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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

Just to update, the Ilex vomitoria looks to be doing fine and appears to have grown a fair amount since the photo.

I tried a strong cup of the tea yesterday from some leaves I got elsewhere. Flavor is pleasant enough and it does have a caffeine kick.

I guess I'm set if there were to be a coffee shortage.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

Is that purple color from one of those 90 watt ufo led grow lights? How well do those things work?

I bought one a couple years ago which had half of it's leds stop functioning after a few hours of use, and it's fan is very noisy so I had to return it, and never got to see how well they really worked. The leds were probably damaged during shipping, but now I simply put plants by the windows which is enough to overwinter my houseplants.

If I get enough houseplants that require lots of light to overwinter, I'm leaning towards 400 watt metal halides or hps systems as I've found that flourescents only aid in vegetative growth, and I don't know much about the leds.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

The purple color is due to the Sylvania Gro-Lux fluorescent lights which seem to work pretty well.

I don't know about the 90 watt ufo led grow lights, but I did try out some of the smaller 14 Watt LED grow lights. Of the five I bought, one still works and one intermittently sorta works. I have saved the nonworking ones with a plan to fix them in my nonexistent spare time.

A weird idea just occured to me, considering the cost of the LED grow lights it might be cheaper to get a large screen LED TV, mount it above the plants and have it display an image of whatever LED grow light system you wanted. Thinking about it I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

You can play some kind of bamboo documentary on it. But please, do not show them the pandas. Horror movie.

Yes, it occured to me that we could see what sort of movies will get the best bamboo growth.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

I was thinking that if you were to show documentaries about pandas or gophers then perhaps the bamboo would start running

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God Bless,

Matthew

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Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.

I am getting down to the last of the leaves I was given, mostly small little pieces of leaves left. Which resulted in the tea ball being more packed with leaves than normal. Very tasty, but WOW did it have a caffeine kick!

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

Foxd you mentioned trying to reproduce Y-holly. You do know there are male and female Plants? Most you can find at nursery's are female for the berrys.
Might try making some of the tea myself (It is considered a weed here).
MarCat

Yes, if I was reproducing them from seed I would need male & female plants. However I was thinking more in terms of rooting cuttings or potting up suckers. I might experiment with male and female plants later depending on whether it is hardy here or not.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

Yea they are pretty good at producing suckers around here, still they are a nice evergreen tree/bush.
MarCat

I'd love to try about a thousand seeds and select for the hardiest seedlings to try and establish it here.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

It started out with one branch, but more and more of the branches on the Ilex vomitoria are producing flowers. No idea if it is a male or female.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

The Yaupon Holly is a staple of central Texas landscaping...dwarf and regular. It is everywhere..a top ten in commercial planting. It lines driveways, makes hedges..When the females are in full berry, it looks amazing. It does have two sexes- and to get fruit, you have to have both in relative proximity- but that is rarely an issue.

Never knew it could be brewed- thanks for the education, sorry it's not psychotropic..

I now have a second Ilex vomitoria giving me a 50/50 chance of having both a male and female.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."