FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

The way to get past that is to plant them in a extra large pots that would take several years to fill? If that is the case then it should be a easy way to by pass replanting so often and avoiding this problem.

Well, my pots aren't really "extra large". They're 7" square and 9" deep. For regular size VFT's, I usually put nine plants in each pot, in three rows of three. Over the last few years, some of them have divided and spread out until the pots look pretty full now, but others must not grow as fast, since they were all done at the same time.

The main drawback I've encountered with not disturbing them for longer periods is the carpet moss that eventually grows on top of the LFSM. It's getting pretty thick in some of my pots and Matt told me one time the only way to get rid of it, for a while anyway, is to repot.

BTW, the other main advantage with not repotting for longer periods is that it's so much easier on the pocketbook!

I guess those are not extra large then but still bigger then ones I have mine in arm.

You know come think of it I heard that carpet moss can get so thick that it can actually block the roots so much it can kill them. Have you ever experience this?

Yes I agree easy on the pocketbook is a good advantage to not replying them every year or two.

What I'm finding is if your main leading plant dies, then the plant will lose apical dominance, and almost always, multiple plants will be formed because the energy gets dispersed to various points throughout the plant. It is similar to pruning a bush where the plant will develop side branches if the main point is cut off. Your plant must of had it's leader cut off.

Here are a couple of my main plants with apical dominance vs the ones which have been divided which will almost always form multiple plants which will share the energy from the original rhizome.

This is making a couple of small babies off the older leaves, but it shouldn't suck out too much energy from the main plant, and I will eventually take those off once they have their own roots.


This is the top part of a division which had a small root, and it seems to be picking right back up likely to get back in size quickly.


Here's the main bottom part of that same plant. As shown, it is producing 4-5 new growth points, and will look just like your plant in another 4 weeks or so. I believe this is exactly what happened to your plant, but I did this on purpose.


As shown here, a piece of plant that does not have apical dominance will produce multiple growth points. You can eliminate some of them if you want the energy to go into fewer plants, but I like to watch and observe.


This piece is a couple weeks more advanced.

Leo756 wrote:Well, my pots aren't really "extra large". They're 7" square and 9" deep. For regular size VFT's, I usually put nine plants in each pot, in three rows of three. Over the last few years, some of them have divided and spread out until the pots look pretty full now, but others must not grow as fast, since they were all done at the same time.

The main drawback I've encountered with not disturbing them for longer periods is the carpet moss that eventually grows on top of the LFSM. It's getting pretty thick in some of my pots and Matt told me one time the only way to get rid of it, for a while anyway, is to repot.

BTW, the other main advantage with not repotting for longer periods is that it's so much easier on the pocketbook!

Are all of your plants in LFSM? I use peat/sand/perlite mix. I didn't repot for 3 years and I actually lost 2 out of 4 plants in the pot. I assume this was possibly lack of oxygen,(probably due to the moss developing, or compaction) or the old leaves rotting right next to the rhizome of the still alive plants. At the same time in another pot, my Megatraps showed similar symptoms(also 3 years). I uprooted and that clumped like what you're describing. Not too sure what happened. Leaves would die in the middle of the leaf. Or even the rhizome end. Like crown rot, but in the middle of 100+ summer weather. Luckily I was able to save the two I did save. They were all HD and Lowes typicals but still is a bummer to lose anything. I will be sticking to two years now....

stevelau1911 wrote:Your plant must of had it's leader cut off.

No, it did not. I carefully removed it from the peat moss Lowe's had it in and gently placed it in brand new LFSM. I kept it in shade outdoors for the first few weeks to prevent sunburn and it looked fine, just stalled out with no new growth appearing. Then the traps and leaves it did have when I bought it began slowly turning black and dying off, gradually becoming replaced by all the tiny divisions shown in the photo I posted. I did absolutely nothing that would have damaged it in any way, but it still died back and clumped anyway. I treated it exactly the same as dozens of other VFT's I've bought over the years, and most of those immediately began growing and thriving just like they should.

BrandonH wrote:I heard that carpet moss can get so thick that it can actually block the roots so much it can kill them. Have you ever experience this?

