FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

tommyr wrote:

uusa2000 wrote: Did you have these issues with dormancy when you first started?

No, I did a bunch of research before growing them and starting dormancy. People don't do that enough it seems to me. It would be a big help to them if they did. It saves a lot of problems/headaches.

Tom

Yes I've done plenty of research too. But as novice, Just not enough to completely understand. I was given advice that I could put Pot in fridge and I dont have to water as frequently. But plant may not have been ready to be thrown in fridge, i didnt know how wet is too wet. I almost never watered but it stayed moist and kept dying back like it was too wet while in fridge. And it kept rotting away after I took it out this spring.

I just want pointed out what I did wrong. My biggest phobia was losing over dormancy so i made sure not to over water which i thought was the only mistake to be made. i really was expected them to wake up

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uusa2000 wrote: I just want pointed out what I did wrong.
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Again, Mosser Lee sphagnum + too much water + not enough light = root rot. While it appears that the dormancy could have been planned a little better, your problem is 100% root rot.

Use the care guides on the site. They are proven methods with years of experience supporting them.

If you keep asking the same question and keep getting the same answer from multiple sources, then you may want to go with that suggestion. It does you no good if you keep asking until someone agrees with you.

Nick wrote:

uusa2000 wrote: I just want pointed out what I did wrong.
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If you keep asking the same question and keep getting the same answer from multiple sources, then you may want to go with that suggestion. It does you no good if you keep asking until someone agrees with you.

I dont understand by asking until someone agrees with me. Sure my plant rotted, but I'm not really getting the same answers. I've heard that i can plant in pure lfsm and i've heard good about Mosser Lee here, so i dont want to blame it on them. I've heard rot comes from excessively watering, And I held from watering. Just damp. I dont know how damp is too wet.I'm just trying to narrow down my mistakes.

The sources works well for me during the past grow. I get different answers and opinions from experience growers. But like I said I'm trying to learn what I did and how one effect caused another.

I could just do how others do but I really wouldn't be learning, just copy cating others

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Honestly, you want to be "copycatting others". When you have plants dying, the goal of research is not to learn on your own find new and exciting ways to do things, it's to find out what other people did to make them not die.
Figuring out how to keep things alive through trial and error is a thing of the past now that the Internet exists. We aren't Victorian scientists experimenting with strange new plants anymore.

Yes, there are people who've grown healthy plants in Mosser Lee, but there are also a lot of people who say that it's very low-quality and kills plants. It may be that the quality varies between batches, it may be that the people who've had good experiences top-watered heavily or did something else that helped. Either way, there are people who had plants die from being in Mosser Lee sphagnum. Therefore, it is probably a good thing to avoid. It is low-quality and may contribute to rot.

The established formula for successful fridge dormancy includes soil that's just slightly damp. Go get a sponge, soak it in water, and then wring it out. That dampness is about what you want your flytraps to always be at- just moist, not wet. For dormancy, they need to be less moist, barely short of dry. They use very little water while dormant. Normally, the goal of watering is to give the plant water to use up. During dormancy, the goal is to keep the plant from drying out.

If your plants rotted during dormancy, they were too wet. I'm sure you were careful to avoid over-watering, and I'm sorry that it didn't work, but they were still too wet.

Thank you

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I have lost plants to root rot with pre mixed VFT media, a poorly draining pot, and overwatering.

I set back a beautiful trichterfalle in the past couple weeks switching to artificial lighting due to root rot.

It's easy to do, but it's also pretty easy to identify and oftentimes your plant can recover if you correct it quickly enough.


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That's the setback trichterfalle. The leaves yellowed and I thought it was bleaching due to the new light. Also, the top layer of media fries while the subsurface remains moist for quite a while. I realized it was root rot, let it dry out, and there's a lovely green trap sprouting from the center.

I keep a toothpick nearly buried in all of my pots near the tags. If I pull out the toothpick and it is wet, then the roots are also getting water. If the toothpick is dry farther than halfway down (approximately bottom of the rhizome), I'll give it another watering.


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I just put my plant in the window because it gets pretty cold there. I gave it about a teaspoon-tablespoon of water per day. (I'm pretty sure I missed some days) Then I over watered my plant when it woke up. I thought it would want lots since it didn't have much all winter. I'm not sure if it was from the mosser lee but it did have a lot of other kinds of dried up plants in it.

Fishkeeper wrote:Yes, there are people who've grown healthy plants in Mosser Lee, but there are also a lot of people who say that it's very low-quality and kills plants. It may be that the quality varies between batches, it may be that the people who've had good experiences top-watered heavily or did something else that helped. Either way, there are people who had plants die from being in Mosser Lee sphagnum. Therefore, it is probably a good thing to avoid. It is low-quality and may contribute to rot.

The established formula for successful fridge dormancy includes soil that's just slightly damp. Go get a sponge, soak it in water, and then wring it out. That dampness is about what you want your flytraps to always be at- just moist, not wet. For dormancy, they need to be less moist, barely short of dry. They use very little water while dormant. Normally, the goal of watering is to give the plant water to use up. During dormancy, the goal is to keep the plant from drying out.

This is some of the best advice with regards to media and watering that I've seen recently! Mossier Lee is horrible quality LFSM. Perhaps some batches are better than others. And, even if all batches were low quality, does that mean it is impossible to grow healthy flytraps in it? By no means! It means that the margin for a fatal error is much smaller and that the plants will likely not grow as well as they would in a superior medium.

Nick wrote:I keep a toothpick nearly buried in all of my pots near the tags. If I pull out the toothpick and it is wet, then the roots are also getting water. If the toothpick is dry farther than halfway down (approximately bottom of the rhizome), I'll give it another watering.

I've never heard of this method before, but it is very ingenious. That's a great way of monitoring moisture levels in the media for flytraps. In the summer months, particularly in very hot and dry areas (like the southwestern US), it may require checking the toothpick more frequently to ensure the pot doesn't dry out over the course of a 12 hour sunny day.

Matt wrote: I've never heard of this method before, but it is very ingenious. That's a great way of monitoring moisture levels in the media for flytraps. In the summer months, particularly in very hot and dry areas (like the southwestern US), it may require checking the toothpick more frequently to ensure the pot doesn't dry out over the course of a 12 hour sunny day.

I definitely lucked into it . I use toothpicks when I feed my plants and I originally thought it was a good idea to be able to reuse toothpicks and keep them handy. The next time I fed the plants, I saw the moisture levels and had a literal "Eureka!" moment.

The toothpicks have become my favorite tools during my switch to LED growing. It is crazy how dry the top layer can be while 1cm down is still perfectly moist.

Nick wrote:

I keep a toothpick nearly buried in all of my pots near the tags. If I pull out the toothpick and it is wet, then the roots are also getting water.

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Awesome technique, Nick. i will use that.. See, these are the solutions I'm looking for. Would having moist in the middle & top too dry have any problems?

Another question about my failed Dormancy, all the leaves died early in the winter like right after I put in fridge, is it possible that I put plant in fridge too Soon?

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