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Normal vs. Leo Song Konjac Pic

MacDaddy
18 years ago

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Comments (19)

  • bluebonsai101
    18 years ago

    Nice pic!! The Leo Song variant has been around for over 25 years just in case you were not aware and was made available in the U.S. from Leo Song, as you may have guessed. It was collected by Wayne Mrazyk in Borneo- reportedly from Mt. Kinabalu, just in case you are interested in this sort of stuff. It really is my favorite variant of konjac and I find the petiole to be incredibly variable from year to year from the same tuber. I've got my larger one this year with a bunch of large brown vertical patches on it, whereas in most years it is either very white or tending toward a lovely pink. Do you also have the one called 'Nightstick'? Not a favorite of mine, but something different. This one was introduced by Tony Avent at PDN 20 years ago, but they do not sell it any more for whatever reason. Beautiful gardens :o) Dan

  • susanlynne48
    18 years ago

    What is growing at the base of your amorphs?

    Susan

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Dan,

    This is my first year growing Konjac, so I only have those two varieties. I didn't know Leo Song was so common.

    Susan,

    The stuff growing around the edge is Verbascum Olymicum

    I planted the bed with petunias an zinnias in the middle. The center has a vivax "springhill" bamboo.

    I only had room for a small circular garden there because there were two enormous Junipers. Most of the rest of my property was shade or play area for kids. So I crammed every plant I started this spring that needed sun into that ten foot circle. I just had the Junipers cut down and the stumps ground. I want to let the bamboo get big and take their place.

    With the other trees I just cut down I have room to start a reasonable sized garden in the back yard. I just bought a Troy-Bilt Horse today for $100 so I am all set to put the new garden in. This thing was in great shape. What a bargain. I just tried it behind my pool, on a combo junk, grass clippings, leaf, dirt pile that the prior owner left. It tore right through it in a few minutes. I have no clean gas and it's tank was almost dry so I had to stop. I think I'm going to put in a 40x20 vegi garden with this.

  • bluebonsai101
    18 years ago

    Hi MacDaddy, Another one you might like is called 'Gordon's Gold' which was first identified by a guy named Dave Gordon. He used to have a web site, but shut it down unfortunately. NOt sure where to track it down at this point. The leaf is a golden yellow I guess.....I had one and couldn't really say it was all that yellow, but maybe I was just growing it wrong. Have fun with the rototiller :o) Dan

  • susanlynne48
    18 years ago

    Things that operate on more than womanpower are beyond me and frightening, too. Not to mention that I just don't have time to mow and edge. I have that hired done. Although, I may have to find a new lawn guy. I was terribly upset last time when he used wasp spray all over my giant fennel, which I grow, for what? AST larvae. I'm sure he got upset in return when I seemed more considerate of the butterfly larvae than of his allergy to wasps!

    I don't use ANY KIND of chemicals in my garden. I let nature take it's course, and it pretty much works. People get upset about the orange aphids on their milkweed, but if they just leave them alone, the lacewings and ladybugs will eat them before you can say "hand me a can of spray"!

    You must be waiting until next year to put in the veggie garden? I planted a Typhonium last week, I think it was the species divaricata - does that sound right?

    Susan

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    I'd fire the guy. What kind of idiot sprays wasp spray on plants. That's for putting on the nest. What the heck is a guy who is allergic to wasps doing yard work for anyway. He is bound to get stung.

  • konjacking
    18 years ago

    Hey guys
    here are some pictures of my Leo Songs! I also have night stick that is doing great this year! Ill get pictures of it also!
    David
    {{gwi:388393}}
    {{gwi:388394}}

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Nice plants. My normal that was 4" has a leaf now that is 4 foot high and 2" diameter stem. How big is the biggest leaf these things put out?

  • konjacking
    18 years ago

    MacDaddy,
    The biggest I have had Konjac get to in height is about 4' - 4.5 'with a leaf spread of about 5-6 feet.
    In shade I know they will get taller but I like that heavy bulb growth! This year I planted some 2.5" - 3" bulbs and looks like I have a few about 30" tall! not too bad! Tons of small ones too! this verity has always done well in growth for me for the past 32 years!
    David

  • bluebonsai101
    18 years ago

    Hi david,

    Good to see you have the same size plants as me in full sun!! I was starting to think I had a dwarf variant after reading some of these posts :o) Dan

  • konjacking
    18 years ago

    Dan,
    My big MOMMA is still growing! She is over 12" around the base now! I moved her to about 75% sun right now because of the 90 degree temps we have been having! she sure looks impressive! Have no clue what size bulb she will bring me this fall! I just re potted some of my other Konjacs as they looked too big for the pots I had them in! I simply slid them out and set them in larger post and filled with soil>

