Transcript:
Hello and welcome to series. Capades my name is John in the previous episode? We discussed an entire episode’s worth of watering topics if you missed it. I would highly recommend watching it. Watching that episode is not required fully understand this episode, but it would help they are related, but the videos are self-contained, so there’s no need to panic in this episode. We’re going to talk about dormancy in. Suffern plants in in gardening dormancy refers to when a plant enters a state of little or no metabolic activity. This is in response to unfavorable growing conditions, such as extreme temperatures throughout not enough light and other extreme weather conditions to put it simply when succulents are dormant, they enter a state of no growth or little growth until favorable conditions return. Unfortunately, favorable is subjective. This varies across genera and a lot of times, even between species in the same genus, for instance. I find that the Echeverria I avoid ease elegance and a few others. They break out of their winter dormancy, a lot earlier than the other plants, especially particularly the Giba flora hybrids. So right, now we are approaching the end of summer. It looks like the give you floors are now just looking up flower stores. What’s the significance of that? You’ll find out later in this episode, and you know what? I think the FAQ format. The peeve’s episode worked really well in terms of exposing or going through a lot of knowledge in such a short time so. I’m going to do that again in this end. So what is dormancy well? I gave you a short version a couple minutes ago. Dormancy is basically what we refer to the period or the state of slow growth. This is basically the plant’s reaction to unfavorable conditions. I know that we are talking about succulents here. But Dormice is more obvious in plants in temperate climates, for instance, deciduous trees. They started at research shed of their leaves during autumn or fall and roll them back in spring. We also see this in seeds, so as long as they’re doing nothing as long as they’re dry, they are dormant, but as soon as to expose them to favour of favorable growing conditions, such as humidity and the right temperature, then they would start sprouting and growing. That’s pretty much the same thing so again to sum it up this, basically the plant just doing nothing and waiting until patience improve. Basically, the goal here is to prevent death. It’s just doing the bare minimum metabolic activity just trying to get by. Hey, I saw this dormancy table going around online. Does that mean they go dormant either in winter or summer? Only not quite, but that’s a good start. The thing about dormancy is that it is based on thresholds, so different plants have different thresholds and by threshold and refer to the upper and lower limit in terms of temperature that they could take in the chart. You’ll see that. HIV is listed under the winter, the runner class, which seems to imply that they are summer growers. What you should realize here, though, Is that majority of the folks of all range for? HIV areas are found closer to summer. But again that depends on your own climate in some areas summer is a lot harsher work well, in other areas summer, a smile from experience. I’ve noticed that extra bears are comfortable within the 15 to 35 degrees, so just range and outside that range, whether the upper end or lower end they they would show signs of being dormant in my climate, It’s very convenient and clear-cut. Because in winter, the temperature drops low enough that it triggers the dormancy of echeverria plants while in summer during the very hot parts of it, the temperature rises high enough, just above the upper limit of echeverria that they start going dormant to. Is it then possible that some are dormant plants do not go dormant in summer. Yes, pretty much, take a. Oh, news, for instance, I noticed that they enjoy a temperature range of somewhere between five to twenty five degrees Celsius, and, of course, that’s a lot lower than the Echeverria. Comfortable Temperature range could say that they tend to enjoy the lower parts of the spectrum of the temperature spread, which is why people tend to classify them under the category of winter growers then again. If your winter is really harsh in that, it’s below freezing. Then that’s beyond the minimum limit minimum the lower limit of the aonian from top of the range, which means that they’re going to be dormant anyway, and vice versa, so going back to the example of HEV areas, although I did mention that they tend to be not dormant until 35 degrees Celsius. If your temperatures rise above that and tends to be more than 35 or more than a day or so few days, then your excavators will still go dormant. In fact above 30 they start closing up, protecting themselves in the heat. And, yeah, that’s a pretty clear-cu’t sign that they’re dormant right there. Basically what I’m saying is that The climates vary so much between the regions and even within the same city that can be varying types of climates, and besides, the seasons are not the same everywhere. I live in a place where my climate would be considered somewhere equivalent to the USDA hardiness zone of 10 a or 10 B somewhere in between it can get cold, but not as cold as say. Zone 7 What’s this hardiness zone? You’re talking about the USDA hardiness Zone or the United States Department of Agriculture. Hardiness zone is a standard that helps gardeners figure out which plants works in a specific climate, and this zones are based on an annual minimum winter temperature. The problem in hardiness zone numbers is that this only indicates the lowest temperature. Your area can get it does not take into how how hot it can get in your area. How do we account for that then? This is where the heat index comes in the heat index is a product of air temperature and relative humidity and this two combined is what’s known as apparent temperature. Now this explains