Monday 30 December 2019

Guest Post: Carnivorous Plant Growing Guide

At some stage I will probably write some posts about how I grow carnivorous plants.

Unlike most of this blog, the following is not my work.  The following is a guest post written by Beauze Menzies.
_____________________________________________________________________________


Media & Materials:
 
Carnivorous plants as a general rule need low nutrient soils based on sphagnum moss products such as peat or long fibered sphagnum which is often used for orchids. Using distilled or RO water is important unless your tap water is under 100 ppm (this number varies by species i.e. nepenthes can tolerate higher ppm).
 
For plants like pinguicula (pings or butterworts) using a soil mix low in peat that is well draining is important and mixes containing no peat have been used successfully. For pings, it might be of interest to try mixing your own soils based on cactus soil recipes that don’t require any real soil (so a rock based soil).
 
Bog CPs like Sarracenia can grow in a wide variety of soil mixes from pure silica sand to pure peat. However, a combination between the two ingredients is often used and is a safer bet than using peat or sand straight. This is also true of flytraps, but currently using long fiber sphagnum is a popular choice for growing them well. However, long fiber sphagnum is very light and dries out quickly, and when wet again, it can become a soggy mess.
 
Proper aeration seems to be key for all CPs.  To maintain aeration, peat is often mixed with course silica sand (free of contaminates) and/or perlite. Perlite has an annoying tendency to float to the top when watered and doesn’t look good. Another way to make sure nothing literally gets “bogged” down is to let the water tray dry out for a day or two between watering. This will allow air to get back on the soil and keep the bacteria down and can be beneficial for some CPs.
 
I use standard black plastic nursey pots placed in 1020 heavy duty nursery trays for most CPs. Flytraps have long roots so they benefit from taller pots. Many people use Styrofoam cups for this reason for their flytraps but it doesn’t look good obviously. For Drosera capensis I plant them directly in a 1020 nursery tray or similar tray and water them directly or place them in an even larger tray for watering. Getting white pots or somehow painting the pots white would be highly recommended if the plants will be outdoors.
 
Flytraps:
 
Venus Flytraps need full sun outside, tall pots, and whatever humidity you got naturally. Don’t stick them in a humidity dome! In hot areas they can be kept full time in a tray of water but a taller pot should be used so the soil at the top doesn’t become waterlogged.
 
Flytraps can be propagated clonally by divisions, leaf pullings, and nonclonally by seeds (Seeds do not need stratification but must be surface sown so not buried). 

A leaf is simply pulled off and floated in water under a light for a few weeks until a bud forms at the base. However, if the leaf does not contain a small section of the crown it will not take so you cannot just cut a leaf off. You can cut a young flower stalk off though and treat it like a leaf pulling and it will also form plantlets.
 
Sarracenia:
 
Adult Sarracenia should be grown full time outside. During the growing season they are kept in a tray of water, but some sarracenia such as leucophylla do not like having constantly wet feet so it is important to let the soil dry slightly between waterings which will help prevent rot too. During dormancy they are often brought into a protected area like a basement to protect them from sudden freezes. It is important to watch for rot in the crown and for mealybugs that live in the roots.
 
For large Sarracenia displays, many people build water tables which allow viewing from eye level and hold water. However, since the water can get stagnant this can also promote rot since it’s essentially a giant tray… and the rot can spread very fast with so many plants sharing the same water. Having the water table slope slightly and having the water constantly being pumped up and filtered will prevent this stagnation. This constantly flowing water could possibly also reduce the need for drying out times between waterings but this needs experimenting.
 
Sarracenia seeds need four weeks of moist stratification before surface sowing. Young Sarracenia grown from seed can be grown indoors and can skip their first year of dormancy. These young plants will need a grow light such as a T5 fluorescent or Marshydro 300 LED (see Darlingtonia). While these lights can be costly but using them correctly (16 hour days) can drastically improve juvenile Sarracenia growth rates. Another way to improve their growth rate is by using Osmocote pellets about an inch under the peat mix (https://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/feed/sarraceniasoil) . In addition, many people foliar spray or fill the pitchers with ¼ strength Maxsea. One thing to remember with Sarracenia seedlings is that they will need repotting and more space as they get bigger. So, if you are not planning on culling heavily, be prepared for sarracenia overload.
 
Drosera:
 
Drosera can be grown outdoors or indoors depending on the species. If indoors they will need a grow light such as the ones recommended for Sarracenia seedlings but keep in mind that a purple LED will make viewing your Drosera difficult. South American Drosera are often picky about growing conditions and need high humidity. African species vary from capensis, which is considered the easiest CP to grow, to D. regia which needs porous soil and literally needs fertilizing. North American and European species tend to need long dormancies since they’re from cold climates (filformis and tracyi not so much?) but there is easier to grow forms such as the Hawaii form of D. anglica and the rotundifolia cultivar: “Charles Darwin” (If you can find this cultivar!).  Australian species…. No idea really except for binata which is easy to grow – the other Australian species look awesome though.
 
