- Sat May 05, 2012 8:00 am
#141561
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.