Grow-A-Long — Ping-A-Ling

This may be a post on what not to do, or more of an experiment of a ping’s will to live:
I told my son about this project the other day and explained what we’d be doing. With all the exuberance of a small child, he had no patience to wait (either for any of you, or even for me) and got started without my knowledge while I was making dinner.

We already had some chunks of lava rock, sourced ages from an aquarium store for this purpose. I came upon him with the largest rock and a nice piece of bark we’d found in the woods. Both had been soaked and rinsed months ago and left in the cupboard since.

He was painting them green. Water colours and not acrylics, if that counts for anything.

Then he shoved in some random bits of leftover moss we’d collected for a mossarium he built. The moss at least had already been soaked for 30min to get rid of any bugs. He’d decorated the plastic container with more bits of bark, moss, and some yellow flowers he’d ripped off a weed the day before. I could hardly quash his enthusiasm at this point, so I went with it and added a couple of ping leaves that had come off my esseriana and mystery gigantea while dividing them.

I did try to sort of rinse off as much of the paint as possible, but I couldn’t sanitize it and the paint is still apparent in some spots.

To be clear: I don’t think this is at all ideal. I had intended to deepen the holes in the rock a smidge to add in some peat and vermicompost as well as actual sphagnum moss. I haven’t had time to prepare a space for it, so the rock is currently grow light “adjacent” rather than under a light. The conditions are not ideal for propagation as it’s near a large window in a room that is unheated at night and I can’t increase humidity because it’s too big to just put a baggie over it. I don’t think the paint will help matters ;)

But now I think we’ll just see what happens, lol! We'll mist daily to keep the rock moist. CPs have adapted to survive in harsh conditions so let’s see how they fare against the enthusiasm of a small child…

I have more lava rock and intend to do more with the ping-a-ling. If the ping leaves on the current one don’t take, we’ll clean it and start over with that, too.

Oh, and the bug jar in the back is housing a tiny beetle that courageously survived the moss soaking.
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An update: both ping pullings did really well, putting out new baby growth, until they didn’t. Over the course of a few days, one set of babies just sort of shrunk and disappeared (this from the mystery gigantea). I suspect they didn’t love the daily misting. Since it was the ping closest to the water, I think it was also quite damp.

The rock does not draw up as much water at the top, hence why I was misting. I’ve stopped misting and only keep water in the bottom now, and occasionally trickle a bit over the top. I’ll probably switch out the moss to sphagnum at some point as I’ve looked it up and it’s a type that prefers shade and it’s looking drier without the daily misting.

But one few new development from this random moss from my neighborhood is what look like baby mushroooms, so I might keep those and see how they do!

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I bought "pumice rocks" from 2 different places. The first rock came from Understory Enterprises

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I don't think this is actual pumice but possibly fossilized sponge. Comes in a variety of sizes, sold by the pound, heavy rock.
The next rocks came from Northern Geckos
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Sold in 3 different sizes, all these ones float. I think the smallest size will work good for this project :) Both Canadian companies.
 
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