FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hello, I was wondering if someone here could answer a couple of questions for me.
A couple of months ago my Wife brought me back a Rocket Farms Fly Trap from our local grocery store and it’s been doing well in the backyard here, I just wanted to finally get it out of the tiny pot that it came in inside of its death cube and into a nice 7” nursery pot. I bought a pound bag of professional grade pre mixed soil from CC and they answered a lot of my questions that I had at the time. They also suggested to put a layer of long fiber sphagnum moss at the bottom so that the soil wouldn’t leach out into the tray of water but I completely forgot to ask just how much of a layer of sphagnum moss was recommended and didn’t really think about it until getting the soil in on top of the layer of long fiber sphagnum I had placed at the bottom and went to do a top water test and had the water tray flooded with dirty water. One of my questions for those who have used long fiber sphagnum as a buffer in the same manner would be how much of a lay would you suggest using? I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to over do it but I’m guessing I didn’t add enough? When I have done a top water flush on the current substrate it’s sitting in (to make sure it measured safe enough to leave in the soil plug to avoid stressing the plant to much so it can recover before dormancy) the water came out clear after draining through the pot. Could this just be down to a difference in medium or did I not add enough sphagnum before putting in the peat and perlite mix? I just want to make sure everything is good before putting it into the new nursery pot. It also has 5 flower stalks on it right now that I’d like to try my hand at cloning to get them off of the plant for now and see if I can get some baby traps in the process (that’s what the smaller pot on the right is for in the first picture), if anyone has any helpful tips on that as well I’d greatly appreciate it.

I use about 1 to 2 inches of LFSM in the bottom of my pots. Kinda depends on the pot depth.
That's a nice VFT, I found some nice ones a few weeks back at a local grocery store as well. Sometimes treasures pop up in unexpected places!

Gary wrote:I use about 1 to 2 inches of LFSM in the bottom of my pots. Kinda depends on the pot depth.
That's a nice VFT, I found some nice ones a few weeks back at a local grocery store as well. Sometimes treasures pop up in unexpected places!

Thank you for the tip Gary, I’ll make sure to add another inch or so and try again to see if that does the trick. Thank you, I just saw your Trader Joe’s post a few minutes ago while scrolling through the forum, nice red coloring on some of yours! I completely agree, usually around here though when you find them they’re completely gone so it was nice to find this one and save it before it met the same fate as the others.

I agree with ChefDean, rinsing the peat helps a great deal. I rinse both the peat and Perlite 3x with distilled water, after the the 3rd rinse the water usually runs clear.

ChefDean wrote:I typically only use about 1/2 to one inch of LFSM when I have it available. However, even if I don't have it, I gently flush the pot with tap water to remove the inevitable mud from peat, then a final flush with rain water to remove minerals. Even without the LFSM layer, I have very little peat come out into my trays.

Thank you for your helpful tips/information ChefDean I will definitely try flushing the soil further and will post another photo of the plant on here once I get it repotted. I appreciate you and Gary for taking the time to answer my question.

Finally had the time to take your advice and get a little more sphagnum in there at the bottom and make sure everything was thoroughly flushed. Here’s a picture of the flytrap in the new nursery pot. Thank you again Gary and ChefDean.

Looks good! I see some flower stalks in there as well.
I spent a couple hours repotting some VFTs today. It'll be a couple weeks before they get back on their feet, but they have a lot more room for those long roots.

Check that middle flower stalk, the one with the dark spots. I see some small insects on it, hope they aren't aphids.

Gary wrote:Looks good! I see some flower stalks in there as well.
I spent a couple hours repotting some VFTs today. It'll be a couple weeks before they get back on their feet, but they have a lot more room for those long roots.

Thank you.
Yeah there were some on it, I just clipped all the flower stalks off though and cut them into / little over 1” sections to try to get some clones off of them. The ones that still had flowers on the top I did standing straight up in the soil and the ones with slant clipped ends on both sides I did laying down with both ends covered by soil but left the middle portion exposed so it can still get light. All together off the 5 flower stalks I got 9 chances at getting a clone out of them. I will leave the flower stalks that come on in the spring though to flower and try to get some seed out of them. I’d like to try my hand at growing using both methods.

MikeB wrote:Check that middle flower stalk, the one with the dark spots. I see some small insects on it, hope they aren't aphids.

If there were any on there at the time they’re gone now. I clipped the flower stalks off as mentioned in my most recent comment to try to get some clones off of them and allow the plant to store energy for dormancy/bounce back from being repotted.

I’ll give an update on the cuttings one way or the other and show if I was successful or not at my first try.

Here’s a closeup of the flytrap after clipping all of the flower stalks off, I was careful enough with the curved tip scissors that I was able to get them all without any accidents.

A couple days in on the flower stalk cutting clone attempt, still looking green and one of the flowers have opened up.