why the air temperature and what it feels like can vary. Cuz There’s more the temperature than just air temperature, so say, if there’s a lot of moisture or humidity in the air, then to feel a lot colder or hotter, depending on the air temperature. This explains why in weather apps, the air temperature is different from the feels-like section. If you’re familiar with that, what happens when a plant goes dormant, we have already discussed the reduced metabolic activity and now let’s get to the more interesting stuff. So unlike the sea goose plants or trees supplies do not shed all of their lives when they go. Dharma, and the way that I see it, It seems like when they’re dormant. They are stuck in optimal, remember health, deciduous plants and not only have this vibrant display of polars. That’s pretty much. What succulents are doing when they’re dormant? So what goes on here is that photosynthesis still happens and there’s an overproduction of sugars in the plant. However, unlike the rest of the year, most of them get stored within the plant leaves rather than being used off by the plant or distributed everywhere on the plant again. This is because the plant is starting to reduce its activity, but in addition to that, most of the sugars are stuck within the leaves because the nodes of the leaves are starting to constrict when it’s autumn, thereby clocking a lot of the plant sugars in the leaves, leaving no place for them to go now. The result of this sugar staying in the leaves means that a lot of the sugars break down within the leaves, and when they break down in the presence of light, this produces the sweetness called anthocyanins and Anthocyanins are those pigments that produces all of those reds, blues, purples and blacks during normal operation. The plant produces chlorophyll and head of the noids. The other field, of course, provides the green coloring of plant, but Carotenoids provide the Orange Yellows and Browns and autumn like conditions. The chlorophyll production is reduced, which then reveals the carotenoids in the leaves, which explains why in deciduous trees, the leaves start turning yellow now. If you add anthocyanins to the mix, and that means that you have the yellows oranges, In addition to the Reds, blues, purples, Pinks and all those colors. Now it would imagine that there’s only going to be an explosion of color in subtle circles. This is better known as stress colors. I made a video about it a while back and you might want to refer to it if you want to learn more about stress colors apart from what we will discuss so far, something else. I find interesting here is the transition period between active growth and dormancy. Polycarp, pick plants or plants that can push out flower stalks as a separate offset tend to push out flowers when they get out of dormancy. So if you’re in a place where both heat and cold can make a plant go dormant, then you could expect at least two sets of flowering throughout the year. Another interesting phenomenon during autumn is that the plant tends to have reduced foliar growth or reduce growth of the leaves, although during that period the roots can still grow as normal and that in my opinion makes autumn the best time to do some repotting or transplanting because you’re pretty sure that the plant would not grow any larger or at least it wouldn’t grow as much while you’re still giving a chance for the plant to replenish or regrow its roots. This is also why. I prefer doing a lot of my landscaping. During autumn, aside from of course, ambient temperatures, it’s very comfortable, but that way the Plas would not be growing larger and I could reserve the space for the design based on their based on their size, or if you’re doing tight arrangement or small ball arrangements, then you’re able to retain the design. As is for a bit longer. They would not be growing fast enough to outgrow or compete with the other plants, yet your design or at least their relative sizes will remain intact until the next growing period. How do I make a plant go? Dormant, based on what we have learned earlier, triggering dormancy in a plant is as simple as just pushing them out of their comfort zone, Whether that be the cold end or the hot end of the spectrum doesn’t matter. That’s what you have to do. You will have to manipulate temperature, humidity and the amount of light for this to be very effective of the three temperature and humidity seems to be having the largest effect on the plant as long as they have enough light. So that might be something that you have to keep in mind, but of course they’ll still need a bit of light to sustain themselves, especially for producing black sugars, but they won’t be able to create energy in the dark. This is also why you’ll notice the plants. During the colder months during winter tend to be leggy at a slower rate, or they tend to stretch a lot slower compared to during the warmer months with that in mind. I would highly suggest that you trigger dormancy during the cold end of the Speck. A good range would be just a few degrees above freezing point. Basically, you just want to avoid freezing your plants. But at the same time, you want to inhibit any growth because otherwise, if you go for the hot, and then you’re risking dehydration and burning, and there’s a lot of other problems associated with the heat, let’s say insects as a lot of them are active during the warmer months, so triggering cold. Dormancy is your best bet. There are many ways to achieve this, but in all of these scenarios, what you’ll want to do is to be able to control the environment and as such, you would need to have a controlled environment, which usually means greenhouses grow lights and stuff like that. And depending on your climate, you might even need air conditioning or heating. You maintain an ideal temperature range, but basically, this kind of setups allow you to simulate the different seasons on your own schedule and not necessarily follow your natural climate. This