Winter makes carnivorous plants get sickly looking, but now everything is greening up for bug season!
Sometimes a little pot that used to contain a venus fly trap, ends up getting visitors from neighboring pots. I just take the one that looks most like an overgrown jungle and I start thinning it out.
I start by bringing it inside and I keep it in the same north/south orientation that it was outside. I have had much better luck with these plants if they do not sense that they have been rotated.
I have four pots of appropriate sizes and I prep the empty ones. The other is had a plant in it and a bird carried off - some birds like to pick the bugs off - the ones that are caught on the leaves.
I am putting perlite in the bottoms and sphagnum moss in the top three quarters.
After doing this for many years, I somewhat know the amount of roots that certain size plants will have. I prep a dimple or hole for the estimated root growth that I will find.
The roots of a plant bond with the surrounding dirt and may wilt if that bond is broken. So I use pliers, aiming to pinch up as much of the dirt and roots, never closing the pliers, just grabbing it like a pitch fork grabs hay.
You then need to pop it in place and make sure that the sticky leaves do not adhere to the pliers before you pull them away.
Then I push the new moss in contact with the moss that came with the plant. Done.
Several more to do in order to clear the skies over the venus.
We are starting to see some of the blackened traps under all the brush. We will get to those once the new plants are safely in their pots.
Is this the last plant we have to do? Look again.
I found an unexpected new comer at the edge. When planting these from a propagation bowl (last post), you have to bring the parent leave with. This one has roots. They are just a millimeter long.
Next, we only need clip off the dead traps. Do not cut into the green leaf. I use a scissor only to keep from pulling on the leaf and possibly detaching it from the bulb that is underground.
This one is all done. Note that I did not do anything with a partially brown leaf. These plants turn brown as the leaves die. what is happening is this. The plant stores the draws the energy in the leave back into its bulb, especially before winter, and stores it there.
Another part of the clean-up job is to compress the moss that is under the traps. These traps grow out and tend to lay in the moss. It can cause rot at the 'hinge' part of the trap. I like them to be a couple millimeters off the ground, so to speak. When they get an insect, it will likely be on the ground but only until the trap opens back up.
The last two pictures show the new leaves forming in the center. These will be open and ready to catch flies in about four to five days. That process, as with all others, will be much faster when the temperature goes above 70 degrees. Right now, we are not getting highs above 55 degrees.
I almost forgot. You should always mark the compass position of the new pots to make sure their transition is less stressful for them.
My next post: This guy needs a new, bigger pot!