The larger forms of Drosera binate (marston dragon, multifida, etc.) do not flower often. To force flower them you can take them out of their water tray and only top water them occasionally. This will make them dry out a lot and they won’t be too happy. Just give them enough water so they don’t die. This took about a month for me. They should produce flower stalks at which point you can water normally again. If you want seeds, you’ll need to lightly rub flowers from different clones together to cross pollinate them. Interestingly, doing this did not get my smaller T-forms to flower so I am uncertain whether they are unaffected by this procedure or if they are were too small. If it matters, which I don’t think it does since I rarely chance the light’s timer settings, the binata started flowering in Autu
 
Drosera can be propagated easily by leaf cuttings which, unlike the flytraps, can be simply cut at the base and thrown in some water (https://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/propagation/DroseraLeafCuttings).
 
Most Drosera species do not need special care if being grown from seed unless it’s a North American Species which will need stratification. Tuberous sundews need to be set outside to germinate since they will only sprout if the day length is right so it can take some time. Germination for common species like capensis will take two weeks normally but can take longer. Drosera also need to be surface sown like most other CPs since the seeds are so small. This also makes it important to make sure the seeds won’t dry out so covering the pot with a plastic bag is common practice until the seedlings have a few leaves (on all CPs actually). To make sure you have good soil to seed contact you could use a thin layer of pure peat on top of whatever peat mix your using and then put the seeds on top of that. This is a good idea if your normal peat mix contains lumpy bits of perlite.
 
Baby Drosera will need feeding. The best way is to rehydrate bloodworms by dipping them in water (the dew will not rehydrate them) and placing a tiny piece on one leaf of each baby drosera. This will take forever, and you’ll need tweezers and possibly a magnifying glass. I was able to get very fast growth rates on baby capensis that were planted in long fibered sphagnum by top watering them often with Drosera pretransplant tissue culture media (from phytotech) without sugar or agar. The seedlings did not suffer negatively from the fertilizing at all which makes sense because drosera in sterile tissue culture grow just fine on that media.
 
The Darlingtonia in both pots are the same age and from the same seeds. The only difference is the larger one is potted with S. leucophylla and has osmocote. Photo taken December 19th – smaller Darlingtonia went dormant Oct 17th.
Darlingtonia:
 
Darlingtonia need good light, a light soil such as live sphagnum, and a steady supply of water in their tray. Having the water be recirculated by a pump probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. However, the biggest problem with Darlingtonia is the fact they die in any sort of heat especially if the roots of an adult plant get hot (young plants are slightly more tolerant of heat). There is an easy solution to this though and that is growing them indoors with AC under a good grow light such as those recommended for Sarracenia seedlings. The annoying purple color of the Marshydro LED is something to consider when deciding which light to buy. The T5 is widely used, produces some heat, but I have no personal experience with it. COB LEDS come in daylight colors and could be an excellent compromise.
 
The darlingtonia will need a winter dormancy so make sure to decrease the light’s daylength at the same rate as the daylength outside as winter approaches so the plant can prepare for dormancy.
 
Propagating darlingtonia can be easy since they produce rhizomes which can be cut and used to grow new plants. More difficult if by using leaf pullings. Germinating seed is easy and while I used a six week stratification, it may not be required for fresh seed. Darlingtonia naturally produce seeds earlier in the year like flytraps which would suggest they too don’t need stratification and can sprout right away. http://sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/2382/darlingtonia-house-2015
 
Shortly after the darlingtonia seeds sprouted I had transplanted one of the darlingtonia seedlings to a pot that contained S. leucophylla seedlings and possibly some Osmocote. I have not given this individual dormancy yet unlike the other darlingtonia seedlings which are now in the fridge (not cold enough outside where I live). Before I put the other seedlings away though I decided to check if they were the same size as the seedling with the leucophylla. Surprisingly, the one darlingtonia with the leucophylla was double the size. I am not sure if this was because of the Osmocote or if the Sarracenia seedlings were beneficial in some way. If I had realized that transplanting the one to the leucophylla pot would speed up the growth rate so much I would have paid much closer attention to the details, but I had thought nothing would come of it.
 

Thursday 12 December 2019

Pumpkin growing roots in weird places

For a few years I have been growing a pumpkin called "kaempw melon rilon".  I quite like it.  It is productive, tastes good, and is usually very vigorous.

It has two down sides, firstly the pumpkins are a little big for my liking.  Secondly it has a thin skin.  Thin skin means it is easy to cut and the skin is soft enough to eat, but it doesn't store as long as thicker skin varieties of pumpkin.

Unfortunately the last few years have been very dry.  This means my plants don't get much water.  When not watered well the flesh tends to be thinner than it otherwise would.

After being dry for too long, when we do have any rain the skin tends to crack and the cracks fill with cork.  When the skin has cork like this is makes it more difficult to cut and while the flesh is still nice it renders the skin inedible.  The easiest way to remedy this is give the plant regular water.

Kaempw melon rilon has a lovely habit of setting down roots along its stem where a node touches the soil.  This means the plant gets more water and nutrients than it otherwise would.  I wish all my vegetables would do this.

