Venus flytrap leaf pulling

Venus Flytraps are reportedly very simple to propagate using leaf pullings.  A leaf pulling is similar to a cutting, but a small part of the rhizome must be attached to the leaf in order for it to be successful.  

I gently pull a leaf downwards which removes part of the white rhizome, and I plant it in sphagnum peat moss mixed with sand.   I treat this leaf pulling the same as an adult plant and often just plant it in the same pot as the plant that I took the cutting from.  

Once the plantlets have grown I divide them into their own pot.  I don’t use rooting hormones or grow lights or heat mats or anything special.

VFT leaf pulling sprouting many baby plants, each bump makes one new plant

 

I find leaf pullings to be a bit hit and miss, incorrect temperature or sunlight seem to be the difference between 100% success and complete failure.  I also find that some cultivars grow well from leaf pulling while I have difficulty getting others to take from a leaf pulling no matter what I do.  Genetics has a part to play here.

Whenever I repot or divide my plants I sometimes take a leaf pulling and sometimes I will pull off a damaged leaf and try to use that.  For me, the leaf pullings that are successful usually provide me with one new plant. Sometimes I get two or three new plants from one leaf pulling.  I normally get a few plants from each flower stalk cutting.  

This past spring I divided some of my plants and took a few leaf pullings.  I was planning on selling the plants, and because I didn't have many spare pots I left the leaf pullings in the pots with them until the divided plants were large enough for sale.  The day before the plant sale I removed any surviving leaf pullings to put in another pot and was surprised at what I saw.

Most of the venus fly trap leaf pullings had either died off or produced a single plant, some had two new plants.  These new plants mostly arose from the rhizome or very low on the leaf near the rhizome. 

Leaf pulling was growing in this pot with a larger plant

One Venus Flytrap variety produced numerous new plants, they were produced most of the way along the stem of the leaf and not just from the rhizome.  One leaf started to produce well over a dozen new plants.  These are the first leaf pullings I have successfully taken from this variety, so I am not sure if this excessive production of plants per leaf pulling is common in this variety or if I just got lucky.  This is a particularly vigorous clone, so it may be possible that they commonly throw this many plants per leaf pulling.

I have never seen so many new plants arise from one venus flytrap leaf pulling.  These were the first two leaf pullings I have taken from this variety, so perhaps it is common to this clone.  I guess next Spring when I take more leaf pullings I will find out.

As I dug up these leaf pullings and moved them before they were established I half expected to either die or for only a few of the plantlets to continue developing.   Often cuttings and the like do not take kindly to being disturbed until they are more established.  So far this does not seem to be the case, and both of these successful leaf pullings appear to have survived and the plantlets are continuing to develop.

The other leaf pulling came from this pot

Two leaf pullings replanted in this pot

I sometimes get a pot of tiny plants that I can care for while they are growing larger.  Keeping tiny plants in one pot makes it simple to care for them.  I put the successful leaf pullings in one of these pots.  You can see in the picture above that it already had some tiny plants as well as a flower stalk cutting.

The picture below shows that both of those leaf pullings survived and are producing many new baby venus fly trap plants.  You can also see the flower stalk cutting (bottom right) successfully made new plants.

This pot has tiny plants growing out from various cuttings and things

From here I will leave them to grow over the warmer months.  I will probably let them go dormant over winter, and I will try to divide anything that is relatively large in spring.  Even though my venus flytraps are growing in very low nutrient media, I find that dividing them seems to help them grow faster.  

I regularly have venus flytraps for sale and other carnivorous plants for sale, if you are interested I list them here.

Cambridge Rival strawberries Australia

For over a dozen years I have been trying to find somewhere to by a "Cambridge Rival" strawberry plant.  I have heard so much about them.  Cambridge Rival are meant to be the best tasting strawberries in Australia.

Diggers used to have them, but I have had such bad experiences with Diggers on many many occasions, plus their prices are unreasonable for low quality plants, and postage price is incredibly high, that I really didn't want to buy anything from them if I could help it.  I looked around, and asked around, but had no success. 

As it has been so many years of searching and I have had no success I decided to bite the bullet, spend a fortune to buy a plant from Diggers, and hope they did not send me the wrong plant that had been mis-labelled, or a dead plant, or a plant covered in mildew, or any of the other nonsense that they have repeatedly done in the past when I have bought from them.  Strangely enough, I looked one day and they had them listed but the following day when I was planning to complete my order they had been removed from their list.  I guess it wasn't meant to be.

I kept looking, and asking around, and eventually found a home gardener who grew Cambridge Rival strawberries and sent me some plants.

Cambridge Rival strawberry

 

Cambridge Rival strawberries have white flowers and can either self pollinate or be pollinated by another variety.  Cross pollination does not change the taste.  They are said to throw a lot of runners but my plants have not done much of that yet.  They are only meant to crop once or twice per year in my climate, which is a down side of this variety. 

My plants survived winter and flowered in spring.  The first berries ripened early December.  A second flush of fruit ripened in February.  The berries were mid-sized, and red.  The colour of these was nice, even the inside of the berries was rather red.  The berries themselves were nice and soft, making them unsuitable for commercial harvest but perfect for the home grower.  They smelled rather nice for a garden strawberry, which was novel.

The taste of Cambridge Rival strawberries was incredible and unrivaled by anything else I grow.  They were intensely sweet, and pretty sour, at the same time.  They had a depth of flavour that I really enjoy.  The texture of these was very soft.  It sounds cliched but they did sort of melt in my mouth.  I have only eaten them perfectly ripe, I have no idea what they taste like a day or two before being ripe.

The richness of flavour, combined with the nice strawberry smell and the texture makes Cambridge Rival my favourite strawberries.

