Expert: Sarracenia Northwest - 3/14/2011

Question
Hi nice to talk to you guys again anyway i bought a ultrasonic fogger off of ebay here is the link to it http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200556788029&ssPageName=STRK:...

I was thinking of putting that in my greenhouse it's small here is the link to it http://www.lowes.com/pd_217498-58329-LS-GH001_0__?productId=3305988&Ntt=greenhou...

So i wanted to put the ultrasonic fogger on the top shelf where i put my Nepenthes, Cephalotus, and my Heliamphora so it would raise the humidity up mainly for the Heliamphora but all of those plants can deal with some medium to high humidity and i tried putting the ultrasonic fogger in a cup of disstilled water and it didn't work then i did some reashearch and found out that you can sprinkle just a pinky finger tip of salt in the disstilled water and stir it up then put it in the water and it will work well it did i now want to put it with my plants in the greenhouse i want to know if the adding of that SMALL amount of salt will hurt my plants thanks.

Answer
Hi Ean,

I'm not really sure about the salt; I've never heard of this.  However, the way ultrasonic humidifiers work it probably would put salt residue on the leaves of your plants, which would not be good.

The bigger question here is, "Do I really need the humidifier?"  Not really.  In an enclosure this small, just a few plants is going to keep the humidity fairly high from evaporation.  Even though you won't always see condensation, my guess is that if you kept a hygrometer in there it would hover around 70%.  That's fine for all those plants.  In fact, if you had the constant fog from the humidifier, I can almost guarantee you would start to see problems with your Cephalotus.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com