Sometimes a pumpkin vine sprawls over onto the lawn, it throws down some roots and collects nutrients and water that otherwise were unobtainable.  What a great trait for a pumpkin to have.

Last time my pumpkins fruited something strange happened.  Can you see it in the photo below?

Have a closer look at this pumpkin.  At first I wondered why this pumpkin was so heavy, then I realised what was really happening.  It grew roots on the pumpkin stem! 


While this may never win a beauty contest I don't care.  I want productive plants that are simple to grow.  Having roots like this right next to the pumpkin meant that the pumpkin grew faster and had more flesh than other pumpkins produced that year.


If you are a seed saver you should grow this pumpkin.  I sell seed through my for sale page, but if anything happens to my stock then I worry that I can never get this variety back again.  I am running low on seed and this year my plants are not performing very well as I don't have enough water for them, this variety needs more seed savers taking care of it.

Thursday 5 December 2019

Growing string of pearls succulent in water UPDATE


Back around August 2018 I started some string of pearls (Senecio rowleyanus) cuttings in water.  I removed the lower few leaves (pearls) and put the stem in water.  I normally grow cuttings in soil, but thought I would give water propagation a try to see what happens.  You can read about it in my previous blog post

Being a succulent I wasn't sure that growing them in water was a great idea.  As it turns out my sting of pearls cutting grew roots pretty fast.  That made me wonder how long it would survive like that.

I then left it in the water, it was just water, nothing else. I top up the water when it is low, and keep the cutting by the window, that is all.  I thought it is time for an update as it is December 2019 and the cutting has been growing for about 16 months.

As you can see below, it is still alive - who would have guessed?  It is growing far slower than the cuttings I grew in soil, but is is growing.  I assume the low growth rate is due to the lack of nutrients in water.  It has not rotted like I thought it would.  I am really surprised that it has survived this long in nothing but water.

The only thing that it seems to be struggling with is the lack of sunlight.  You will notice that the newer parts are decidedly less green than the older parts.  I also bruised the stem when I got it out of the water once to inspect the roots, but it seems to have survived that pretty well.

I am expecting this cutting to die at some point if it is constantly kept in water like this.  I think I will leave it in water at least a bit longer, once it starts to decline I will probably try to pot it up into soil and see if I can revive it.

I do sell string of pearls plants and cuttings through my for sale page.  Rest assured, none of them have been kept in water.  They have all been grown in pots of soil.
String of pearls cutting after 16 months of growing in just water

You can see where it started to grow roots on the left, everything to the right is new growth


Tuesday 3 December 2019

Venus Flytrap from seed

I haven't grown venus flytraps from seed in years.  I used to enjoy it, so I gave it another go recently.  Growing Venus flytraps from seed takes more patience and time than just getting a mature plant, but the seedlings are so cute.  Each seedling is genetically unique so you can end up with some interesting looking plants.

Venus Flytrap not too long after germinating

Days to germinate Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula)
Seed planted             13/03/2019      Day 0
Germinated              08/05/2019       Day 56

I had one seed that was even slower!
Seed planted             13/03/2019      Day 0
Germinated              21/09/2019       Day 162 - over six months
At this size they catch fungus gnats

From memory, it usually doesn't take this long for Venus flytrap seedlings to germinate, and it certainly doesn't usually take this long for it to produce carnivorous leaves.  Slow germination can be caused by a few things.  Older seeds take longer to germinate (or don't germinate at all), but I don't think that was the issues this time.

Colder weather slows the germination process considerably, I think it was just too cold for fast results.  I suspected it was too cold before I planted the seed, but I was too impatient.  I got some seeds and just couldn't wait to plant them.


Edit to add: I planted some more seeds in warmer weather.  They germinated a bit faster but still took six weeks:
Seed planted             30/11/2019      Day 0
Germinated              11/01/2020       Day 42



WARNING: do NOT buy venus flytrap seeds from ebay.

Many ebay seed sellers are thieves.  They may be local, have 100% positive ratings, super low prices, large numbers of seed per packet, and incredibly fast postage, but it means nothing.  Almost all seeds for venus flytraps on ebay are not real, they will send you seeds from some packet of cheap flower seeds.

Never buy seeds for blue venus flytraps because they don't exist.  They will not even send you venus flytrap seed, they will send cheap seeds for some type of garden flowers, by the time they have grown and you realise something is amiss it will be too late to leave negative feedback or get your money back.  You will have lost your money and supported thieves.  Blue venus fly traps don't exist, the people selling seeds of them are thieves and liars. 

If you think blue venus flytraps are real (there is at least one very aggressive ebay thief who claims they do exist and says horrible things about buyers who claim they don't) then send me one, or send me seeds, or even send me a leaf pulling or a cutting from a flower stalk.  I will grow them, and photograph them, and link back to you, so thousands of people will see them and many will buy from you.  Seriously, thousands of people will see your amazing plants and I will link to you so you can make a fortune selling them.  None of these thieves will ever take me up on this offer because blue venus flytraps don't exist and they never will exist.

For a full list of vegetable days to maturity (I know that flytraps are not really vegetables) please click here.