FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

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Discussions on how to propagate your plants sexually and asexually, by seed, natural division or leaf pulling

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By JaneCP
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Posts:  97
Joined:  Sun May 02, 2021 3:13 am
#385148
Hello everyone!
So I’ve never grown any carnivorous plants from seed before I joined this forum but the awesome seedbank here gave me a chance. Being new at this, I wanted to see what others are doing and experiment with some methods myself… So here is my first seed germination experiment and it involves Drosera spatulata seeds from the Seedbank.

(Please note, none of what I’m doing is an original idea but things I remembered from reading somewhere. Unfortunately, because of the hours and hours of google-ing, I can’t exactly remember where each tip came from so I’m sorry I can’t reference anything!)

I used seed germination trays that I had which have drainage holes and humidity domes and set up three trays each with three types of soil mix:
Bottom layer is LFSM (just to keep the peat moss and sand from escaping through the drainage hole)
Middle layer is 50/50 rinsed peat moss and silica sand
Top layer for 1st row is sifted and rinsed peat moss, 2nd row is peat moss/silica sand, and 3rd row is chopped up LFSM
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All three trays were placed in the same location for better control and had humidity domes over them.
Week 1: No sprouts yet but grass-like things from LFSM are appearing.
Week 2: What looks like algae appearing in LFSM and peat/sand layer but first sprout noted in sifted peat moss layer!
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Week 3: Algae growth and white mold now in all three layers (guess I needed to rinse things more), also fungus gnat larvae! Picked out any larvae I could find with tweezers.
Week 4: Sprouts in all 3 layers and noticing first initial sprouts from sifted peat moss layer now have carnivorous leaves!
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Skipping to Week 8: All layers had sprouts eventually with the LFSM layer being the last to produce sprouts which was surprising since I thought it would perform the best.

Although it was more work prepping the sifted peat moss layer, it was my personal favorite since it produced sprouts the fastest and it was much easier to see sprouts or unwanted pests versus the others.
I highly recommend everyone to try their own experiments too! It was so much fun to see what worked for me and what didn’t. Let me know if anyone else has other experiment ideas, I would love to give them a try (if I have all the needed materials, of course).

My second experiment has already started and it involves the use of Neem oil, diluted isopropyl alcohol, vs. nothing for controlling mold growth and unwanted pests to see what is effective.
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By Supercazzola
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Posts:  1499
Joined:  Sun Nov 22, 2020 1:57 am
#385162
Nice write up and experiment!
A few questions:
(1) can you describe how you are sifting the peat? Is it before or after you rinse it?
(2) speaking of rinsing, please describe how you did that (length of time, number of times)?
(3) I’m curious, did you treat the white mold with something like Captan ? Or did you leave it alone ?
(4) how did you detect and remove the fungus gnat larvae (and why)?

Sorry for so many questions, but I am curious.
Thank you for the write up
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By JaneCP
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Joined:  Sun May 02, 2021 3:13 am
#385168
Supercazzola wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:53 am Nice write up and experiment!
A few questions:
(1) can you describe how you are sifting the peat? Is it before or after you rinse it?
(2) speaking of rinsing, please describe how you did that (length of time, number of times)?
(3) I’m curious, did you treat the white mold with something like Captan ? Or did you leave it alone ?
(4) how did you detect and remove the fungus gnat larvae (and why)?

Sorry for so many questions, but I am curious.
Thank you for the write up
No, please, ask away! The post was a shortened down version since I was afraid it was going to be too long...
1 - I sifted the peat moss using the tool pictured below. I found it at the dollar store but don't remember exactly what it was called. And definitely sift AFTER rinsing. I initially made the mistake of trying to give it an extra rinse after sifting and the sifting made the peat moss completely dissolve in the distilled water... basically lost all the work I had done.
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2 - For rinsing, I put distilled water into a big container of peat moss and massaged the peat moss to force it to take up the distilled water. After that, I would take a handful of wet peat moss and squeeze the water out and place the squeezed peat moss into another container until almost all the peat moss was transferred. Then I repeat by adding in distilled water again. I did this a total of five times. I read that someone would do it over ten times but honestly my muscles were way too tired. I also didn't let it sit in distilled water which I wonder if that would have made a difference... an experiment for next time I suppose.
For the sand, rinsing it was WAY easier. I just poured distilled water into a container of silica sand (while wearing a mask because of the dust from the sand). Then I mixed it around manually and then poured out the water without trying to lose too much sand.
I am questioning the effectiveness of rinsing. For my second experiment, I'm seeing the usefulness and potency of Neem oil and isopropyl alcohol with germinating seeds and I'm getting interesting results. But I will have to post that at another time to verify things first.

