Turning the Houselights Up High
(Plumeria • House)
The transition from fall to winter means many things here at the One Acre Ranch, not the least of which is the placing of plumeria seedlings under artificial lighting in what during the rest of the year is a rather substandard portion of our old house referred to as the Jethro Room.
Older plumeria are a breeze to take care of in the winter: You can deny them light, water and all but enough heat to keep them from freezing. you can even store them stacked up on top of one another, because the plants go dormant like so many sticks, until longer, warmer spring days wake them up.
But plumeria seedlings or new cuttings less than a year old should if possible be provided with a bright, warm winter location to prevent dormancy.
As we have yet to build our first greenhouse, the above fact provided quite the challenge, considering we grew somewhere in the neighborhood of 275 plumerias from seeds this year.
So it was that I purchased a heavy-duty indoor plant lighting system, consisting of a switchable 1,000-watt remote ballast, Yield Master II reflector, with glass, the better to hold either a 1,000-watt metal halide bulb (currently installed) or, closer to spring flowering time, a 1,000-watt high-pressure sulfur bulb. Plus several feet of aluminum duct tubing with a fan at the end, which I’ve attached to one end of the reflector so as to provide ventilation around the tremendously hot metal halide bulb. The ballast gets quite hot, too – as hot as a stove top after several hours.
On the minus side, the set-up adds about as much to our electricity bill as two large color TV sets going 16 hours a day. On the plus side, the plumeria plants have been growing much as if they still were spending the day outside in the summer sunshine. On the minus side, they grew so big and bushy so fast that the overcrowding allowed for a pesky little creature called the six-spotted spider mite to gain a foothold on our crop.
On the plus side, I now know how to control spider mites with horticultural oil at about a 1.5% solution. I also know how long it takes to spray the tops and bottoms of all the leaves on about 275 plumeria plants: A long time.
Actually, I ended up culling the plumeria herd of the 50 or so plants that had been growing least rapidly and appeared to be most affected by the spider mites. This was also necessary to give the rest of the plants more growing room.
It seemed a shame to toss out 50 seedlings, originating as they had from mostly somewhat hard-to-find Thai plumeria varieties that showed a lot of promise. So I used them as the foot soldiers in the Great Cold-hardy Plumeria Experiment. They are now in an outside plant nursery area along a south-facing garage wall fairly well protected from the wind. We’ve had a brief freeze and plenty of near-freezing weather already and, surprisingly, only three or four of the outdoor seedlings have given up the ghost. I fully expect all of them to die, however, if even one survives the winter unprotected and then goes on to grow well in the spring, it will mark a breakthrough in a personal quest to develop varieties of this plant that can more easily be enjoyed by people in colder climates.
Meanwhile, I present the above photo (click on it for a bigger version) along with a shout-out to the fine members of the Fort Bend County Narcotics Task Force. Call it pre-emptive information and allow me to explain:
About a week ago, in my role as reporter for the local online news publication FortBendNow, I found that Task Force agents had discovered a hydroponic plant-growing operation complete with a heavy-duty lighting system somewhat similar to my own. Only in this case neighbors apparently had alerted them to the fact that a somewhat well-known rapper called Tow Down was growing big, potent marijuana plants with the system. So the drug agents busted his ass.
Considering I can see the Fort Bend County Jail from the back window of the upstairs plumeria nursery, and neighbors no doubt wonder what’s up with all the light spilling out the windows all the time, I thought it might be prudent to satisfy everyone’s curiosity, especially to satisfy them that the vegetation growing up here is not intoxicating, but rather tropical and floral.
The profit margin may not be as high for plumeria as for pot, but at least I’ll remain free to pick spider mites off the leaves, as opposed to hanging sadly behind the bars with Mr. Down.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 16, 2008, 06 46 pm
Plumeria busts it’s sweet ass! Cop to it, you have an insatiable appetite to protect sweet flowers!!!!
— Kat_Princess Jan 6, 05:57 pm #
---------------------
