Long Re Victoriae-reginae mssgs answer

Hi!

Ken, I never fertilize. I repot, a bit more easy than usual, leaving
most of the old earth at the roots). All my plants, which are outside
from end March till end October, have worms in their (plastic) pots. I
dont put them there, they just get in. And I "feed" the worms by
watering from time to time with water in which pear and beech leaves
have rotted away and by putting crumbled leaves on top of the soil.
(Plastic pots are much better; black so they take more heat from the
sun, and the plastic avoids nuture to sediment at the pots side, where
in clay pots the water, transporting the nuture elements, evaporates.
Which also causes mayor root damage when repotting because the roots in
a clay pot tend to adhere to the nuturious clay.)
And its not a growth effect because the old one I have, always shows
this and the new one had no winter rest since it came from a very
commercial nursery (Geeling, the Dutch "Agave Specialist"; see
http://www.agavespecialist.nl ).
Nor re-hydration because I have not yet started watering much more then
they had water in the winter since the weather is grey and dirty (the
plants stand outside, in full sun if any, but protected, most of them,
against rain).
I must say I am very proud of how good my agaves grow; see the pic of my
VR (plant D0 at Fotki); the two shorter leaves in center background were
top leaves about 18 months before the pic was taken, believe it or not.
(I moved then, and something fell on that plant and the spines broke
off.)
As a matter of fact I started an experiment some weeks ago, because I
cannot get good clay here. The clay I can get is the kind that becomes a
stone when dried out. I use pot plant earth of very good quality, mixed
with coarse sand, and I have to use a lot of sand because otherwise the
soil will not take water anymore when completely dry. Its too peaty for
that and its of course meant for house plants that get water about every
three days. So I took reasonably hardy seedlings (sown January;
asperrima, celsii, cupreata, deserti simplex and striata rubra) of about
the same size and put them in pots with A] the normal mixture, B] with
crumbled clay added and C] with small clay lumps added. To see what
happens. And its a double experiment too because I have three sets; one
is watered with tap water (which is quite good here; Ph 5.9), one with
rain water from a concrete container (Ph 6.3) and one with water from a
medieval well, of which the lining is built with peat "bricks" (Ph 5.6).

Tom, Ill send a pic as soon as I have bought a new camera, in about two
weeks.
Its a shame I dont have one but the mere thought I have to go trough the
manual of the new (digital) camera makes me very tired. I have Asperger,
a kind of autism, and these things make me run amok.
And I didnt buy one earlier because someone promised several times to
come and take pics but never showed up.

Breck: the problem with Fotki is that it doesnt accept long file names.
"victoriae_reginae-minima-q-1" is too long (q for question mark for the
name). But generally it does accept long album names. So
http://fotki.com/maarten/v/victoriae_reginae-minima/ might work.
But anyway you always can go to http://fotki.com/maarten/ and scroll to
vr minima in the list at the left. Or go to http://fotki.com/maarten/v/
and end up with a list of albums on the right side, ranging from
vanbalenii till vizcainoensis. (I cant check all the links because I am
at a very rustic line and mostly off line because of that.
http://fotki.com/maarten/ always works.)
When in near future I will apply the new nomenclature also to the Fotki
site, I hope at the same time to do something about the file names.
victoriae_reginae-minima should of course be victoriae-reginae_minima,
but when I started the site I didnt use Photoshop yet, but some software
that didnt accept "_", while Fotki changed " " in "". Hope I made my
point...
And yes its extensive; 1100 agave pics...

Weather is even dirtier today than it was; yesterday they killed a
politician here...

Thanks to all, regards,

Maarten

-- 

"When two reasons are given, generally there is a third one"
Aert Kuipers

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