3 - With the white mold, I left it alone. With my other germination trays (with tomatoes and peppers), it was easy to just scrape off the mold since the seeds were planted under the soil but I was afraid with these seeds since it was just placed on top of the soil. I read that the white mold isn't too harmful to seedlings and it seems to be partly true. Below I have a picture of two d. spatulata sprouts growing alongside the algae and mold. These sprouts appeared and the mold started before the small sprout had it's first carnivorous leaf and it's still growing. However, in the second picture the algae and mold appeared first and as you can see, no sprouts appeared over the eight weeks. The two pictures are the worst pods I had with the algae and white mold growth and I plan to treat it to hopefully help out the little sprouts.
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4 - I read that fungus gnat larvae can eat/impact seedlings so I wanted to remove every larvae I find. Basically if I saw anything wiggling, I plucked them out with tweezers. They were really easy to see in the sifted peat moss row but hardest to see in the LFSM row. (I'm going to omit the pic of fungus gnat larvae just in case some people don't want to see it)

Let me know if I need to clarify anything further and feel free to ask for any other info~
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By NightRaider
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Posts:  418
Joined:  Mon Jun 07, 2021 4:01 am
#385188
JaneCP wrote: No, please, ask away! The post was a shortened down version since I was afraid it was going to be too long...
I actually just want to say I'm incredibly appreciative for all of this work you're doing, speaking as someone who is also just starting my first attempts at germination. I don't think there's a particular shortage of basic guides and information out there for germination in general, but experiments like this that draw a direct comparison between different methods are much harder to come by so any crowdsourced science like this is always incredibly appreciated by me if by no one else. With that in mind, I and I'm sure many others wouldn't complain in the least about having more detailed writeups, even if they did end up being rather lengthy (if you chose to do so of course, since I'm sure this must be incredibly time-consuming already).
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By JaneCP
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Joined:  Sun May 02, 2021 3:13 am
#385217
Thank you! I'll be sure to keep posting my experiments and their results :D
I'm open to any ideas/suggestions for future experiments. My plan has been to try just about everything and take tons of notes!
I'm pretty new with carnivorous plants myself, but I agree and really love that this forum allows everyone to bounce ideas and knowledge off of each other~
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By MaxVft
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Joined:  Sat May 08, 2021 4:17 am
#385221
Wonderful write up!
I have a couple ideas that could be used in the future by both me and other users:
-Germination in a sterile tube of distilled water.
-Germination on a moistened tissue paper in a ziploc bag.
-Or even just letting the flower stalk do it's thing and germinating with the parent plant.
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By JaneCP
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Posts:  97
Joined:  Sun May 02, 2021 3:13 am
#385300
MaxVft wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:08 am Wonderful write up!
I have a couple ideas that could be used in the future by both me and other users:
-Germination in a sterile tube of distilled water.
-Germination on a moistened tissue paper in a ziploc bag.
-Or even just letting the flower stalk do it's thing and germinating with the parent plant.
I'll have to give these a try, especially the moistened tissue paper one seems interesting. Please let us know if you happened to get any results with these yourself!
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By coorain
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Posts:  60
Joined:  Tue May 11, 2021 4:45 pm
#385306
Thanks so much for sharing this! I am also new to CPs from seed and am totally surprised to hear that the LFSM sprouted last! I was kicking myself for not being able to find it some and just starting out with a peat/sand mix, but maybe I did myself a favor!
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By MaxVft
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Joined:  Sat May 08, 2021 4:17 am
#385307
coorain wrote: Tue Jul 20, 2021 9:21 pm Thanks so much for sharing this! I am also new to CPs from seed and am totally surprised to hear that the LFSM sprouted last! I was kicking myself for not being able to find it some and just starting out with a peat/sand mix, but maybe I did myself a favor!
Hi @coorain,
The rate of germination is always variable and sometimes will change if you keep the media in different conditions. It's not necessarily that peat is better, as I have had far better luck with LFSM. @JaneCP's experiment turned out different, with peat doing much better.
Just my opinion
Max
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By JaneCP
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Posts:  97
Joined:  Sun May 02, 2021 3:13 am
#385313
Completely agree with MaxVft, everyone's conditions differs so I highly encourage everyone to experiment and see what works best for them~ I was surprised with my results so I'm definitely going to be experimenting again and again to see what happens and of course I'll be adding the results here ;)
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