A Strep Killer's Interesting Experimental Find....

I've killed more Streps than most people have owned. I don't try to, mind you... they just exist for a while and then decline.

I'd given up on growing them for a year or so, except for the leftover straggler. But then I had a notion to try something very weird with three plants that were literally going to be thrown out in the compost. They were "dead" anyway, so why not try the experiment? The first pic shows my recovered plant on the left looking very dark green and lush. The plant on the right is a brand new, healthy, lovely baby I just got in the mail two days prior to the photo. I know it's completely well grown and disease free.

 The new plant is "Gisele". And, I think it's going to be pretty lovely when grow out.

 I decided that all I hear on Gphiles and such is that a large bunch of Gesneriads grow on limestone rocks. Everything I'd been reading about from Central and South America comes from a mossy waterfall with the plant clinging to limestone rocks. Well.... limestone it will be then. Streptocarpus are Old World, but they must have lots of limestone in Africa too.

I got some crushed limestone at the landscape center and asked them about 10 times if it was really limestone. They assured me that it was. I took the rocks and mixed it right in with the soil.

The plant(s) in question were limp, rotting and as I mentioned literally going to be thrown out as "dead".

I put in the rock and put the test plants on the lowest light-level shelf I had (because why waste a good light stand on trash?) And in about four months, all three of the dying plants had a great green color and were firm and growing like I would expect a healthy plant to grow.

This is the gravel I was using. I understood it to be that some "class 5" gravel is recycled and could contain dirt and other stuff, but this looks to me to be fresh crushed rock and only one type of rock... the limestone.

An opinion expressed about the experiment thought that it was the additional air space added by the chunky rocks, another thought that it was the "lime" in the limestone adjusting the pH that might be doing it, or, perhaps it was that the move to a different stand had something to do with it and it has nothing to do with rocks good or bad.

Don't know, but I am going to transplant my Streps with this method and see what happens. Can't be any worse than the abuse I've handed out to my plants over the years and if it works, I'll have the greenest Streps I've ever had. Hope that doesn't translate into all green and no flowers. Hmmmm.

Questions???
Comments???