My quest to photograph the lifecycle of plant has come a step closer. The investment of a few bits and pieces to control the environment, mostly an Arduino micro controller and a grow lamp looks to be paying dividend.
My interest in the pulsing lifecycle of the Tonle Sap and cyclic flood seasons of the Mekong, alongside my passion for time-lapse led me to this quest. The growth cycles of local flora and fauna could be shown as metaphor of the Mekong seasons.
I learnt a lot from my first trials growing blossoming lilies indoors. I had got to the stage of blanking out windows and having to find a solution to controlling lighting conditions to simulate that of the plants in the wild. Previous searches on the internet proved fruitless until I came across the work done by Chris Field at Biolapse. Reading his blog has probably saved me many days of failure, the best way to learn. So I’ve jumped in, and with a little over $50 of kit, the possibilities have grown significantly. For the technical information I suggest you go over to Biolapse, where Chris has lots of information available.
Live and learn. A time-lapse of whole plant cycle is new for me. When the lily shoot came up it was shaking violently – well, in a compressed timeline it was. To tried and help it along I strapped it to a stick. Big mistake. This shaking from side to side is a kind of growing up, building up strength for when the stem has to support the massive leaf. Do not interfere with nature 🙂
On a side note. 7/7 orders from China / Hong Kong have been delivered to the Post office here in Siemreap. Items took a while to get here, but 100% success rate, thats surprisingly impressive given the bad press the postal service gets here in Cambodia. I can only hope the success continues.