Nutrients? Check!

Just finished the liquid nutrients!!! It looks absolutely disgusting, but I am pretty convinced it should work.

Wouldn't you love to eat nothing but this for three weeks?

So I used the recipe I listed in my first post. I had found a 20-20-20 fertilizer (a ratio of Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium, the major nutrients needed by plants), so I diluted it by 1/2. Otherwise everything was the same. I improvised with measuring, because I didn't have 1/8th cups, so it was a bit of a guessing game. Otherwise though, it looks good to go!

The materials I used: (Front row, left to right) Jack's Classic 20-20-20 Fertilizer, measuring cups, One A Day Women's Multivitamin, Inositol, measuring cup, measuring spoons. (Back row, left to right) 1 gallon distilled water with 1/16 teaspoon of fertilizer, pure distilled water, Domino cane sugar.

In other news, I finally bought my pressure cooker. It's a six-quart model from Walmart. It was steeper than I imagined at $35, but well worth it. Just look at that quality aluminum! I will be using this to sterilize the nutrient liquid once I add it to the jars and thicken it.

When I was at Walmart, the guy behind me in line told me that he hated aluminum pressure cookers because they always leak. Not exactly the best encouragement.

How will I thicken it? Good question! I also bought some corn starch today, and intend to play around with it. I don't know how much will make a good gel, just that I should add it to the mix, heat it so it dissolves, and then distribute to the jars.

I kind of feel like getting away from procedure now. I am really excited to list my plant as a cultivar (by definition: a race or variety of plants that has been selected intentionally and maintained in cultivation) if I can reproduce it. I emailed the International Carnivorous Plant Society for some input on how to go about registering it. I'm not sure if I made this process very clear in my first blog post, but I've done some more reading to understand propagation.

Basically, there are two ways a plant reproduces, either by sexual (with another plant) or asexual (without another plant) means. Sexual reproduction will never result in very similar plants, because two plants are exchanging traits. Asexual reproduction can occur either by the regeneration of some plant tissue (This is what tissue culture aims to do. By cutting off a part of a plant and forcing it to grow back, you get an exact clone of the original.) or by self pollination of a flower. But self pollination is tricky. Apparently, some genes that may be hidden in the parent can be revealed again when a plant pollinates itself. Essentially, the seeds aren't exact copies, even though they were formed by one plant. Because my unique sundew can't be cloned by regrowing leaves (except under the controlled conditions of tissue culture) the process of maintaining its traits is really difficult. If the ICPS does not allow me to multiply my plant with self pollinated seeds, than this tissue culture attempt is really my only hope at registering my own plant.

So no pressure.