During a recent spell during which I couldn't take normal care of my plants I've killed my fifth seedling.
Over the last few years I've bought four of these, from two different vendors, in 4" pots, with sphagnum or a sphagnum/bark mix, and two leaves each. Each looked healthy, but not amazingly so, on arrival. Not one had beautiful roots. I kept them in my humid, warm sunroom and tried not to let them dry out. Each did dry out completely at one time or another, but in each case that happened months before it died.
The first three never made any attempt to grow a new leaf, nor new roots, despite monthly treatment with KelpMax. I kept them moist and fertilized as I fertilized my other Phals.
The next plant was a $5 bare-root plant from Ecuagenera. I was willing to spend $5 extra with a larger order, and see what happened. It arrived with only one root, broken at the base of the plant. I put it in a humid, moist container on top of sphagnum moss and sprayed with KelpMax, but it never grew. It took about 9 months to wither away. I recommend people not buy a bare-root Phal. gigantea from Ecuagenera. Of course they never responded to my E-mails.
The last plant arrived last fall. Because my sunroom regularly falls to 60 F / 15C I overwintered it in a large vase with a heater underneath and a cover. It dropped one of its two leaves, then began making a new leaf in midwinter. When the sunroom was good and humid I moved it there. The new leaf continued slowly growing. I was out of town for almost a week this spring. When I returned the container was almost but not quite dry. The new leaf never grew after that. Recently for a 3-week period I was only able to care for my plants about once a week. On the second visit I found the plant with moist medium, but leafless and dead. This plant never made new roots during the time I owned it. As I mentioned, not one of these five plants made any new roots.
I'm not sure what the problem is. Can drying out once be fatal for these, even in very warm and humid environment? Can it take months for them to die after drying out? Why has none of five plants ever grown a new root? Are some strains of this plant easier to grow in cultivation? Could fertilization have anything to do with it?
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