubers.

There is mention online, which I cannot find now, that the genus has synonyms, so trying to find those and searching may be useful.

Peonia seeds are a good example of growth requiring more than one stimulus/trigger.

In the open, peony seeds germinate the spring after they ripen and produce just a root. In the second spring after riepening, they produce their first leaf.
This can be shortened to one year by placing the seeds with roots into a refrigerator for 4? 5? 6? months (someone here will remember), which is enough to "tell" the seed that it has been through a second winter. A shorter period in the cool does not work.
They require temperature and time as triggers.

In the one or two examples that I have seen explained in research papers, the bulb contains a growth-inhibitor that is generated during growth, and which breaks-down slowly after the bulb goes dormant, so acts as a clock/calendar.

Many bulbs use fire as a trigger for growth and/or flowering (or at least the products of combustion - at least one active chemical from smoke has reasonably recently been discovered).

Lots of seeds certainly require light before they germinate and may remain dormant for tens, perhaps hundreds of years if in the dark - poppies are a good example and are the reason why, in Europe, the field poppy is associated with (the end of) war, especially the end of WW1, when poppies covered the battlefields in France and Belgium after the guns fell silent - the soil had been "ploughed" to great depths by shelling, bringing the old and ancient seeds to the surface.

Horses for courses again.

Don't forget that some bulbs have deciduous roots, some perennial, another factor. As for the trigger - there will be data posted online somewhere, but I suspect that the great majority of bulbs use more than one trigger for regrowth and/or going dormant.
Certainly some bulbs use chemical compounds in their flesh that act as clocks - the bulb may have to be over or below a certain temperature for so many days before cooling or rising temperature triggers growth - this is why simply changing temperature artificially seldom triggers an immediate response. Once the time has passed, and temperatures are dropping or rising, there is then the question of water being available, or not.

For instance, Lachenalia here make leaf growth while still totally dry, and they have deciduous roots. It will be time and changing temperature that triggers them, probably nothing else.

As for moisture during dormancy - same again - desert species may require to be near or totally dry, lots of spring bulbs are unaffected by moisture during dormancy.

Quote from: David Pilling on August 24, 2023, 10:55:35 AMGoogle says there are only 50 years of oil left,

This comes up time after time and when you get to ask people who actually know what they are talking about, this figure is based on obscure science linked to known deposits.

Real estimates totally dwarf that.

Stone was never part of 90++++% of everyday life. Materials derived from natural gas and crude oil are very much so today.

Quote from: MarcR on August 24, 2023, 06:33:46 AMI don't think any sane person wants to ban extraction!

As I said above - lots in the UK do. We had major protests here to stop the issue of futher exploration permits for new oil and gas.

If you are suggesting that they are all insane, I would dispute that - they are massively ill and under-informed and naive on a scale that defies belief. But not insane.

Where does Ms Thunberg stand on this? I strongly suspect that she is as astonishly, mind-numbingly naive as the rest of them.

Most bulb/corm/rhizome seedling are no great size at a year, lots never make any size even when flowering size, and a few of the biggies romp away within 12 months.

Horses for courses.

Unless any are exceedingly closely packed, I would leave them as they are, and even closely packed ones are probably best just "dropped" into a larger pot rather than actually separating and transplanting them.

Quote from: Robert_Parks on August 20, 2023, 06:28:40 PMI don't think anyone is seriously pushing the end of oil extraction

Some lunatic groups in the UK are - "Just Stop Oil" for one.

Quote from: David Pilling on August 19, 2023, 04:03:31 PMthey get out more than goes in because the volume expands.

It is like the school chemistry lesson "trick" - mix 100ml of water with 100ml of meths - you don't get 200ml, you get less.

I suspect that the 30% figure includes natural gas as well, and a lot of that goes for fertiliser manufacture - as a source of H in NH3, but how much as a %.........

Bottom line - if we stop extracting oil and gas, the world would cease to exist in any form even remotely similar to what we know now.
Imagine, no PVC for electrical insulation - imagine how much tropical jungle would have to be felled to return to rubber insulation - current production is around 14-15 milion tonnes per year produced on 10 million hectares (100,000 square km), PVC is 50-60 million tonnes and is used for pipes for every conceivable use, as well as electrical insulation.

Quote from: David Pilling on August 19, 2023, 06:37:33 AMI did not think they produced stuff they didn't particularly require.

I have never worked in a refinery, but suspect that something close to 100% of what goes in, comes out as one product or another. Even the residues after distillation are things like bitumen, or what is called petroleum coke, the latter commonly being burnt in coal-fired power stations.

An interesting article -  it claims to be a typical analysis of a US refinery, but it seems to be high on the % destined to be fuel - the general figure that I have seen previously stated was that around 30% of world crude production was used for non-fuel uses.

Refining crude oil - inputs and outputs - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Quote from: David Pilling on August 18, 2023, 03:57:37 AMThe other interesting thing I heard is that diesel/jet fuel/petrol(gasoline?) are produced together. If they replace all the petrol powered cars with electric vehicles, all that happens is there's a lot of cheap petrol to sell to countries with fewer evs.

How had you previously imagined that fuels were produced?
In fact, refineries tend to specialise and to that end use particular types or blends of crude, so that fractional distillation produces a particular mix of fractions - give or take not much they end up with X% of, for instance, Jet A1, Y% diesel, and Z% petrol, day in, day out.

The very small refinery not far from where I used to live specialised in aviation spirit production and produced rather little petrol, which was down to what crude they processed as much as their process.

If the UK went 100% EV tomorrow, or any time even remotely soon, the country would grind to a halt faster than PDQ. Just to replace all petrol consumption would require a generating capacity in the UK of approx. double the current installed capacity. (The figures will be online somewhere, but 2022 saw low output from solar and wind - the UK was unusually overcast and still all year.)