a garden sewing project

Last year a vis­i­tor to the gar­den was ask­ing about the lit­tle bags that were on some of the flow­ers. It looked like it was time to explain the birds and the bees to the curi­ous visitor.

That was Year One of my mak­ing some hybrids using Sar­race­nia, one of the two North Amer­i­can car­niv­o­rous pitcher plant gen­era. Most of the plants live out­doors and get vis­ited by var­i­ous insects. The lit­tle bags were con­doms against larger insects get­ting to the flower and deliv­er­ing pollen from a dif­fer­ent flower than I’d intended to be used in a hybrid. In the South, where most of these plants orig­i­nate, the flow­ers are pol­li­nated by a large bee that isn’t found here in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. But I looked at the layer of pro­tec­tion as insur­ance against some other insect get­ting to the flower and doing its own exper­i­ments with plant breed­ing. I wanted these flow­ers all to myself.

When I was shop­ping at the fab­ric store I was a lit­tle dis­tressed to find that the mesh fab­ric I was inter­ested in was labeled “pet­ti­coat liner.” I thought I was a fairly open-minded and lib­er­ated male, but I felt a lit­tle shy going up to the counter with a bolt of the stuff, sort of like the first time you go up to the phar­macy counter with a box of condoms.

The clerk sensed my dis­com­fort and sup­por­t­ively asked what I was going to do with the fab­ric. I explained. “Inter­est­ing idea,” she said. “I use big pieces of it to cover up my fruit trees to keep the birds out.” Oh good. A fel­low gar­dener. This per­son under­stands. I left the store feel­ing much less stressed.

These bags aren’t the most vir­tu­osic sewing projects you’ll encounter, just a long rec­tan­gle of fab­ric that’s been hand sewn up the sides to make a long tube. I use paper­clips to hold the sheaths in place, but with a lit­tle more effort you can sew in some rib­bon or string to make some­thing resem­bling gift pouches that you can open and close easily.

It’s good to make at least a cou­ple dif­fer­ent sizes to accom­mo­date the dif­fer­ent bloom sizes found in this genus. This sea­son I ran out of larger bags and ended using an actual gift bag left over from the hol­i­days. Its white-gold color stands out pretty emphat­i­cally in the gar­den. If you were start­ing from scratch, a darker color would recede into the gar­den more gracefully.

These bags don’t pro­vide pro­tec­tion against smaller pol­li­na­tors. After doing a lit­tle more research it appears that the gold stan­dard for mate­r­ial for hybridiz­ing bags seems to be reemay, the breath­able spun poly­ester that’s used for float­ing row cov­ers in the gar­den. Sci­en­tific papers fre­quently cite Reemay bags being used in con­trolled pol­li­na­tion sit­u­a­tions. That stuff is bright white and really stands out in the gar­den. For­tu­nately these bags only need to be on Sar­race­nia flow­ers for two to three weeks, so you won’t be defac­ing your gar­den per­ma­nently. Still, while your plants are wear­ing them, you might have to do a lit­tle more explain­ing to peo­ple vis­it­ing your plant collection…

April 02 2011 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • •

8 Responses to “a garden sewing project”

  1. maggie on 02 Apr 2011 at 11:08 am #

    now you’ve earned the expe­ri­ence to invent petticoat/hoop skirt/garden cloches for plant hybridizers!

  2. Sue Langley on 02 Apr 2011 at 4:04 pm #

    Pretty inter­est­ing process, James. Your gar­den would make an inter­est­ing field trip for teen stu­dents. Botany, sewing plus sex ed. Do you get your plants from a local nurs­ery or mail order? I find this plant fas­ci­nat­ing and would like to try it. I’ll have to search your blog for all the Sar­race­nia posts.

  3. Rob on 03 Apr 2011 at 12:01 pm #

    Hi James! This is very cool! Thank you for shar­ing this! I love the whole visual of “sort of like the first time you go up to the phar­macy counter with a box of con­doms.” LOL! I bought cheese cloth to use for this process but found I didn’t need it last year as I did pol­li­na­tion only in the green­house then. I may be using it this year if I cross any­thing out­doors as more plants are out­doors now. I am look­ing for­ward to the hybrids that you will be com­ing up with!

  4. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » diversity on 04 Apr 2011 at 6:31 am #

    […] the last post I men­tioned that I was mak­ing hybrids with some of my pitcher plants. The process is a little […]

  5. lostlandscape on 05 Apr 2011 at 8:23 pm #

    Mag­gie, good idea! The hoop would do won­ders to pro­tect the flowers…

    Sue, my first sar­race­nia plants came from Trader Joe’s, but the rest have been from rare nurs­ery vis­its or mainly mail order. It’s mostly a bunch of hob­by­ists with a few com­mer­cial firms thrown in. The folks I’ve dealt with pos­i­tively via mail order include Cal­i­for­nia Car­ni­vores, Wes Buck­ner and Mike Want. The lat­ter two often have lists up at the US wants and sales part of the CPUK site: http://www.cpukforum.com/forum/index.php?s=7a8f00a737a4795988c3a6fc66959819&showforum=24

    Rob, thanks for your inspi­ra­tion in all this mad­ness! Like any par­ent, once the kids look like any­thing I’ll be shar­ing photos…

  6. Janet/Plantaliscious on 10 Apr 2011 at 6:22 am #

    I’m impressed at your ded­i­ca­tion — and your will­ing­ness to face down pos­si­ble embar­rass­ment. Look for­ward to see­ing the results.

  7. Colleen on 10 Apr 2011 at 5:10 pm #

    Pet­ti­coats for Pitcher­plants, sounds like your first hor­ti­cul­ture book already has a title.

  8. lostlandscape on 11 Apr 2011 at 8:46 pm #

    Janet, there will be baby pic­tures! It’s inter­est­ing that unlike humans, where child­hood has so much rev­er­ence, I just want the seedlings to pull them­selves out of it and do some seri­ous grow­ing up.

    Colleen, I’ll give you a title credit when Tim­ber Press picks it up…

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