>>The one question I have is what
about humidity in the house?
>>Wouldn't growing plants in water greatly increase the
humidity?
>> (which is not good for wood, drywall, metals that tend to
rust)
>> MJ
Without
the soil an additional onus on the setup is to replace the soil's function of
support. This generally involves using vases that have rather narrow
openings at the top. I would expect that this combined with the fact that
the water is still means that the water aspect doesn't increase humidity very
much. Its should be similar to having bunches of flowers in water
vases. A single aquarium would have more effect as would the current
fashion of floating candles in bowls of water.
I'm not
sure of the effect of the plants themselves. I expect that plants would
evaporate water when hot. It may even be that they would do this more if
they have plenty of water but I haven't seen any evidence of this and would
expect it to be similar whether in water or in soil. At home I
have heating powered by natural gas and a problem with this is that it tends to
dry the air. In this case a bit of evaporation from the plants would be an
advantage.
>>Question: Re: cleansing roots prior to
changing from terrestrial to aqua media
>> have you used detergents, fungicides,
alcohol, or chlorine etc to sanitize them?
At
present I am just using water but I try to thoroughly clean the roots. The
nurseries here tend to use soil that is easy to remove. Some of the these
sanitizing methods may well improve the percentage of plants that succeed.
If I found plants that did get root rot unexpectedly and were cheap enough to
have further tries I would probably have a go at using
fungicides.
>>Incidentally
some Spaths grow luxuriantly when entire pots are plunged
>>into water,
other forms, mostly common more matt leaved cultivars in
>>exactly the same
composts rot, rot, rot. Why?
>> Every
Syngonium stem cutting with or without adventitious roots
>> develops
"water roots" presumably with aerenchyma & often the
>> adventitious roots grow lateral root
systems.
>> It would
be interesting to know the histology of the various stages
>> of their
root growth & adaptation.
Ron,
I would like to know
the names of those species that you know worked easily and those that you know
didn't.
I would be interested to know if those forms
of spaths that get rot, rot, rot when emersed while in pots with compost etc
would still get root rot if the roots where cleaned, trimmed and then simply
emersed in water without a pot, soil or compost being
involved. I suspect that its similar to
Dieffenbachia (Dumb Cane) which
often get mentioned as a plant that can be grown in water and yet in
soil is always described as being very easy to get root rot if the soil is
too wet.
Incidentally, many mentions of the use of spaths in
water seem to indicate that it needs to be tied to the top of the container so
that the crown of the roots or at least any non root part remains out of the
water. I expect that many other plants are similar in this respect but
which it is needed on and which it isn't is something I have to find out.
Whenever a plant has a definite crown to the root it is safer to either keep it
above the water line or allow the water line to go down so that it is above the
water line most of the time.
>>in ponds in a "soup" of healthily fed
ornamental fish
I'm
also interested in the use of fish but for my concepts to work with other people
it would require that the paludarium to be self sustaining.
Paludariums are normally defined as aquariums that have a land section but it
seems to include the concept of having terrestrial plants growing out of the
water as giving a land section even if there is no actually land. You
don't even need fish in it to call it a paludarium.
Looking after fish is normally a lot of work
(feeding, cleaning etc) and requires a bit of knowledge to keep them
healthy. Most people with aquariums can't have holidays trips without
getting someone else to look after them.
As
mentioned, there are algae eating aquarium fish but I believe that you would
need a very big aquarium and a lot of plants before you could support one small
fish in a self-sustaining environment. (I would love to get figures on
just how large it would need to be).
One
problem with most of these algae eating fish is that each type of fish likes to
eat, or will only eat, one particular type of algae. Different types of
fish eat different types of algae. Apparently, when you get algae you
often get quite a few different types of algae.
While
I am writing this, I'm looking at a spider plant (Chlorophytum Comosum) growing
very successfully in water here at work. I haven't changed the water in
over 6 months and the glass jar is quite green. Its just algae to
me. I can't tell the difference in types.
Regards
Ken
Dawber
Melbourne Australia
ph 0409
790 802
Best
Email: ken@mira.net
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