Re: wilting snapdragons

"Sean A. O'Hara" wrote:
> 
> At 02:09 AM 4/11/2002, L Schmiege wrote:
> >Something is happening to my Snapdragons.  They are full of buds and
> >suddenly the top of the plants wilts as if it can't get any moisture.
> 
> Lorraine -
> 
> I am not sure about the specific problem there in Greece, but I sometimes
> notice a similar symptom locally here in California.  My observation seems
> to show this more in plants that are bedded out from 4-inch pots where the
> soil is often a loose, peat-based mix. 

Hi Sean
I have become totally disillusioned with peat in any capacity. Sure, it
can be persuaded to take up a lot of water by approprite soaking, but it
doesn't seem to be very good at _staying_ wet. I remember when it was
recommended here to bed plants like Azalias in plenty of moist peat, but
having several times seen distressed plants and on investigation
discovered the peat around their roots had become bone dry, I gave up
this idea.

Peat was also popular here for a while as a mulch, especially for
Ericaceae, but in our dry windy climate soon became dessicated and so
light it simply blows away. Many good organic mulches such as pine
needles are free or cheap for most of us and more likely to stay put any
day.

The next craze was for putting transplants in peat pots or even in
little "buns " of compressed peat which were soaked to make them swell
before planting a seed in each. The idea in each case was one did not
need to remove the seedling for planting but put the plant in the ground
pot and all.

The first problem with the moulded pots was that if one left any part of
the pot edge above the soil it acted as a wick and ferociously dried out
the plant and all its close neighbourhood. This was partly solved by
recommending one to break off the edge and so bury the whole pot below
ground level. With this modification the plant remained moist most
times, but often had a great deal of bother breaking through the
compressed peat with its roots and sometimes just gave up the struggle.

As to the peat "buns", in my one experiment of using them for starting
off primrose seedlings there was no move at all for roots to grow out of
the tiny centre dollop of soil into the peat, and as the poor prims
became more and more miserable I just had to rescue them and put them
instead into pots of proper soil where the majority recovered and
developed normally.

Not much later the fad for soilless composts got under way and the first
synthetic planting media on our local market were all peat based. I
never bought or made such composts myself, but of course they are
obviously  very handy commercially and soon all potted plants one could
get were grown in peat-based media. When buying such potted plants, to
begin with I would leave them in the medium they came in  and found from
my point of view two major disadvantages. The first was that if the
potmix became more than slightly dry, watering its surface was simply a
waste of time as it was as wettable as a duck's back. The only practical
method of rewetting was to dunk the pot in a sink of (preferably
lukewarm) water and leave it for some considerable time.
The other thing I found a nuisence was the fact that there is no
inherent food value in the ingredients, so all the necessary food must
be provided as an extra. With many commercial pots this seemed to run
out all too quickly and then one was faced with the urgent task of
topping it up.

To cut a long story short, it soon became my regular custom to almost
immediatly repot each plant I bought into a much more convenient and
more easily  manageable soil-based medium. 

Interestingly, peat-based mixes rapidly became much less common here in
the trade, being replaced by ground pine bark (a by-product of our
timber trade- which I suspect was largely substituted as a cost-cutting
measure). However in my (limited) experience bark-based composts are at
least less liable to excessive and rapid dessication than those based
on  peat and would have slighly more nutritive value maybe.

The vast majority of the potting mixes sold to the local public here
these days have a bark base, but I have long given up buying them, 
making up my own potting soils from mainly my own finished compost
lightened with pumice and sand, using a recipe I modified from
information in Organic Gardening several years aince.

As to your occasional wilting problems with peat-grown seedlings, I
presume this is due either to a tendency of the stuff around the little
roots to dry out easily or an inhibitory effect on their extension into
the surrounding soil (or maybe a bit of both)

 Often, snaps will reseed themselves
> moderately, even in waste places of the most difficult type.  These
> self-seeded plants do not seem to share the wilting symptom of their
> coddled garden cousins. 

I should say the main reasons are no damage or check to root growth and
no chance of any inhibition on spread. Soil grown transplants should be
almost as good, as should seedlings produced on the spot.

I have found one disadvantage of self-seedling among snaps is the motly
offspring one often gets. Dwarf varieties produce tall children and no
means always in the colours one expects. Often I have found a
preponderance of a dark rather purplish red which I presume is a
throwback to some ancestoral form.

In nature I have the idea they have a habit like wallflowers of often
growing happily in cracks in rocks or old walls.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan
Wainuiomata - at the
Southern tip of North Island, NZ, Lat 41°15'S, Long 174°58'E
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