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