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Discuss water requirements, "soil" (growing media) and suitable planting containers

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By idontlikeforms
Posts:  144
Joined:  Sun Feb 22, 2009 10:12 am
#141561
Matt wrote:The largest flytraps, by a large margin actually, I've ever seen in my life were growing in peat/sand mixes.
I would expect this to be the case simply because so many CP hobbyists are growing their VFTs in P/S and because it is a good media overall. I think there is quite bit less CP hobbyists using all or largely LFS.
Matt wrote: I'd like to do 5 pots of LFS and 5 pots of peat/sand, growing alongside each other in different trays so that I can water them individually as needed. The pots will be 5 inches deep and 2.5 inches across. However much LFS you think I'll need to fill 5 or 6 pots that size would be great.
Time permitting, I'll send some tomorrow. Let me know if it is not enough when it arrives.
idontlikeforms wrote:When you move the larger VFTs to larger pots the water level should be about 1/4th of the way up the pot if the pot is about 5 inches deep
Matt wrote:Wow, that's a lot of water! About 1.25 inches of water in the tray at all times if the pots are 5 inches deep?
1.25 inches should work well as long as you allow it to go near the bottom before rewatering, which is probably about .25 inches deep. If the tray gets dry then you've let the moss get too dry too. And if your greenhouse, assuming that is where you are growing them, is only getting to about 80 during the day but is dropping into the low 50s at the same time at night I would keep it at 1 inch when you water it and of course if it is dormancy time .5 inches deep when you water is probably fine too.

Another thing you'll want to watch out for is when you pot them in it. The roots should not be planted deeper than just above this 1.25 inch water line. If they are too long just wrap them around the moss sideways in the middle of the pot just above where this water level would be. This way they can grow into the water level if they want to or not if they don't. A great way to give a VFT root rot is to suddenly submerge its roots in water when they are not used to it, especially if that water is getting too cold at night or very hot during the day. They will basically grow their roots to right where they want them to be and they shouldn't be forced to be wetter if they don't want to be.

With my VFTs they like to grow roughly the bottom 25% of their roots into a pool of water and keep them there. This is 25% of the root not 25% of the root plus rhyzome, which would likely be 50% of the root. They do not usually rot if only about 25% of the root is in a pool of water. But if more than this is submerged, especially if they are left that way for a few days and the water is too cold or too hot they can easily get root rot. That's why it's best to let them grow their roots where they want to in regards to the water level and simply water up to the same point every time they are watered and then let it recede to roughly the same point every time just before you rewater them. I have also noticed that when they are grown cooler like late fall to early Spring they often don't even grow 25% of their roots into the water and it's something more like 10% or just the pale root caps that like to be in the pool of water.

Since your 5 inch pots are only 2.5 inches across I suspect they may not need to be top watered at all and probably should not be if they don't need it. You'll know if they need it because the top of the moss will get very dry and not just a few loose strands. If this doesn't happen then I would say just water the tray instead. But with wider pots a lot more of a given strand of moss at the top a pot is exposed to air and they can easily dry more and the moss will stay wet better if top watered then.

When you pot them up you should not be squeezing water out of the moss to make it fit into the pot. That would be too tight but you should put as much moss into the pot as you can without a lot of water coming out of them. Of course a little water will get on your hands and some probably will leak out the bottom too and this should be fine. NZ LFS holds a lot of water. If you're unfamiliar with it and have only used lesser grades of LFS you may be surprised just how wet and spongy it really is.

If you grow them like this I think you will see roots that are not extremely long but that are thick and stiff and there should be a good amount of them too.
idontlikeforms wrote:the 12 jars of VFTs you sold me 2 years ago had very spindly roots out of TC and they stayed relatively spindly until they were later on put in full sun
Matt wrote: Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. Plants growing under lights make very thin roots.
I've seen the same thing but these 12 jars had VFTs with even thinner roots than VFTs usually have under lights both right out of the jars and for the whole time they were under lights. They grew great until they were placed outside though and then stalled quite a bit but didn't die and later started growing fast again once they put down a bunch of think roots.
95slvrZ28 wrote:Joel, could you post a picture of the watering trays you would use with a 5" pot? I'm wondering what sort of water volume they hold to know what I'm shooting for here...
I don't use 5 inch pots for my VFTs. I use 5 inch net pots for larger Nepenthes and larger Sarracenias though. For VFTs all of mine grow in 4 types of trays. The main trays I use are 3 inch deep 60 cell root maker trays. But for larger VFTs I use 4 inch deep 32 cell root maker trays. The AG3 VFTs I leave in the 72 cell trays they come in aka liners. They are just slightly less than 2 inches deep and I have some old 72 cell trays that are 2 inches deep with a few batches of older smaller giant clones. I used to use them but now don't anymore and it just happens that it has not been worth my while to replace several of them left yet. All of these trays sit in 1020 flats, which they are designed to go in. And I don't use pure LFS. I actually use coarse perlite as well. I put it at the bottom of each plug. Each plug has about 20-25% of it filled on the bottom with coarse perlite. The LFS goes on top of this. This keeps the LFS slightly drier as the coarse perlite doesn't wick as strongly. This way they can be grown in more shallow trays with less risk of being overly wet. This is of course less of a problem, even with 100% LFS, in taller pots. But I do recommend to my customers to grow larger VFTs in 5 inch pots with pure LFS.

