Most of the plants that I have are Droseras. Those are the ones that are very easy to reproduce simply by putting one leaf in some distilled water. The plants just sprout up after a couple of months soaking.
They just start growing in a tangled mess. Some are connected, not by roots, but because they grow out of many leaves pruned from plants before or during winter.
I started by rinsing and filling many pots I had used a couple years ago.
Step 1:
A layer of perlite at the very bottom. It holds moisture very well and keeps the moss from running out the drain holes.
Step 2
Add moistened Sphagnum moss on top of the perlite.
Step 3
Add perlite, a much finer variety of the substance, and mix it in with the moss.
Step 4
Now I add semi-moist moss to the top and use a skewer to make a hole to receive the baby plants. Most babies do not have much of a root. But if they do, there is a for it to drop into. I never know until I lift a baby plant from another pot.
The first one that I am replanting came out of the repotting mentioned in this post. There were four of these
When I got that plant, it did nothing but get brown all winter. Now it is shooting up and its roots are showing at its base. There were four little Drosera spatulata plants that were microscopic growing at its base. I must get those out of that pot so that I can add moss to that rate beauty.
The first one to come out is the largest spatulata.
Step 5
Pinch just below the surface right below the center of the plant. I use a long nosed pliers and try to grab as much wet moss as I can with to the new pot.
This is the largest of the four that was in that pot mentioned in the linked post above. The others are tiny but should survive in their own new pots.
All of the pots we are using today are two inches wide and the plants should be happy in their starter pots until mid to late summer. We are just starting summer now where I live.
I repeat that process until there are no babies in the other pot. Now I can top up the moss in that, much larger, plant.
Step 5-b
This is a variation of the last step because these propagated plants are in a clump.
I am not sure how many plants I will find in the clump. I separate them, sometimes having to clip them apart at the root or old leaf that was their mother. There will be no pinching. No moss is taken with them to their new pot.
Here is what I have on my counter top after they have been separated.
I did not count them. I start moving them to their new pots one by one, starting with the largest ones first. Larger babies have a better chance of survival than do the more little ones.
These three photos show what I had in my hand, approximately one square inch of growth from my nursery pot. I still have another 20 or so square inches in that pot. I may need more starter pots to continue to plant them all.
I have my work cut out for me. Here is what we have accomplished today.
These will stay inside on the kitchen counter for a week or so and I will add distilled water with a dropper near the roots. If any die, I will reuse the pot for the next clump that I tackle. All of these will be ready for sale, another of my monetary hobby perks, in the next few months.
Until they are sold, bugs will happily land on them and become nutrition for these awesome wonders of nature.
Thanks for taking the time to learn more about Bug Eaters. They are really fun to cultivate.