    DAVID

  • bluebonsai101
    18 years ago

    Hi David,

    Sounds impressive!!! I never re-pot my konjac....they have to suffer in whatever I put them in to begin with. I am starting to think I might have goofed by putting around 40 or them (1-2" tubers) all in the same large black pot though.....they are seriously leaning to find light and I wonder what I was thinking :o) Dan

  • klavier
    18 years ago

    Rototiller? What ever happened to lifting sod and turning soil all with a shovel. A forty be twenty vegetable garden only takes a day to put in by hand, with 1 1/4 tons of manure (didn't turn out to be large enough for my atlantic giant pumpkin though). Shame on the guy with the wasp spray. I have never used a chemical in my garden until this year when I applied fertilizer to the atlantic giant. other than that I have been fully organic like Susan (keep it up Susan!). Sometimes I buy dipple dust with no pestacide in it to kill tomato horn worms and the little green caterpillars on the columbine and hibiscus. It contains a naturally occuring fungus that the caterpillars cannot digest and die after eating; highly selctive; only kills caterpillars.

    Macdady- The pictures are great. You have quite a few Konjac for your first year growing them. I have one that was the size of a quater a yearago last February when I got it from JoeyPack and now it must be much bigger, because the plant is four feet tall. Does not have anything like the spread that Konjacking describes though. It is in full sun.

  • susanlynne48
    18 years ago

    Okay, Klavier, we must have a little chat. Those tomato horn worms, if left alone, don't eat very much, plus they are the larvae of the sphinx moth, or hummingbird moth. Beautiful insects! Oh, to have a sphinx? I keep hoping I will find one (different species), on my datura (also in the solanacea family, and last year I had one, but it was parasitized), and I always get tersas on my red pentas, planted especially for them. The little green caterpillars are probably cabbage whites, which are more plentiful than the swallowtails, Monarchs, and hummingbird moths. Could I talk you into not killing the THW's. They are fun to grow in cages. You can segregate them from the general population of your tomatoes, and watch them as they grow, pupate (you have to have some detritus in the bottom of the cage, because they pupate underground), and then eclose as a beautiful moth. Think about it just a little, okay?

    Susan

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Well I went out an measured with a ruler. The leaf is two feet high where it splits. However the leaves are not flat and rise at an angle so that the tips of the leave are two feet off the ground. So do the mature plants split at 4 to 4.5 feet off the ground? If so are the mature plants like 9 feet tall if they leaves don't lay flat? Remebmer mine was not a 18" bulb but only 4" so it is hard for me to believe that it is full size already.

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Digging, not particularly on my list of fun things to do. I have however done a lot of it. Two years ago I had to move 38 cubic yards of clay by hand. I did it in four days with a shovel. This spring I had to dig a 4 foot diameter 8 foot deep hole for a swimming pool drywell because the prior owner of this house had his backflush outlet spilling into the neighbors yard. Late spring I dug out that 10' foot circle to a depth of 2.5 feet, shifting out the stones, digging in all the organics, took me three days. It wasn't something I could do with a rototiller anyway so I did it by hand. Not to mention I didn't have the rototiller yet.

    I've done more that my fair share of digging in this life so I don't fell particularly guilty about using a rototiller. It' mostly for saving time and for not aggravating the pulled tendon in my arm.

    I pulled a tendon last winter when I grabbed a garbage can to run to the curb with because the garbage man was coming. Unknown to me the can was frozen solid to the ground and didn't budge an inch. Ouch. It started to bother me again after helping a friend over the past couple weeks set a stone wall around his pond. Another friends dad was selling his rototiller on the cheap so felt I had to get it.

    I could get lazy and use the Ruth Stout method but bales of hay are expensive here in the suburbs. I used to do that when I was out in the sticks when a farmer would sell me those big four foot rolled bales at $11 each. I even have a hay saw which I needed to cut them up. Another thing is we have a kind of worm here on LI that does not pull the organics down into the soil. Instead it stays on the surface. So you don't get as much as a rototilling effect.

    Besides I'm starting to get lazy in my old age, and the tiller can do the entire bed in less than an hour on less than a dollars worth of gas.

  • count_d
    18 years ago

    Hi MacDaddy,

    Where do you (or anyone else) get your Leo Song from?

    Thanks.

  • MacDaddy
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    I got it off ebay. You can set ebay up to email you when your search critera is matched.

  • count_d
    18 years ago

    Thanks.

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