NEPENTHES NANOVIV #1
Nepenthes NanoViv (1st tube)
Inspired by the wonderful miniature orchid displays by Mikael from Sweden that he calls "nanovivs", and years later by the beautiful craftworks by Shaun from Oregon, I chose to build one on my own, with my Nepenthes ampullaria 'Harlekin' as the solitary plant.
Like Shaun, I used a Makrolon foil (polycarbonate) for my first tube, in 1mm thickness and 50x100cm size, and bended it with a 2cm overlap to a cylinder. I fixed the overlap with some magnets and glued it together with Dichloromethane, that I applied via a syringe and a needle to one side of the seam. It will find its way - only problem is not to spill the highly fluid liquid around -it will leave ugly spots on the foil that are hard to remove afterwards...
As container I chose a big piece of bark, cut it into equal halves and glued them together as a kind of trunk. In the middle I placed a Xaxim branch, and fixed it crosswise with two metal rods through the Xaxim, glued to the bark with silicon. Under the bottom I fixed a plastic grid to keep the soil in but let the water drain freely. No idea why, but my attempts so often have this Star Wars appearance...
Soil is about equal amounts of dead long fibred Sphagnum, bark and low decomposed peat. I topped the surface with some live Sphagnum, seems as if some Drosera adelae found their way in with it ;) it makes a great companion plant. The whole trunk sits in a glass bowl, keeping it in an ebb-and-flood style watering regime.
The lighting
Light is my key factor to cultivation success - there will be a chapter coming about what I've learned, so I'll keep it short here.
I use five High CRI LED panels, 9 Watt each. The modules are standing on screws as spacers, on a glass plate that is fixed to the tube with magnets. Later I made a cutout into the glass plate of about 10 percent for better ventilation.
So, that's it - I found it a quite aesthetic, compact and very low-maintenance solution, standing in my bathroom with a bit additional sun in the summer afternoons, getting watered only weekly to monthly but otherwise self-supporting. See the gallery to follow how this thing developed over the months.