Here's a few more photos. I have not checked some of the trays I have with older smaller giant VFTs that are in full sun and I suspect will have very nice roots on them but probably can in the next few days and upload a few pics of them.
Image
This photo is of VFTs that I shipped on Thursday. They have thick spaghetti roots. They are stiff and if you look close enough you can tell by the shadows that some of them are staying stuck in the air because they are too stiff to flop onto the table. These VFTs have fewer and not quite as long roots yet because they were sold to me wholesale as dormant bulbs and have only been at my place for about 3 months during a very cold early Spring. They are also maybe 90% of my target size for a typical VFT. But there's nothing I can do about it because my sales have been very high lately. So I usually send an extra little one with each one to compensate for this. I have not received any complaints from doing this yet. If my sales slow down a little or the weather stays pretty warm a few days in a row I can usually find some that are the right size again for a while then and then don't have to add extras. But I wanted to show them to show that it's the LFS making the roots thicker and harder even with SG VFTs.
Image
I have 4 32 cell trays filled with VFTs flowering. This is the first tray I set up for this. The reddish plants on the other side of the tray are some Maroon Monsters I got from Steve this last Winter. They've put on considerable size. The tall very green VFTs next to them are Justina Davis x XL. The XL parent plant is the same clone that Matt and Steve are selling as DC XL. I don't know yet how big it can really get though. The plants in the middle are mostly DC B52 F1, which David Conner has shown me a large one of that was about the size of a B52. He of course just called them B52 F1 though. The 4 plants on the other end of the tray closer to the camera with floppier flower stalks are King Henrys.
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These are mostly VFTs from the 12 TC jars Matt gave me in person almost 2 years ago. The largest ones got sold. Many of these were originally smaller plantlets when I got them or natural divisions since then. These had pretty thick roots last Summer and Fall and when I retrayed them into this tray in late Winter many of them still had very thick roots then too, which I was pretty impressed with at the time.:) They also were dividing like crazy when I retrayed them, but each cluster of them still had one large parent plant all the smaller ones were dividing off of.
Image
This tray has a mix of clones. Some of you may recognize the Jaws in the center. These came from Matt and Steve last year. The ones on the bottom are Wallys. They are good sized right now but not very colorful yet this year.
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The VFTs on the top are B52s. It's a long story why they are not bigger and more pristine looking and I don't want to get into it right now.:( But the good news is they seem to be recovering. The 4 VFTs on the bottom are more King Henrys.
Image
This is the first tray lifted up, the one with the DC B52 F1s. The roots are only a little thick but are rigid. They are not as thick as they would be outside in full sun though and some of my smaller non-flowering giants may have even thicker roots. In case you have not figured out why they are not as thick as they could be, it's because these are growing in a greenhouse. But I wanted to show that they can get thick and rigid to a good extent even in a greenhouse in LFS.

These are growing in a greenhouse because I want to see if they will set seed better this way than outside. Otherwise they would be growing outside.
By 95slvrZ28
Posts:  1825
Joined:  Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:00 pm
#141564
Joel, just so you know if you surround your picture links with img tags they'll show up embedded in the post.
Code: Select all
[img]URL/TO/IMAGE[/img]
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By Steve_D
Location: 
Posts:  3913
Joined:  Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:06 pm
#141575
Edited Joel's (idontlikeforms) post to include img tags around the links to images. -Steve
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By Matt
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Posts:  22523
Joined:  Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:28 pm
#141591
Created a new thread for this discussion.
209 wrote:Has anyone tried to grow these little monsters using aeroponics?
I have seen perhaps a couple of people growing flytraps using aeroponics. The plants looked horrible.

