Arisaema disappearing
Anita Roselle (Mon, 27 Mar 2017 15:57:33 PDT)

Uli,

If I had paid more attention to this property when I moved and started the
garden, I would have made most of my growing areas raised and incorporated
a lot more compost and GRAVEL before planting anything. I had never heard
of mixing gravel in a planting bed. I moved from SE Pennsylvania where I
had the kind of soil that is perfect woodland duff.
Now I have the clay, a lot of rain and less than perfect drainage. It is
almost impossible to start over, I have been trying to get the drainage
better a little at a time.

The A. sikokianum died rather quickly, it wasn't poor drainage, it just
never grew at all and died. I never had anything react the way they did,
they never took off or thrived just rapidly went down hill, they were on a
slope where lots of other plants are doing will. I have about 45 of them in
2" pots right now, some up about 4", perhaps the best thing to do is put
them in several large pots and enjoy them that way.
It is so frustrating to see them thriving at my friends house and not at
mine, it's a mystery

When you store them in their pots, have you repotted then in the fall or do
you do that in the spring before they wake up? I have seed from our seed
offering and I don't know if I should start it now or wait till fall so
they will germinate next spring?

Thank you for your input, I appreciate it.

Anita R.

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 4:40 PM, Johannes Ulrich Urban <
johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de> wrote:

Hello Anita,

Your difficulty with disappearing Arisaema sikokianum seems quite
amazing. Myself I have never managed to grow it beyond seedling stage and
have given up on it. The growing conditions you describe sound perfect, I
imagine the soil you prepared this way as a deep rich loose and humusy
soil. Is there nobody out there who has seen this plant in the wild? Does
it not want that kind of soil?
I looked it up in my Arisaema book by Gusman: They describe it as easily
grown but short lived (!) and recommend a raised bed with ample drainage
and a soil of sandy peat accompanied by small rhododendrons. Otherwise they
state the tubers will rot from winter wet. (I do not know where they
garden) That sounds to be the most likely explanation of your problem.
What also strikes me is the fact that you are very successful with it in
pots. So why don't you grow it on in pots to flowering size?
All of my Arisaemas are potted. A. candidissimum and A. fargesii are also
growing in the open garden. But when it comes to pamper small offsets to
flowering size pot culture is far better than open garden culture. This
experience was confirmed by a friend who runs a small bulb nursery. Both of
us cannot explain this.
There is of course a certain inconvenience in pot culture. But don't we
all do a lot for our treasures?
For substrate in my pots I use my own garden compost from the compost
pile with some general fertilizer added. All my pots are attached to an
automatic watering system in summer so that they never dry out. Excellent
results with A. tortuosum and different forms of A. consanguineum beside
the two mentioned above. They are repotted every year into fresh compost.
The dormant tubers are stored totally dry in their pots in their compost in
my cellar.
I would not bare root them now because you said they have already broken
dormancy, this would cause considerable if not fatal root disturbance.

Hope that helps

Uli

_______________________________________________

pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/