This isn't a "First Bloom" pic, but it is the first that I actually got a picture of. It's now getting to the point where I have trouble remembering just which ones I have shot & posted, and which I haven't. Same with fertilizing, too! (For that, I'm going to develope a system.)
Grown in an 18oz cup, here is Ostara:
First, about the ghostlylooking hand in the pic. In order to get the angle I wanted and to keep the flower in the shade so the sun wouldn't wash out the color, I was holding the stem of the flower about six inches or so below the surface.
Second, and more important, is how the flower looks. This picture does NOT do the variety justice. Nothing is wrong with the plant, except that as others have noted elsewhere, plants grown in very small containers will often produce pads and blooms that simply do not reach the full potential of the plant. That is perfectly OK when you are doing this to enhance tuber production, or just trying to keep the plant small for a smaller pond or container garden. But you cannot expect the plant to perform it's best when doing this.
To get the most out of them, usually the larger container the better, and that container needs to be in a pond that provides the surface area to match the plant's tendency to spread.
So, depending upon your goals and what you have available, it's always going to be a compromise in one direction or another.
What I'll have to do, is to grow some of them out in larger pots and fewer of them in each pond, to be able to show the plant doing what it is capable of. Othes will be grown in containers as small as 8oz's, for production. A bit of a strain, but that is what I'll have to do in order to produce the plants in quantity, and to also be able to show the plants at their potential. I will only post pictures of plants that I have grown myself. Either here, or on my web site. For me, it's a question of ethics.
Nothing wrong with posting pics from various sources, so long as it is made clear, nothing at all! But since I'll be going "commercial" next year, hopefully, I want to accurately represent what I'll be selling.
Mike S.
Spring Hill, FL