Joel, thanks for all of the information about your growing technique in LFS, the photos of your plants, and for sending me some of that nice NZ LFS. Blake and I will give it a go this season and see how we do with it. I am trying to think of some measurements to take on the plants before and after (perhaps letting them grow until August or so of next season before uprooting them again) the experiment in order to "measure" the relative health of the plants. Does anyone have suggestions? I was thinking:
1) Overall mass of each plant (weight)
2) Rhizome width
3) Root length
4) Root width

I will have 5 plants of near equivalent size growing in each medium (LFS and peat/sand/perlite). I was thinking that taking the average of each of the 4 above items before and after for each of the 5 plants would give at least something that would be representative of the overall health of the plant. Does this sound reasonable?

Blake, do you need me to send you some peat/sand/perlite, along with the plants?
By 95slvrZ28
Posts:  1825
Joined:  Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:00 pm
#141603
Sorry I just responded with the img tag thing last night Joel, I was tired and didn't want to read all of it, just look at the pretty plants! You have some very nice looking VFTs there, are the plants that you're allowing to flower all growing in the 4" deep trays you described?
Matt wrote:Does anyone have suggestions
I also think that we can also (roughly) measure root volume by submerging the roots into water and looking at the volume displaced. I say roughly because I don't have a full lab, but we should be able to get an idea using common cooking measures.

Matt, how would you feel about varying pot size on 2 of the LFS plants? Maybe grow one in a short pot and one in an even taller pot to see how the roots grow differently between the pots and overall plant health.
Matt wrote:Blake, do you need me to send you some peat/sand/perlite, along with the plants?
I have quite a bit of peat/sand/perilite that works, although I'm pretty sure my sand is finer grain than what you use. If you want to send some of either potting material just for the sake of consistency you can, just let me know what you plan on sending before you do so I can prepare media if I need to (I have to wash stuff for a few days...).
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By Matt
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Posts:  22523
Joined:  Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:28 pm
#141606
95slvrZ28 wrote:I also think that we can also (roughly) measure root volume by submerging the roots into water and looking at the volume displaced. I say roughly because I don't have a full lab, but we should be able to get an idea using common cooking measures.
Yeah, that would be nice to know also.
95slvrZ28 wrote:att, how would you feel about varying pot size on 2 of the LFS plants? Maybe grow one in a short pot and one in an even taller pot to see how the roots grow differently between the pots and overall plant health.
I think that would be a fine thing to do.
95slvrZ28 wrote:I have quite a bit of peat/sand/perilite that works, although I'm pretty sure my sand is finer grain than what you use.
I'll send you a flat rate box full of soil and plants sometime next week.
By 209
Posts:  122
Joined:  Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:08 am
#141613
Matt wrote:
209 wrote:Has anyone tried to grow these little monsters using aeroponics?
I have seen perhaps a couple of people growing flytraps using aeroponics. The plants looked horrible.
Humm...They were not doing it correctly then. They probably goofed up the nutrition. An aeroponic environment with a stable temperature and nutrient load should produce the largest and best looking plants possible.
By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#141622
This is a great conversation, but it also reminds me of the fads I've seen in the orchid world. There seems to be a constant search for the magic medium that never ends. I remember the tail end of the Osmunda days, followed by bark, then peat, then a huge LFS fad, inorganics, back to bark, and so on. The real magic is not in the medium, it is learning to read your plants and figure out what works best under your conditions and with your habits, chasing fads or trying to copy the mix a successful grower may use will only end in dead plants if you don't look at the big picture.
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By Matt
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Posts:  22523
Joined:  Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:28 pm
#141629
209 wrote:Humm...They were not doing it correctly then. They probably goofed up the nutrition. An aeroponic environment with a stable temperature and nutrient load should produce the largest and best looking plants possible.
Seems like that would be the case, but I know nothing about aeroponics.
Tony C wrote:The real magic is not in the medium, it is learning to read your plants and figure out what works best under your conditions and with your habits
Excellent point Tony! Being in tune with the plants is the largest key to successfully growing the plants well. Though, pot size, watering schedules and soil mixes do play an extremely important role in the overall health of the plant. And I don't think anyone here is arguing that their medium is the "magic" one. It's true that the best medium for one grower in one particular climate or with a particular care regimen, may not be the same for another grower. For me, as a retailer that ships flytraps potted (and sells flytrap medium), I'd like to ship plants in the "best" medium possible that is easiest for most people, in a wide array of climates, to grow the flytraps to large sizes without a lot of fuss. That's what I'm most interested in learning and I think we are already using it. I don't know if this experiment will provide any conclusive results to determine whether or not LFS is better for growing flytraps in a wider variety of climates, but I do think that at least some valuable information can be gleaned from conducting the experiment.
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By jht-union
Location: 
Posts:  3205
Joined:  Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:43 pm
#141636
I agree with Tony C,

There is not such thing as one factor affecting the growth of the roots or the overall health of the plant. The combination of watering, soil, sunlight, aeration, and insects all play a role in promoting good health for the plant.

