QuestionI saw that in the care sheets for the cobra plant, that you can use water with ice cubes in it to cool the plant during the hot days, or even put ice cubes into the standing water.
Will cooling the water this way also work for top watering the heliamphora and cephalotus, or the small amount of standing water with the cephalotus, and the standing water in a african violet pot?
AnswerHi John,
We're in the process of updating our growing instructions for Darlingtonia. Earlier we held the belief that Darlingtonia need cool roots. This turned out to be inaccurate. What they really needed was aerated soil and cool nights, so we're backing off from our recommendations about using ice cubes. Ice cubes are still helpful, but there are other methods that are more reliable to maintain healthy roots.
The information is a bit extensive to relay in this format, but suffice to say that simply top watering your plants daily will produce better results than watering with ice cubes.
Heliamphora is a bit of a different creature because it comes from a tropical area where it never freezes and it rarely goes above 75癋. Ice cubes will only cool the roots, but the trick is to also keep the upper portions of the plant cool. In this case, automatic misters to simulate fog and clouds might be necessary if you live in a very warm climate.
The care for Cephalotus is similar to Darlingtonia. Because Cephalotus is a smaller plant, you can actually keep it in an African violet pot. We've had a plant in such a pot for a number of years. Of course, top watering isn't possible with this type of pot, but the pot itself served a purpose of keeping the soil at a consistent level of dampness.
With all three plants, the key is always cool nights, daily top watering and well drained soil.
Good growing!
Jacob Farin
