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Discuss water requirements, "soil" (growing media) and suitable planting containers

Moderator: Matt

By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#138314
I picked up some native plants at a show last weekend and they came in pots that immediately struck me as having great potential for flytraps. Anyone out there using them? The bottom is too open to use as-is but can be easily fixed with a scrap of window screen, and the height provides lots of room to play with water levels and encourage deep roots.

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By jamez
Posts:  702
Joined:  Mon Aug 23, 2010 12:26 am
#138937
I thought about it. It's something about it where people say " i found a great pot for flytraps!", when its just a tall pot. You can go to lowes, home depot, or mostly any other gardening store and get a 12 inch pot (deeper than those) which holds more soil and more room for the flytraps to spread. I think that people see them as a longer pot, forgetting that there are 12 inch pots available. They can be good if you don't have a lot of soil, but a bag of peat moss or FS largest medium bag should fill a 12 inch pot up. Flytraps would get much bigger in a 12" pot. They are good for trees because their "rhizomes" aren't as girthy as flytrapsa dn they will save soil. But a flytrap would do better in a pot wider than 4". I grow some baby flytraps in 5" pots and some that I was too lazy to repot in. The adults in the 5" pots have filled them out to capacity and I wouldn't be suprised if there were over 15 plantlets in them. They all have small traps (from being bunched up) and they have divided instead of growing big. My other plants in 12- 14" pots have traps 1" to 1.75" traps. I divide them as frequently as I can (now) so they can individually get bigger, then plant them out together in a 12-14" pot. Give them lots of room and they should grow big if your care is good. I only put 2 plants in a 14" pot and one in a 12" pot.

When grown in short pots, their roots coil around the bottom of the pot and don't grow too much longer, then the moisture is everywhere and they stop growing big and start dividing. You want your flytraps to reach for moisture and that encourages root growth.



Hope this helped!

James
By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#138946
I'm not sure I'm following your argument here. What exactly is the advantage you see in a larger pot diameter? The band pots are available in sizes that are as tall or taller than a 12" pot, and I have never seen a flytrap rhizome so large that it would need more than a 4" diameter pot. Assuming equal height in either case, what does a 12" diameter pot do for the plant that a 4" diameter wouldn't?
By jamez
Posts:  702
Joined:  Mon Aug 23, 2010 12:26 am
#138953
In a Larger pot the flytraps have more room to divide. The rhizomes on my plants are about 2.5" in diameter. If It makes just one division the pot would be filled out in just a little while. Steve grows his personal plants in large pots. he has a comparison photo that you can look at. It shows a plant in a tall pot and one in a large pot. There is a big difference. Like I said before, those pots are great if you don't have a lot of soil or a lot of room for growing. If you go to lowes or home depot there are big bales of peat moss for cheap and big bags of perlite for cheap. You could get more than enough to fill a decent amount of 12 inch pots for under 20 dollars. Those are the only pros to the lanky pots. And the 12" pots are usually of better quality. Once you go from 12" up they get pretty strong. Those are pretty thin, not super thin but a 12" pot would be more durable.
By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#138962
I am familiar with the bales of peat, as well as the 20lb bags of perlite and 100 lb bags of sand.
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:mrgreen:

I'll look up the thread with Steve's comparison, but I am having a hard time imagining that a little flytrap needs a bigger pot than a Sarracenia.
By jamez
Posts:  702
Joined:  Mon Aug 23, 2010 12:26 am
#138966
They need a wide deep pot, sarracenia get pretty large. I use big wide containers for mine. Their roots don't grow too deep, they grow wide. I grow mine in one plant in a tray 5" deep and 24 wide. So then why are you lening towards the skinny pots? To save on soil for more pots?
By Grey
Posts:  3255
Joined:  Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:48 pm
#139105
I would really like to see photos of your plants one day jamez, they sound great!

I think it may be down to personal preference regarding pot width, though I can't really say for sure. I prefer depth to width when it comes to venus fly traps simply because of their potentially extensive root systems - though I am accustomed to shallower pots.

It may be worth trying these pots, Tony. If you fancy giving it a go I'd love to hear how your plants do.
By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#139349
jamez wrote:They need a wide deep pot, sarracenia get pretty large. I use big wide containers for mine. Their roots don't grow too deep, they grow wide. I grow mine in one plant in a tray 5" deep and 24 wide. So then why are you lening towards the skinny pots? To save on soil for more pots?

The roots growing out of the bottom of the pots disagree with you. :lol: My flytraps are doing well in typical 3-4" round pots, just curious to see if I can get them to do even better in extra tall pots that allow for more of a moisture gradient from top to bottom. The pics I found from Steve showed 6 plants in 10" pots, not single plants in 12-14" as you were suggesting. I'm confident that 4" is plenty for a single plant and I have no real interest in community plantings. Maybe someday I'll be a good enough VFT grower to have them grow into potbusters, but I'm not too worried about oversized rhizomes at the moment. :mrgreen:
By SEB
Posts:  201
Joined:  Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:19 pm
#139354
I use 8" deep styrofoam cups and I melt some holes in the bottom. The diameter near the top is about 5". I have been using them for a couple years and prefer them because they are very very cheap and they insulate the root systems and keep them from over heating. Also, 8" inches is a good depth to provide enough room for root growth without using tons of soil. My plants also, get very large with good 1.5" traps, some times bigger.
My two cents.

Oh, and to answer your question. Those pots seem fine for the medium to small VFT. My only concern is that because it is pretty thin it might overheat the root systems. But give it a try.
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