No, not yet. Matt told me one time that if it gets too tight and thick around the plants, it can keep them from producing new divisions, but I doubt it would damage the roots since the moss only grows right on the very surface. VFT roots go very deep for such a small plant, so I doubt the moss on the surface would affect the roots very much.

cjpflaumer wrote:Are all of your plants in LFSM?

Yes, the top half of my pots is all LFSM. I only use the peat/sand/perlite mixture in the bottom half of the pots. My pots are 9" deep, so it's about 4-5" of each. The sandy mix in the bottom helps to weight the pots down, and it stays wet longer than the LFSM does. From what I understand, that helps approximate the bog conditions where they grow in the wild. The longer roots can stay consistently wet down in the sand, but up near the surface, the LFSM lets the rhizome dry out from time to time which prevents crown rot. I switched to this method instead of all peat/sand/perlite after I lost several of my plants during an extremely wet summer. That's when I saw Matt saying that's how he was growing them at the time, and I've had much better luck overall since then. This weird clumping anomaly has only affected about five of the dozens of VFT's I've bought over the years, and it seems to have nothing to do with the media since I've had it happen in both kinds now.

Leo756 wrote:Yes, the top half of my pots is all LFSM. I only use the peat/sand/perlite mixture in the bottom half of the pots. My pots are 9" deep, so it's about 4-5" of each. The sandy mix in the bottom helps to weight the pots down, and it stays wet longer than the LFSM does. From what I understand, that helps approximate the bog conditions where they grow in the wild. The longer roots can stay consistently wet down in the sand, but up near the surface, the LFSM lets the rhizome dry out from time to time which prevents crown rot. I switched to this method instead of all peat/sand/perlite after I lost several of my plants during an extremely wet summer. That's when I saw Matt saying that's how he was growing them at the time, and I've had much better luck overall since then. This weird clumping anomaly has only affected about five of the dozens of VFT's I've bought over the years, and it seems to have nothing to do with the media since I've had it happen in both kinds now.

I wouldn't mind trying this. But I am scared haha. Scared of the big change and also about my hot dry summers.

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cjpflaumer wrote:I wouldn't mind trying this. But I am scared haha. Scared of the big change and also about my hot dry summers.

I was leery of making the change at first too, but after losing so many plants, I figured it was worth the risk since all the others would have surely died too if I didn't change something. It does require more attention and more frequent watering since it's not a good idea to leave them standing in trays of water since the LFSM sucks up water like a sponge and would stay far too wet around the rhizomes.

I always water from the top now, and yes, it does trigger a trap to close every once in a great while, but it hasn't killed anything. Seems no different than when I've watched bugs trigger a trap on their own but manage to escape. I have to wonder if having my plants standing in trays of water wasn't the whole problem in the first place. Just stayed too wet and simply rotted. Works okay for Sarr's, but not VFT's. We have pretty hot summers here too, with heat index well over 100 sometimes. I have to water every day whenever it's that hot, but I can usually skip a day or two in between. I just have to make sure I keep plenty of rainwater collected this time of year.

If I get a chance, I'll post some pictures of my entire collection, so you can see how much better they're doing in the mixed media I've been using the last couple years.

BrandonH wrote:I heard that carpet moss can get so thick that it can actually block the roots so much it can kill them. Have you ever experience this?

Leo756 wrote:No, not yet. Matt told me one time that if it gets too tight and thick around the plants, it can keep them from producing new divisions, but I doubt it would damage the roots since the moss only grows right on the very surface. VFT roots go very deep for such a small plant, so I doubt the moss on the surface would affect the roots very much.

That's good to know i didn't if that could actually happen or not so i thought i would ask. I actually think they look neat with the moss on top of the dirt. I wouldn't want it too thick though since you said it can effect new divisions.

Okay, I guess the picture I started this thread with probably makes it look like I don't know what I'm doing, but like I said, the weird clumping effect has only happened a few times for me. I just snapped some more pics of my entire collection, but I decided to start a new thread for that:

http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/my-cp ... 32501.html