is probably an essential technique when you’re trying to create your own hybrids because you would want to sync their flowering cycles that way you’re able to pollinate different specimens together, but as you can see in my garden. I just tend to follow the natural cycles. I do not have greenhouses at most. I have the shade cloth. I use the shade cloth to dampen the hot end of summer, So I might need a bit of help. Explaining the setups, so to that end here is Alex from windowsill surveillance. Take it away! Alex, I joke, and I travel me on your channel. So I’m Alex. And I grown succulents in the northwest of England, so in the Northern Hemisphere and we were in the depths of winter right now and I thought well. Chuck and I thought it’d be interesting for me to give my current experiences of dormancy in any different hemisphere, so I have a kind of wide range of growing environments, actually, so I for windowsill. Which into here, which is mainly lower, light, tolerant plants. Everything’s like even though this is south-facing, we are so little light in winter and I can only really keep these guys here, So things like the edge of areas and Priscillas are actually in separate grow tents. So these get here get exposed to quite cool temperatures at night. I’m fairly warm during the day. So yeah, it’s a bit like a greenhouse. I guess, but it loses heat very quickly because it’s only a single glazed window, so it’s quite tricky, actually trying to work out which ones of these are dominant, which ones aren’t because war. Theory create quite slow growing, you know, at the best of times, and so it’s quite difficult to kind of keep an eye on them and see which ones are dominant. Which ones aren’t it’s far more clear-cut in the grow tents that I own, so I have to, like I mentioned the first one has quite a powerful light in it called a my girl 100 I have it turned down to around. He said about 75 watts at the moment, but that’s quite powerful, really. That’s equivalent to around 300 watts of t5 and so that’s quite a lot, so everything in there is pretty much tactically growing. Ionian’s are growing well and even the edge varies of flowering micro Sulis, such as the Buddhist temple are growing. So everything pretty much is growing in there and there. I think just opportunistic, so even though the day length is shorter, I’ve got it set on a timer to around 12 hours, so that’s obviously less than what they would get in summer, but because it’s quite strong, intense light, and because it’s quite warm in there, they all seem to just be taking opportunity just to just to keep growing, so the other grow tent that I have has a weaker light and it has around 28 30 watts of power, so it’s not producing as much heat, so it’s a little bit cooler in that tent and because the light intensities no, any was strong, most of those in there just aren’t really growing at all, or if they are. I can’t notice so I would probably call those fairly dormant. Even though, is it, you know it’s still fairly warm in there. The other environment. I have is a greenhouse so that just gets exposed to whatever temperatures we have outside, so our winters are fairly mild here up in the northwest we’re up at about 8 degrees today Celsius, but we tend to go down to about minus 5 ish, Probably I’d say with the lowest temperatures we would get in winter. The odd times will go down to like minus 10 and but it’s quite unusual, so the sort can’t seem to be able to do quite well out there. Most of the time I have had some casualties last year and but with a frost cloth on and stuff like that, they seem to do, OK, but all of those completely dormant, So I’ve not been watching them. One bit the combination of the cold weather and the short day lengths that we have so around 8 to 9 hours. I think we’re currently on. Just means they completely shut down. So I really hope that’s been an interesting perspective for you. And now, honey about to Chuck. Thanks again, sure, thanks. Alex, so there’s a fair amount of things that we have to learn about dormancy and what I’ve shown you is everything in a nutshell. If you read more into it, you’ll find more details about it, but I think you just need to know the simplified version. I hope you learned a lot from this, and I hope you check out Alex S. Channel as well. He has been producing a lot of videos about the equipment. He is using, so if you are curious about it, then make sure to check out his videos, And, of course, he also has a succulent content, So I’m pretty sure. If you’re watching my channel, you’re already probably watching this. But if not, make sure to subscribe, I’m pretty sure you’ll find this other videos interesting as well now that we have discussed dormancy. I think it is a good segue to move into flowering first, so for the next episode. I’ll be focusing on flowering in plants and everything to do with flower stalk’s motivation behind. This is that I am seeing that A lot of people are still being confused by flower stalks and plops on offsets. And I wrote an article about it. You can check out the link in the description or right here. I published it in my website. It contains photos and instructions that would teach you how to differentiate between flower stalks and pumps. So if you think this is something that would be interesting to you, make sure to like this video and subscribe, and I’ve seen the next episode. Bye Special. Thanks to all my patreon supporters, especially Oscar. I know Judy seal snapped. We Gloria. Nevada Governor – Linda Lorelle granddaughter, Cute -, Jessie Mae and run in Paris. Thank you so much without your help. A lot of this is not possible you should also check out. My website city staff is calm. I have a flan shop and very superior section right there. I push updates once in a while, so make sure to check back from time to time and finally follow me on Instagram, That’s at cityscape AIDS for support of a nature better every single day. There’s a hashtag. Dania Chabela .