FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Has just been edited for accuracy.

I found three "grow your own carnivorous plant terrarium" kits on a clearance rack at Lowe's and thought I might as well give them a try.

The kits contained a total of one fat sarr rhizome trying to grow, one fat sarr rhizome that isn't doing anything but seems heavy enough to be healthy, and one thin sarr rhizome that might be mostly roots but seems heavy enough to be alive, plus two Venus flytrap tubers. The flytraps seem to be growing back already, so my questions are about the sarrs.
I couldn't find much online on getting sarr rhizomes to grow. About the only thing I could find is that they should have the top end uncovered, as the sunlight triggers the growth of pitchers.
I didn't try to clean the rhizomes, as I was concerned about damaging them and the dirt they were stored in seemed halfway decent. Gave them a good rinsing with distilled water, but that was it. I've potted them in pure LFS, as I didn't trust the soil included in the kit. Upon close inspection, the soil seems to be finely ground peat of some sort, and it's very hydrophobic. It might work, but I don't think I want to use it, so will LFS work for them or do I need to try to get something better? Can probably get something off of Ebay or Amazon before they grow enough roots to get upset about being moved.

This is how they are now. The three square pots with dead LFS are the pitchers. The smallest one is the one that looked like it was all roots, as I'm not sure it'll grow and I was running low on moss. If it grows, it'll get more space.
The two larger pots are in a tray with about 1/2" of water, the small one has more like 1/4". I wasn't sure if rhizomes like being as moist as fully grown plants.
Anything in particular I need to do for the one that tried to grow in the bag? The pitchers all seem... healthyish? Twisty and light-deprived, but not rotting. It's protected from full sun, but it has some light- I'm hoping the twisty pitchers have a shot at photosynthesizing, even though I doubt they'll self-correct enough to grow into proper traps.

The first alarm should go off once you read the word "tuber" on those kits. Sarrs and VFTs do not form tubers. These kits are just made by chopping all of the leaves off of Sarracenia and VFT rhizomes and throwing them in some soil. The elongated "tuber" looks like a Sarr that was trying to grow, but is so light starved that even the rhizome grew in an elongated fashion instead of the healthy, densely packed bundle of tissue it should be. It is really hard to identify any structures at all, the plant is so screwed up.

That being said, with some TLC, you should be able to revive the plants. I would worry about dormancy at this point.

I thought it might be something like that, especially when I saw the VFTs. They really look like they were just cut down. Both flytraps are trying to grow, and one already had a couple of leaves. The three pitchers all seem to be about as heavy and dense as rhizomes of other plants are, and they don't have any rotting spots, so I think all are at least tolerably healthy.

Anything I should do to give them the best shot? Or should I just keep them moist, leave them alone, and let them do their thing?

As for dormancy, it was cold where they were outside, but I don't know if they were just put out on the rack a day or so before. What should I do with them? Let them continue to grow in a relatively warm spot? Put them in a cool spot (maybe right up against the window) with some light? Refrigerate them? I don't want to freak them out even more by messing with things, but I don't know if they need dormancy.

They should do alright with a shorted dormancy. I would do as you said "keep them moist and let them do their thing".

The area they're in gets to about low 60s at night. I'm guessing that's not low enough for dormancy, but I can't tell because the only other plants I have that go dormant are some death cube VTFs that are probably very confused. Everything else is growing and evidently thinks it's not winter.
How do I tell if the rhizomes stay healthy and alive? Assume they're okay as long as the conditions are right and no fungus/mold is showing up?

It's not the weight you should be concerned about, it's the firmness of the rhizome. If it's firm, then it's healthy. If it feels squishy, then it's rotting. You just have to pot them up and treat them like mature plants. Make sure you give them enough light to break dormancy since natural light won't be enough this time of year.

One thing I would change is to raise them up a little bit in the pots. I try to keep the top 1/4 or 1/3 of the rhizome above the soil level (basically whatever you can without exposing the roots) to give the plant more air and light - it should help keep them healthier, especially after who knows what sort of treatment they had going into the kit.

It also wouldn't hurt to try to clean up the rhizomes a bit. You can peel off the old dead leaf stubs to get down to the living rhizome (it should be white, though will change color over time with light and air exposure.) If you expose dormant growth points to light, which appear as little nubs on the rhizome, they can start growing.

Good luck!

Just treat the as an adult plant and give them lots of sunlight. As for the dormancy, you don't need to worry about that for now.

And just a side story, i bought 2 of these "Terrarium Kits" from Lowes about 3 years ago, and each kit came with a vft and a sarr. Today, Those 2 vfts have now multiplied to about 30+ (im not sure) and the 2 sarrs now are giant clumps of what seems to be S. rubra. Patience and time is key to success of these plants.

The one with all the sphagetti pitchers is turning the tips of the pitchers towards the light, which looks like a good sign.
I took all the dead pitcher bits off the other large one, found a growth tip, and positioned it a bit higher in the pot.
The really small one might actually be just a clump of cut-off roots with a tiny bit of rhizome, but I'm keeping it because I lose nothing by sticking it and its tiny pot in one of my trays for awhile.

Thanks for the advice!

And the success story that I remembered seeing on here is most of the reason I grabbed these up. For $9 total, I figured that if I could get two rhizomes total (or even just one decent sarr) to sprout, I'd have my money's worth. So far, I've got the two flytraps and one sarr definitely going, and one sarr that might go, so I'm pretty happy with this particular impulse buy.

Interestingly, the pots included in the kit were the exact same kind (shape, size, color, drainage holes, etc, all identical) as the ones that some of my (very healthy) plants from SouthBayTraps came in. Must have the same pot supplier. And I can see why, they're good pots that seem sturdy and look halfway nice.

Any bit of healthy rhizome can grow. Even if it doesn't have a growth point it can develop a new one. It looks like you're doing well so far.