I was able to propagate about 80 flytraps this year at a strike rating of about 70%.
Here's what I did.
- Wait until the flower stalk was fairly tall (~12") and then cut it off at the base. I usually wait almost until the flower stalks were going to open.
- Cut the flower stalk up into 1-2 inch pieces.
- Fill a seed tray with 1:1 peat:perlite soil mix and insert one end of the flower stalk vertically about ~1/2" into the soil.
- Melt a bunch of holes in a propagation cover and place over the seed tray. This should provide at least 90% relative humidity consistently. High humidity is a critical aspect for successfully striking cuttings.
- Water with good water (<50 ppm) and place under cool bright lights. You're shooting for about 15 DLI without raising the heat inside the propagation tray beyond 85F. Keep the flytraps wetter than you normally would but not soaking wet.
- Now the hardest step ... waiting. They should strike in about 2-3 months time.
- Once the plants have formed leaves you should be able to transplant them out of the propagation chamber and into to their own pots. They should also be placed under stronger light (~15-30 DLI) at this time. Once under stronger light they'll grow even faster. Because of that I try to transplant them as soon as possible. I've found the baby flytraps are amazingly resilient and even clumps without root systems have grown very well for me after transplanting.
Btw, I recommend inserting the flower stalks vertically in the soil because I noticed the strike points are almost always on sections of the plant that didn't receive strong light. I also found that when I lay the cuttings horizontally they had a strong tendency to curl up and lose contact with the soil. At that point, even if the cutting struck then it was frequently on sections that were not in contact with the soil and the baby plants would eventually die off.
By inserting the cuttings vertically, you'll get strike points below the soil surface and the plants will be able to form good root systems. I try not to insert the cuttings more that ~1/2", though, because I noticed the strike points at the bottom of the stalk had to reach up too far to the soil surface and became elongated, fragile, and stunted.
Hope that helps!