Ok, I went against my OCD-grain and through a 1/4" drill bit in the drill and put four holes in the very bottom and four holes around the side, barely above the bottom. Worked ok...chunked out a little, but hey...it's a big styrofoam pot (minnow bucket
)!
I went ahead and re-potted the four little Wallyworld rescue pots of traps this afternoon. The OCD in me made it an all-afternoon-event!!
I rinsed the peat moss twice, I *think* I got the peat:perlite ratio close to right. But, I did end up putting more peat moss than I did to start with...the mix just felt too light...but what do I know? After all was said and done, it drains well and appears to hold moisture. I'll be watching it close.
Regarding the mix...are the equal parts of peat and perlite supposed to be equal parts of *moist* peat and perlite? Or should both be measured dry?
Anyhoo... I broke down all four little pots. The outer later around the plug was simply some ground up peat moss with no perlite. This outer later fell away easily from the "plug". The first two fly traps (one of mine and one of my granddaughter's) that I re-potted a few weeks ago I did not break apart the plugs and simply planted it in the new mix. I decided to go ahead and make these transplants "bare-roots". Firmly but carefully I broke the plug up. It too some gentle pulling and teasing to get the plug to break apart and to separate the multiple plants within the plug. Out of the four pots I ended up with somewhere around 25 plants. Some were tiny, which I went ahead and planted the best I could. There were several rhizomes in each pot.
My tools of choice was a tablespoon (used both ends), my pocket knife (used to dig the deeper slits in the growing mix), and a #2 pencil (used for making small holes for the tiny plants and the eraser was used to get in between plants when firming in around them.
Anyhow, I got all the plants in the 8.5" diameter minnow bucket pot. It looks semi-crowded, but these are really small plants that I don't think will get to be large plants...they'll probably fill in a good bit, hopefully, but the trap leaves are small...biggest ones probably in the neighborhood of 3/8" long. So, though it is rather congested in the bucket, I think they will be fine for a long time...maybe (or maybe not!)
After all the divided plants were planted I bottom watered *and* top watered with rainwater. I bottom watered first and saw that the planting mix was taking the water. For the top watering I took a 20oz water bottle, drilled a hole in the lid, and squeezed a drinking straw through the hole. I filled it with rainwater and used the straw to water in between all the plants well, helping to settle the mix around the plant bases and roots. I watered enough so that the water ran out into the saucer.
Finally I moved the minnow bucket over into a more shaded area...more mottled sunlight. That probably isn't necessary as we are supposed to start getting rain tomorrow with rain chances continuing for several days. I may need to move the bucket indoors or into the garage to keep the freshly transplanted plants from getting battered too badly.
And, similar to
@Panman, I have a small terrorist cell of squirrels besieging the house...aka "flying rats". Thus, out of sheer fearof having the yellow toothed heathens possibly mow down my carefully planted traps,
I stole Panman's idea I created "The Squirrel Defense 0005".
I went out a little bit ago to check the plants. Even after having gone through a tormenting afternoon at my hands the plants actually seemed more perky than they were before the re-potting. We'll see how they look tomorrow!