| This section of the web site reviews each year of our adventure, with details not found in other sections of the site -- things like plant and flower numbers, successes and failures, big and small things we've learned. It also discusses things we want to do, things we want to know, things we speculate about. It is sequential, often with questions raised one year answered the next. We don't go back and rewrite. | |
 Little 'Longwood Hybrid' New Year's Day 2008 |
Our Adventure With Victoria 2007 We have learned that amazonica benefits from a head start approaching the warm season in order to reach adult size in synch with cruziana. Since both species are harder to grow than the primary hybrids, we tend to keep any extras around. We stall them in small pots with limited fertilizer. See Stalling Young Victorias |
| In 2007 we had some late spring plants of amazonica and cruziana that were candidates for stalling. The space we have available to do this is "Sun", a dune pool we heat in the cooler months to several degrees above other water temperature. | ||
 V. 'Longwood Hybrid' in Sun 1/1/08 |
We had to evict several hybrids to make room for the species, which created another experiment: to see if small 'Adventures' could make it in an adjacent unheated pond, in both 3" and 6" (8 cm and 15 cm) pots. One that we kept in Sun was a little 'Longwood Hybrid' that now approaches two years old and has provided us with 18 flowers, only in fall and winter. |
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By late fall, all of the stalled plants were suffering from overgrowth but the timing was wrong to repot them. As it turned cold, the 'Adventures' in smaller pots succumbed first, then those in the larger pots, then several amazonicas. The rest hung on. In February 2008, the overgrowth was so dire we had to repot. Repotting stalled Victorias > |
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 V. 'Longwood Hybrid' out of its pot |
The little Longwood was entirely out of its 8" (20 cm) pot, relying on roots growing into the bottom for anchoring. Several cruzianas were also somewhat sideways. After trimming off as much of the old rhizomes as possible, all were put back into the same pots with fresh peat and sand. Will they make it? That answer will have to wait for our 2008 Adventure. | |
 V. cruziana with overgrown rhizome |
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| But it raises another question. If the cruzianas do make it and are grown out, will they achieve the same size as younger plants? Based on only two previous examples, we don't think so. We think cruziana is "programmed" for rapid growth and won't do as well if that is interrupted, as in being stalled for a year. | ||