I have grown vft's in LFSM mix with silica sand and another vft in all silica sand and in all peat moss, and also using peat moss and silica sand.( different ratios)

My plants grow well in all medias, and the roots are fairly the same from what I remembered when repotting( though I didn't pay much attention to the roots). But for me, when using peat moss, it is less demanding than using the other soils when watering, it also depends on how deep the pot is as I use 2ft containers, so watering every 20 days is good for me :)

For me, in my conditions, vft's and most of my plants grow very well in peat moss.

This is a trial error thing where you are looking what best suits you experimenting with different soils. But for the most part, we can all agree that growing VFT's in peat moss has proven to be the most widely used soil for CP's and there's no arguing about that.
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By idontlikeforms
Posts:  144
Joined:  Sun Feb 22, 2009 10:12 am
#141637
95slvrZ28 wrote:You have some very nice looking VFTs there, are the plants that you're allowing to flower all growing in the 4" deep trays you described?
That's all of them. Most of the VFTs that you could call "my personal collection" are there, except that I have about 500, mostly smaller, B52s that I also won't sell and a number of other clones that just weren't big enough to need a larger cell.
Steve_D wrote:My experience with pure long-fiber sphagnum moss is that in my hot and dry climate, it dries much too fast, endangering the plants regularly for lack of hydration. If one compensates by allowing the pots to sit in water, the pure long-fiber sphagnum stays much too wet all the time, which in my view encourages fungal infection and rot. So I personally don't use long-fiber sphagnum moss much, although I think it would be a fine ingredient in a medium when mixed with other ingredients, and is reported to work well for others in their particular climates and environments and with their care regimen.
I used LFS for VFTs when I used to live further inland in CA where it gets hot and arid. I think it does seem to me to dry out faster than peat but I never noticed the difference between it and peat to be that great. One thing I think happens is that a lot of water evaporates from the water trays themselves when it is hot and arid, particularly if the tray has a lot of water exposed to air and the same goes for the soil at the top of the pot. If the pot is somewhat wide on top water seems to evaporate more. It seems to me to clearly help if the pot is tall and skinny and the tray is full without a lot of water exposed to sunlight. I suspect a wide pot with PSP would have more water loss than a skinny pot of the same height filled with LFS.

The color of the pots/trays also seems to be a factor in water loss. I found that dark trays and pots heat up more and lose more water than light colored trays and pots. I had black trays when I lived more inland and wrapped white duct tape around them and found this kept them from getting as hot as they did when their black sides were exposed to the sun. This was also why I started using reflective duct tape on the top of my trays. But I wound up moving before Summer hit and never did get to see how big of a difference it would have made where I used to live when it was really hot.

About 6 weeks ago I started keeping my VFTs under 30% Aluminet shade cloth instead of just being exposed to pure full sun. I've found that on sunny days this cuts the water loss in their trays down to about 1/2 to 1/3rd of what it used to be. I've also taken a light meter a couple different times and tested it in front of the Aluminet shade cloth and then placed it about 3 inches or more underneath it and found that the same light intensity was read. I have not noticed my VFTs growing more slowly under it either, though there is much much less occasional scorch on less hardened off VFTs because of the shade cloth.

I think there are a lot of things that can be done to minimize water loss in VFT trays and these seem to me to be weightier factors than whether primarily LFS or peat is being used.

BTW, Steve have you ever used New Zealand LFS or just other types of LFS?
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By Tony C
Posts:  352
Joined:  Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:23 am
#141640
Matt wrote:And I don't think anyone here is arguing that their medium is the "magic" one.
That point was intended for the less experienced members who seem to latch onto a dogmatic belief that peat/sand is the only way to grow VFT.
By 95slvrZ28
Posts:  1825
Joined:  Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:00 pm
#141650
Matt wrote:I'll send you a flat rate box full of soil and plants sometime next week.
Sounds great. Just shoot me an email when you send it off so I know roughly when to expect it.

Chipi3s, at this point all of us should know that the conditions you grow a plant in can very heavily effect how it grows. I've often heard people say that NZ Peat is better grade (in terms of texture, moisture retention etc.) than other peat as well. A highly moisture retentive LFS certainly may be a superior medium, that's what we're going to try to find out :)
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