I have saved some of their seeds and should plant them at some stage.  Seeds that were self-pollinated will not produce Cambridge Rival strawberries.  These are octoploid and largely heterozygous, meaning every seedling will be genetically unique.  While most seeds will not be as good as the parent, some may be much the same, and there is a chance that some may be even better.

At some stage I need to track down a good day-length neutral strawberry and cross it with Cambridge Rival in the hopes of producing a day-length neutral strawberry that is of similar quality to these.

Cambridge Rival strawberries with insect damage

As you can see from the berries in the background of the above picture, other things also like to eat these strawberries.  I grow everything organically, so the earwigs and slaters tend to get into my strawberries.  This frustrates me greatly.  There isn't much I can do unless I spray, and I am not keen on spraying, so I have to put up with it.

Given how difficult Cambridge Rival strawberries were to track down, and how great they taste, I plan to let my plants throw as many runners as they want.  If I ever have a few spare plants I will offer them through my for sale page.  I can't imagine I will ever have too many extras of these though as I really want to grow a lot more of them myself!

Tiger fern

I recently got a lovely variegated tiger fern.  Tiger fern is a variegated variety of the Boston fern.  There aren't a huge number of different types of variegated ferns, which is too bad because I think that variegated ferns usually look really nice.

For some reason that I am unable to find out, I am told that Nephrolepis exaltata and all of its varieties does not form viable spores and can only be reproduced asexually.  I would love to know more about why this is the case, but I have been unable to find out anything.

Something I find remarkable is even though this species does not produce viable spores there are dozens of cultivars of it.  It seems to throw natural mutations from time to time, and many new varieties have formed naturally and spontaneously.

Tiger fern have variegated fronds

I find the history of the tiger fern to be interesting.  As they can not be sexually reproduced they were developed by a long drawn out domino effect of naturally occurring mutations that just happened to be noticed by someone with enough wherewithal to keep them alive, propagate them, and spread them around.

Brief history of the tiger fern:

The wild type 'Sword fern' (Nephrolepis exaltata) has upright fronds and looks like the type of fern you would find in a woodland.  The wild type existed for millennia, it was noticed by collectors and has been propagated and grown by gardeners across the world.

The 'Boston fern' (Nephrolepis exaltata ‘Bostoniensis’) came about as a natural mutation that occurred in sword ferns.  Sword ferns have upright fronds, while the Boston fern has gracefully arching fronds.  The arching fronds mutation was noticed in one plant among an importation of about 200 sword ferns by a florist near Boston in 1895.  This mutant plant was grown and cared for as it was a beautiful oddity.  Since then the Boston fern has been propagated asexually and spread across the world by gardeners and collectors.

‘Tiger Fern' is a natural mutation of the Boston fern.  The Tiger fern came about as a natural mutation that occurred in Bogor, Indonesia, in the spring of the year 2000.  Since then Tiger ferns have been propagated asexually and spread across the world by gardeners and collectors.

To be clear, the tiger fern is not the only mutation to have occurred in Boston ferns, nor was it the first mutation to have be found in Boston ferns.  There are literally dozens of varieties of Boston fern, all have arisen spontaneously and have been noticed by someone who grew them and spread them around to other interested people.  

Tiger fern

The tiger fern is noticeably different from its Boston fern parent.  The following description of a tiger fern has been copied from google patents:

The following traits have been repeatedly observed and are determined to be the unique characteristics of ‘Tiger Fern’. These characteristics in combination distinguish ‘Tiger Fern’ as a new and distinct cultivar of Nephrolepis Fern:

 

1. Upright and outwardly arching plant habit.

2. Vigorous growth habit.

3. Durable rachis; plants resist breakage during shipping.

4. Green and yellow green variegated pinnae.

5. Closely-spaced pinnae; densely foliated.

 

Tiger fern stolons

 

As mentioned, Tiger ferns reputedly do not produce viable spores.  I am not sure if they are completely infertile, or is a small percentage of spores can be viable under the correct conditions.  This means that tiger ferns can only be reproduced using asexual methods.

One method of propagating these is through the use of stolons.  Stolons, or runners, function the same way as strawberry runners.  The plant sends out long thin stolons that can produce a baby plant where they touch the soil, and stolons may even produce baby plants while they are hanging in the air.  I have heard of people removing the stolons and using the them like cuttings, while most people leave them attached to the plant and allow them to do their thing.

My little tiger fern came with a few stolons.  Some were damaged and won't produce plants, whereas others look healthy and may produce new plants in time.  As the plant grows I am sure it will throw more stolons when the time is right.  

After only growing this tiger fern for two months it produced three baby ferns.  Meaning this fern should be quite productive and quickly fill out it's pot.

Tiger fern runners

Another way to propagate tiger ferns is to split a larger plant into several small plants.  My plant is still pretty small, so this is not yet an option.  I have little doubt that my variegated tiger fern will be large enough to split in spring.

From what I have seen, splitting a larger tiger fern into several plants is pretty simple.  Most people just remove the fern from the pot, then use a knife and hack the thing into a bunch of pieces.  I am told that Spring is the best time for this as the plant is actively growing and the plants each have a full growing season to establish before winter comes.

Variegated tiger fern frond

Tiger ferns, like many ferns, do not love frost and do not love too much direct sunlight.  They do best in bright indirect light.  They like water but not being waterlogged, and they seem to do better with drier soil than many ferns.

I have a few places to grow them that may suit these ferns.  I have the greenhouse that I feel may be too bright, I have a place on the deck that only receives an hour or so of morning sun that I think may be ideal, and I have limited spaces inside the house which I think may be too dark.  I regret not getting two tiger ferns, that way I could have grown them under different conditions and hopefully found the best way to grow them.