FlyTrapCare Forums

Today I was separating a whole bunch of seedling Drosera of various sorts in multiple overcrowded pots which got me to thinking...

What is y'alls procedure for growing Drosera (or Dionaea or anything else for that matter) from seed. Do you intentionally overseed pots with the intention of thinning the weak ones out? Do you sparsely seed and just let them grow? Or do you do something in the middle where they grow closely together and split them for replanting later? I never really see anyone talking about this and would like to hear how everyone else deals with seedlings.

I think it goes without saying that plants will have to be transplanted at some point. I'm only asking about, say, the first 2 months after germination depending on growth rate. Aaaaand.......GO!!

Patrick

Pat. Experience has taught me to plant out only a partial amount of seed that I have in any one pot. For example, if I have about 50 drosera seeds of something new to me, I'll plant out maybe 10-20 seeds for the first try. If they don't germinate, I'll research again and try with more seeds and slightly different conditions. The reserve seeds are sort of insurance is case I do something dumb with the first batch. Planting fewer seeds at a time tends to result in seedling being further apart, which means they don't need to be transplanted too quickly.

I second twitcher. When it comes to actually putting them in the pot, drosera are so small that I just kinda sprinkle em in like I'm seasoning a steak.

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I've been germinating drosera seeds in water. I got some small vials, fill them with distilled water, and add the seeds. I check them every day and give it a little shake. When I see some sprouting I put some distilled water in a saucer and dump out the vial. I then use an eye dropper to pick up the sprouted seeds and put them in the pot. If there are still seeds that didn't sprout, I put them back in the coal and repeat the process

Panman wrote:I've been germinating drosera seeds in water. I got some small vials, fill them with distilled water, and add the seeds. I check them every day and give it a little shake. When I see some sprouting I put some distilled water in a saucer and dump out the vial. I then use an eye dropper to pick up the sprouted seeds and put them in the pot. If there are still seeds that didn't sprout, I put them back in the coal and repeat the process

I haven't done that but I've got a great little stand up vital set that I'm going to do that with. Does work for generally any drosera?

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Not sure on that. So far I have used it for capensis, filiformis, and brevifolia.

I just sprinkle mine on the soil and mist it daily

To spread out Drosera seeds, I press my clean fingertip on the seeds so they stick, and then i gently rub them off as I move my finger over the seeding area. For watering, if they are in small pots or cells, I water from underneath. I put a wad of sphagnum on the bottom and then cover it with peat/perlite and finally peat. (I omit the perlite from the top layer to avoid floating and because of aesthetics).

If it's a seed flat without drainage, I create a divot in the middle and I don't seed it. I water it by putting water into the divot to spread out. Attaching a photo because it's hard to explain.

I'm very interested to try the water method though

Good stuff. I find that I am generally overzealous with the amount of seed i put in any single container, I suppose I should try seeding sparsely like twitcher said. I've got a ton of seed sitting around so I'm not concerned about failure to germinate so much, but I may try the water method like panman mentioned.

Panman wrote:I've been germinating drosera seeds in water. I got some small vials, fill them with distilled water, and add the seeds. I check them every day and give it a little shake. When I see some sprouting I put some distilled water in a saucer and dump out the vial. I then use an eye dropper to pick up the sprouted seeds and put them in the pot. If there are still seeds that didn't sprout, I put them back in the coal and repeat the process

Do you sterilize your vials and boil the water beforehand to prevent other stuff growing in it?

Patrick

I bought some centrifuge vials from Amazon. I think it was $5 for 50. I don't do anything else to sterilize them and use distilled water. So far, I haven't had any problems with anything growing that I don't want. I've even reused some of the vials.

It also depends on what you are going to do with the plants that grow.
If your primary goal is to grow a few for personal use, the water method with the eyedropper can get your sprouts right where you want them.
Sowing just 10 or 20 seeds on the media can get you many that have room to grow before transplant, then you can pick and choose which to keep.
Sprinkling like a seasoning a steak (my favorite analogy) can yield you a lot that will likely need separation early, but leaves you with a lot of extra to give away to the neighborhood kids. (That is what I do, the neighborhood moms seem more excited about it though ) Alternatively, you could try to sell the extras, but most Drosera are common enough that it can be difficult to sell them sometimes, making it more trouble than it's worth.
Last, if you have enough seeds, I've seen people get the trays that have multiple, 6 plug containers. Fill everything with media, not just the plugs, so that it overlaps. Sprinkle (steak seasoning method) multiple varieties of dew seeds (mostly varieties of Capes) and grow them that way. They then choose what they want to keep, and sell the rest. A couple of plugs with 10 to 15 plants on your local marketplace site, ebay, heck, even your local farmers market for $20 to $25 would probably move quick. Whether you charge shipping is up to you.

What I do is I take a piece of WHITE paper and crease it in the middle. Put some seeds in that crease. Hold the end of the paper over the soil and GENTLY tap the paper while angling the paper so the seeds will slide down to the end and one by one fall into the soil. You can control how many and where they fall this way.