In this post I will talk about how I grow Heliamphora's, also known as Sun Pitchers.
Heliamphora are carnivorous plants which originate from high on the humid tepui mountaintops.
Heli's like cool, bright and humid conditions as found on the tepuis of Guiana Highlands and their surrounding uplands in South America.
I try to replicate those conditions in my grow rack.
My collection lives inside a modified storage rack, under LED growlights and active cooling.
This is all controlled by a raspberry pi to keep the envirnomental conditions in the optimal range.
The ligthingfixtures in use are from the Austrian manufacturer Sanlight. I use 2 fixtures from the type Q4WL S2.1 in combination with Sanlight M-Dimm dimmer.
The magnetic dimmer can dim the growlights in 4 steps (between 100%, 80%, 60% and 40%). In my setup the lights are dimmed 60%.
Choosing for LED growlights helps to keep temperature easier to control. Under these lights the plants color up nicely as you can see in the pictures below.
The lights come on and off on a calculated sunrise and sunset from the Guiana Highlands.
Heliamphora do not like high temperatures at all. They can survive high temperatures as long as relative humidity is kept high (>85%).
I keep my Heliamphora's during summer in a temperature range of 24°C during daytime. At night the temperature drops to 13-14°C. These temperatures are achieved trough my active cooling system.
During winter day temp hoovers around 15°C and nighttime temperature can go as low as 8°C.
Temperature is monitored with a SHT-31 sensor from sensiron, connected to the "brains" of my setup. The sensor itself is enclosed in a weatherproof housing.
Below you can see a picture of the formentioned sensor.
To keep relative humidity high I make use of an ultrasonic humidifier. This device creates a cold fog and is piped in to the growrack throug PVC piping.
Relative humidity is monitored trough the same SHT-31 sensor used for measuring temperature.
To give te plants the nighttime temperature drop and prevent the daytime temperture to never exceed 24°C, my setup is equipped with a watercooler.
The watercooler is an industrial cooler normaly used for cooling a CO2 laser. Inside the growrack I 've mounted a radiator intended for watercooling a PC. I 've modified the cooler and hooked it up to a relay controlled by the raspberry pi.
My media mix consists out LFS (long fibered sphagnum), horticultural perlite, a bit peatmos and smal orchidbark. All of this is then topped of with live sphagnum moss.
This mix allows for exelent drainage and stays moist but not soaking wet.
The plants get watered with rainwater (conductivity of max. 58µS) or with reverse osmosis water (conductivity of max. 18 µS). The most of the time I use rainwater.
I fertilize my Heliamphora's with RAIN MIX®. This is an all seasons orchid fertiliser and has been especially developped for use with rainwater, RO water or soft city water.
The ratio's (NPK) are: (11,8N + 2,7P2O5 + 13,7K2O + 11,8CaO + 3,5MgO + 4,8SO3) completed with neccesary trace elements like Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, B, Mo and Co.
I prepare a solution with a max. conductivity of 250 µS and fertilize with every watering. The conductivity varies with every watering never exceeding the max conductivity of 250 µS.
On top of the fertilizer the plants also get dried bloodworms/other dried insects once a month.
In the table below you 'll find and overview of all the different Heli's I have in my collection. If there are plants available then the number per species is shown in the field "Aantal te koop/ruil".
The listed price is only for the plants and excluding shipping costs! If you are interested in one of the plants listed below you can send me email and I am sure we can arrange something.
I 'll try to update the list as frequent as possible. You can always contact me for the most up to date status of plants available for sale/trade.
Plants on my wishlist are listed below my growlist.