How to pack and ship Mexican Pinguicula

[WillyCKH]

This is not the absolute way that we should pack and ship Mexi-pings, it works really well though. I have received Mexi-pings that have turned into brown mud because they are shipped wet. Please avoid shipping them wet as they store energy in the leaves and can go without water and light for a month without problem! However, if they are kept in moist and dark environment, they are very fragile to fungus attacks.

Step 1:
Carefully uproot the Pinguicula, you will realize that they don't have massive root structures like other CPs.

Step 2:
Place the plants on top of a piece of paper towel, allow the moisture on the bottom dry out

Step 3:
Carefully wrap around the plants with paper towel.

Step 4:
Put them in a plastic cup or similar container for extra protection.

Step 5
Fill the gap inside the plastic container, to ensure that the plants won't be rolling around during transportation.

Step 6
Place the plastic containers inside your favorite box, fill the gaps with newspaper, close it and ship it.

 

[hebtwo]

Nice walkthrough. Your stuff has always been really well packaged!

 

[WillyCKH]

Thank you for the kind words!

 

[Shoggoths]

Hey Willy,

You should have post this how-to last week

The extra plastic container is for sure a great way to do it. I'll try to remember it.

 

[Lloyd Gordon]

If you are sending a small shipment, try putting it into a petri dish in a bubble wrap for lettermail postage.

 

[Muckydoo]

I took some pictures while I was packing, a little go thorough of my packing method.
I think this is a fairly common way of shipping pings, although I still do get the odd one in a Ziploc bag

Only thing was, I forgot to take pictures all the way through on the same plants, haha..
So I had to mash together pictures from different plants, but I got the whole process.

First, get all my stuff ready for packing!
Cleaned and sterilized tools, paper towel, deli cups and some very lightly damp LFS (if required)

Then I find the plant with an absolute disaster of roots and dead leaves, one that I know will be a giant pain to unpot...

Once I'm done fighting to get it out (and forgetting to take another picture because I ended up pulling out 1/2 the pot and then had to REPOT the remaining pings...) I end up with a mess that's ready to clean!

(Different Plant)

Use my cleaning method listed here to remove the dead leaves.
http://www.carnivorousplantsociety....best-substrate-for-pinguicula.6092/post-55698

And you end up with this beauty! Not perfect, but much better!

Get my Deli cup ready with some paper towel cushioning.

** Optional Step, use at your own discretion**
If in winter rosette you can ship dry.
If in carnivorous rosette you can place a few (1-2) drops of water on the bottom of the paper towel, or use tightly squeezed out LFS in the bottom.
I used to ship everything completely dry, but I did a few experiments with shipping (with recipient approval) and the pings that had a bit of moisture did better then dry, and the ones with slightly damp LFS did the best. Shipping times were 2-3 days BUT one of the shipments was one that got stuck in the wrong delivery box by Canada Post and it sat for 2 days in over +40c temps in the big steel community mailboxes. The pings lived, and they were the ones with the slightly damp LFS. Did it help? I don't know, I didn't have a control in the same box so...? Maybe?

Anyway, put your ping in the right sized deli cup.
This one had carnivorous leaves and a nice flower, so I used a bit of very slightly damp LFS to keep it happy over it's 3 day pack/ship/unpack journey.

Carefully fold up the paper towel to secure the ping in place, without crushing it.

Label it somehow, please!
I make plant tag sticker labels with my label maker.
Easier then writing them all by hand.
I do NOT have the ability to write in macro mode like some people I know @WillyCKH
The sticker can be peeled off and used on a plant tag when you receive it.

I also tape up the cups to make 100% sure they stay shut. A 3M rep gave me a bunch of tape samples, so I'm going through all of it. This is 'Washi' tape. Not super sticky, but does the job I guess?

That's it!

Do you have to do exactly like I do? Nope.

Do you need to clean your plants before you ship them? Nope. I'm just weird and I like cleaning them.

Can I just write on the deli cup with a marker instead of labeling it? Yep! As long as it's somehow identifiable, you are doing it right!

Can you pack your plants using one of the methods above, and then put them in a unpadded Canada Post envelope so that they bounce all over, get crushed and broken open in transit? I mean.. nothing is stopping you from doing that... but I'd prefer if you didn't do that.