I need a new pot for my Japanese maple bonsai. I’m going to the Winter Bonsai Expo in Kannapolis on Sunday. So, I can pick one up there.
I could have gotten an identical one in Florence at the Pee Dee Farmers’ Market in May. But, I didn’t. I hadn’t come expecting to find bonsai supplies and I was dithering because there was a lot. And at that point it had only lost a chip on the side. So, I just decided to wait. Now, the pot is kind of crumbling. It’s still enough together that the trees are OK. But, that won’t last forever. I went outside to take a picture to show you and when I lifted it up the bottom stayed where it was. So, it’s really crumbling and critical that I get them a new pot.
I have carnivorous plant pot dilemmas, too. The Drosera binata is in the little plastic pot I bought it in and it’s still very small. I think it can stay there for a while. But, it’s not particularly attractive. It needs to keep its feet wet and I have it sitting in a milk glass dish that was given to my parents as a wedding present.
(That dish is its own dilemma. It’s kind of a weird shape and I have never known how to use it. When my mother gave it to me, it had a frog in the bottom. So, I guess she used it as a flower vase. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t know of anything else to do with it.)
And.
I would like to add a Sarracenia pupurea to my carnivores. It can live in the water garden with the Sarracenia psittacina I already have.
My other Sarracenia are happy in their bowl on a table. I keep their feet wet, there, too. I think one is probably ‘Judith Hindle’. It may be a hybrid. There’s a little one with it that’s flourishing. But, its leaves never have gotten big since I got it. It did so well this summer, I was able to give a piece to a friend. I have no clue what variety it might be.
The purpurea has a different way of consuming insects than the others and I like the look of it. Its mouth is open to catch rain and drowns its food. Insects get trapped by the hoods of the other two types.
None of them can go in terra cotta. So, I have to be particular about their pots. I can put them in terra cotta if I have it lined with plastic. And I can use glazed pots.
I have a large, whitish, glazed-everywhere pot similar to the one the nepenthes is in that I could use for the purpurea. It’s about the same size as the blue one with the psittacina is in.
I have a pretty, medium sized pot that is terra cotta inside. It would have to have a liner to put the binata in it. I could get a small one like the one holding the nepenthes (and eventually purpurea). But, it would need a deeper tray to keep it’s feet wet and it has a tray attached. The purpurea will get set down in the water garden deeply enough that it won’t be a problem.
So.
- I have to buy a bonsai pot this weekend.
- When I’m in SC for ArtFields, I can pick up a purpurea and, while I’m there, get a bag of peat-and-perlite mix to plant it in the other pot because I do not have enough to fill that thing up.
- And the binata can stay as it is for now.
I have a PLN1.
- Feegle for “plan.” ↩︎
I am the Audience 