FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi there!

Well, seeing as I can't wait for my Red Dragon VFT to get here from petflytrap.com, I managed to find THESE little guys today! I found them cooped up in little plastic containers at the old chain home improvement store.

These guys are my first VFT's!!! The guy on the left is Tinkerbell, and the one on the right is Creampuff. They kind of look like they've been thru the wringer, so the first thing I did was take the tops off their pots, and get them in the indirect evening sun.

Hello and welcome! Congrats on your new purchases, I'm sure they'll do well for you. Don't be surprised if the leaves that are on there burn off if you put them directly outside.

Should I slowly acclimate them to the outside, you think?

Grats on the new plants Dooter!

The sun is so strong in Phoenix, I'd definitely introduce them to it very slowly. Even when they're hardened off, it's probably going to be a good idea to keep them out of the mid day sun. It will help keep the soil cooler. Try to give them good morning light and then keep them under 40%-50% shade cloth the rest of the day.

I used to live in Tucson, so I know about that Arizona sun. It's pretty intense and if I still lived there I'd probably grow my plants under a shade cloth most of the year.

Okay, I'll let them have the morning sun tomorrow, and bring them inside for the rest of the day.

I can't imagine letting them get the full-on summer sun - I have a sun shade on my porch, so they'll only get about 50% direct sun when it hits my porch, which is about 3 pm - 6 pm. But I'm going to wait to let them be outside during that time of the day - until they are strong enough to handle it, anyhow.

If I were going to repot them into larger pots, should I wait until they are more established? Or can I do that this weekend? I just don't like the miserable little cups they're in...

I'm always in favor of repotting sooner rather than later, so I'd go ahead and do it this weekend if they were my plants. Good luck!

Tinkerbell and Creampuff Great names for these little plant-monsters! I can hear them now--

"Come on little buggy-buggy, we won't hurt you, we're Tinkerbell and Creampuff, and we LOVE you!"

Welcome to the FlytrapCare.com Forum!

LOL!!! Yeah, I decided to go the "unsuspecting" route with their names, LOL!!!

I hope they grow to be big, fat monsters with those names!!!

And... I just repotted them this morning. I was very careful to soak the moss off of their roots in distilled water, and carefully replant them in deeper pots. They've been outside in indirect sunlight, and the poor things look just haggard as hell. I feel like they'll bounce back, though. I hope!

The one day you had them in direct sunlight could have done in any of the leaves they had. Don't worry, you should start getting new leaves out of the rhyzome.