FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi all.

After a lot of research I finally decided to buy my first flytraps so a few months back I ordered two young adult plants (planted) from the store here. Now they are very happy and healthy plants. They have both grown enough to fill the entire surface of the cup.

Since my first two plants did so well and I was pleased with the service I ordered two new starter plants - DC XL and FTS Purple Ambush. The plants did get jostled a bit in shipping and were somewhat uprooted when they arrived. Mostly with the DC XLs their rhizomes were out of the soil and I tried to push them back in the soil as much as I could. That was hard because they are still babies so I used tweezers to push soil against them so the rhizomes were covered as much as possible. Is this okay/normal?

Since they are tiny and there is no moss (unlike the young adult plants) do I need to treat/water them differently? I assume they will dry out a bit faster.

I was also happy to see that there were multiple plants and not just one tiny specimen. I also do want to be clear that I am not upset with my order - they were packaged very well but being starter plants I understand they are much harder to "keep seated" during shipping. I just want to give them the best chance to live.

Thanks!

From my understanding, you can't go wrong with having the pot sit in a water dish. Regardless of your soil mixture, moss or no moss.

Sashoke wrote:From my understanding, you can't go wrong with having the pot sit in a water dish. Regardless of your soil mixture, moss or no moss.

This is somewhat of a false statement. It is not good to leave VFT sitting in a tray of water all of the time, they can get root rot from that and seriously get sick or die. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, depending on your climate in your area, sometimes it is necessary to keep them in a tray to keep the media moist. VFT like their growing medium damp, not soaking wet. A good soaking helps "freshen" the media up every few weeks or so. But generally keep it damp to the touch, if you see algae growing, that means your soil is too wet for its environment and either needs more sunlight/air/less water.

LFSM holds water better than a 50/50 mix but it also dries out quicker too. Generally speaking, once it starts drying out it will keep drying out pretty quick. A 50/50 mix hold water at a more consistent basis. I personally like LFSM better than 50/50 mix because there is more aeration for the roots to grow and the overall appearance is better to me. However, this is going to be something you want to test or research for yourself, some people like LFSM and others like 50/50 mix better. It's all preference.

Thanks for the info. I am happy to report that the DC XL seems to be doing pretty well now and in the last few days has started to produce new traps. The FTS Purple Ambush seems to be having a harder time adjusting but I am watching it carefully.

But generally keep it damp to the touch, if you see algae growing, that means your soil is too wet for its environment and either needs more sunlight/air/less water.

I am curious about this. So far, all of my plants have been potted by FTS. The way I have been handling the waterings is I will pick the cups up and if they feel 'light' I will slowly add water until I see it begin to drip out of the bottom of the cup. I will let the cup drain freely and then once all the excess water has drained return the plant to its place at the window. The plants have been 'very happy' with this arrangement and have grown to completely cover the surface of the cup and have produced some surprisingly large and colorful traps. (Now that they are large, they usually seem to need watering every 2 days.) If I do lift up a clump of traps I do find that the material under the layer of leaves has algae. Is this normal? Since the plants hug the ground I am not sure how to really avoid having that damp under layer. All the plants are currently indoors and sitting on a south-facing window sill.

Thanks again for the help.