FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Well, unfortunately, some of your comments make me feel better at my feeble attempts at growing seedlings. I guess misery loves company, eh?

Seems mine usually will germinate, some will die off, and the remaining ones are just malingerers...staying small, not hardly growing. I give them a wee bit of Maxsea on occasion, but they still seem to just sit there...laughing at me and calling me bad names. The largest seedlings I've grown are about an inch tall now and were started months ago...from some d. filiformis Florida Red/white-flower that Chef sent me. I thought I wasn't going to get much out of them but I've got probably seven or eight of them going now. Most every other variety of seedlings that I've germinated has dwindled in number of seedlings and those still living have remained small. The seedlings will germinate, somewhat, but then just seem to sit there.

I've mostly started all my seeds in pots of 50:50 peat/perlite with a 1/4" or so deep layer of sifted 100% peat moss. I surprisingly had some d. brevifolia to sprout from seed in a pot where the newly planted parent plants had died off but had dropped seeds. I'm considering going with a heavier sand mix if I can find some suitable sand. Maybe I'll start trying two pots of each variety...maybe the 50:50 peat/perlite and a more sandy 30:70 or similar peat/sand mix. I've seen capillaris and brevifolia growing in sandy soil with dark organic matter mingled in whereas I've seen filiformis in spongy sphagnum moss. Maybe focus more on trying to replicate the natural growing medium. Using peat moss as a large part of the germination mix seems odd, in that the peat in a real bog would be deep and out of reach of the falling seeds, wouldn't they? So plants growing in sphagnum moss would probably fall and germinate on fresher moss, probably live. And, plants growing in sandy conditions would not naturally have a high percentage of peat in what they fall on. Maybe the tannins and other chemicals in the peat moss aren't the best for germinating seeds? I dunno...I'm just reaching out trying to grab the ring as I ride this merry-go-round.

When I first started out trying to grow from seed I held back a few seeds as "insurance". I kept doing this out of habit. I think I'm going to start planting the entire envelope. That way if I get a few plants to mature I can then do leaf cuttings....those have worked well for me with filiformis and I figure would work well with other drosera.

Maybe some of the folks that are good at starting seeds could post there techniques for us mere mortals to ponder over.

Do you bag or dome your pots, evenwind? If you do have them covered for germination when do you remove the cover? I like the idea of pampering the studs of the crop. I'm like you, I don't want (or need) a field of plants, just a few. Then, if I want more I can do leaf-cuttings. But, I gotta get them to the mature stage first. I read where someone (you?) had used a blender to finely chop up the LFSM...I haven't seen my wife use ours in years...I hope it's still stuck back on a shelf somewhere.

The best baby plants that I've grown I grew from leaf-cuttings of a filiformis. I grew these in roughly 1-1/2" of BetterGro LFSM under about the same depth of live sphagnum moss....cuttings laying on the live moss. I might try this with some drosera seeds and see what happens.

I've been thinking about how a plant growing in the wild plants its seeds. I wouldn't think seeds would drop onto peat moss, being as in a bog the peat would be far below the surface (relative to size of the seed). So, the seed would likely land on live sphagnum moss or some type of sandy/organic(I think we refer to it as peaty) mix. I've only seen three types of drosera growing in the wild. Brevifolia and capillaris which were both in a tightly packed sandy soil with speckles of dark matter mixed in...a shallow layer of sphagnum moss was growing nearby both of these but they were not growing in it...only out of the bare sandy soil close to it. The other drosera was a filiformis which was growing out of a spongy sphagnum moss bog. All locations were "bottom" or "basin" like areas with seepage areas within them. Very humid. These are just my own, *very limited* experiences with wild growing plants and I feel other people probably have witnessed these species growing in much different environments. But, having seen this it tends to make me think that rosette, flat-growing plant seeds would benefit from the sandy/"peaty" mix and that taller, arial-growing plant seeds may benefit from live sphagnum moss. The seeds fall at the parent plants feet...and under an open sky.

Having stated the above, my first batch of brevifolia natively was in sandy/organic(?) soil but I transplanted them to a peat/sand mix...they died. But...one or two of the plants had seed stalks and a month or two later I started seeing tiny red specks appearing. So, apparently they *can* handle peat moss ok. And, @KategoricalKarnivore , in another thread stated that brevifolia grows close to him and they grew in a sandy area close to him and that he used a rough 2:1 sand-to-peat mix with good success. So, maybe the peat is ok...dunno.

Thanks to the comments above from evenwind and Bug_cemetery I think I know what I'm going to do next with my stock of live sphagnum...make a germination/nursery chamber from it! It won't hurt the sphagnum moss, but it'll be "earning its keep"! It makes sense. I'm thinking if I can find a tall container so that I have maybe six inches or so above the growing mix surface that that would create a good, humid zone above the plants while still allowing a free exchange of air. Those milk-shake covers with the big hole in the top come to mind...but on a larger scale. Maybe a tall disposable cake cover with a large hole in the center covering the sphagnum moss container. Planted pots nestled down into the sphagnum moss and covered/surrounded by the vented top.

Thanks to the link to the chopper, evenwind!

Oh well, guess I've been rambling enough...