FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi everyone!

I know it's a little early in the season for seeds, however I've been looking around online and in the FTS even, however places I find seed at seem to worry me, and the FTS is sold out. I originally bought a carnivorous plant kit that was supposed to have VFTs as well as other various carnivorous plant seeds with it, and it has been a huge waste of money, really: Out of three sets of seed packs (3 x 10 VFT seeds, & 3 x assorted cold stratification seed bags), I have had an extremely low germination rate: I have two sundew plants (I think!) that seem to be growing, one Cobra Lily that has seemed to do fairly well (and is putting up a shoot, as it germinated last summer and went dormant during the winter. I thought it had died!), but absolutely none of the VFT seeds have grown, though the company said they were "guaranteed" to grow, hence the multiple seed packs.

After reading the guides and the information, and having read about the seeds of a VFT, I'm wondering if the problem lies in that I'm getting old seed that isn't stored very well, and they aren't viable once they get to me. :/ I've followed the information in the guide about how to sew VFT seeds, and how to properly care for them, and yet I've gotten absolutely nowhere. So after lurking around here for awhile, I decided to go ahead and join the board, post up an introduction (which I did earlier), and now I decided to post here and see if anyone might have some seeds, any variety, that I might be able to try growing. I would absolutely love to have my own little baby VFTs sprouting. Or if anyone would be so kind as to send me some after theirs bloom and seed, I would be happy to wait, as well. Either way, I really appreciate anyone's help whatsoever! I absolutely love carnivorous plants in general, but I must say, VFTs are definitely my favorite.

Patience & timing are your friends. You acknowledge in your post that you may be early - you are. Wait until people are harvesting this year's VFT seeds. As you've already experienced, getting old non-viable seed from unreliable sources is a waste of time & money. You've only got a few more months to wait - time to chill for a bit.

I regularly see this exact issue w/ Ceph seeds. When people are harvesting Cephalotus seeds, none of the newbies want any. After the seeds are no longer fresh - people start to look for them & the numbers keep increasing until lots of people are possessed to find seeds at the worst time of the year - when they are almost definitely not viable. This seems to be the time when the fleabay huckster seed sellers really clean up. None of their nasty old seed germinates but they still get their money - LOL.

That is why I've considered buying some live plants, which I may still do, however I really want to grow some from seed too, more of a self-accomplishment thing than anything. I seem to only have luck growing carnivorous plants, in my experience, even looking in the direction of other plants by me seems to kill them, lol!

That said, in a few weeks I will probably order some live plants, probably from FTS, actually, and I look forward to growing them until I have some seeds to plant.