One week ago, I had comments similar to the title of this blog post. It is not that simple, but today I am going to show you how start to finish. This will answer all the questions I got last week.
Here is an example of the step by step we will be doing today.
The above is an uplose and personal look at the base of a Sarracenia plant. This one has 14 leaves, or pitchers of nectar as it were. They sit there and wait for pray to start munching on the edge taht leads up to the trap. When the go inside, they do not come back out.
The plant is 14.25 inches tall (36 cm) from the bottom of the pot to the top of the tallest pitcher. The tallest leaves are nearly 10 inches tall from the moss they are in to the top of the pitcher lid.
I have decided to pull one of these beautiful works of art from the plant and let it attempt to grow a new plant aka: propagation. The reason? Because I recently, for the first time ever, had some good luck with propagating a Venus Flytrap and I am striking while the iron is hot. I am going to make as many new plants as I can!
This is a middle-aged pitcher. If he droops much more his nectar will be escaping. From the looks of it, he is yelling, "Hey ! Pick me."
So, let's do that.
We don't want to just grab the pitcher and pull. That would likely pull the whole plant out of the pot. We are going to open up the moss (it is not normal dirt) around the base of the plant just a little bit. And only right near the pitcher we are removing.
As soon as I removed the moss from around this side of the plant, the leaf started separating from where they all join the roots. It is, after all, sticking out over the edge of the pot by almost a foot.
We will not be cutting the leaf. At the base of this plant is a bulb. The roots are below the bulb. Let's pull up the cover photo and take a closer look.
These very tall, liquid filled leaves join the plant in a similar way as celery sticks join the base of the bunch. You see a root heading off to the right of the photo. Below that, we have our target propagator!
If it breaks where it goes from green to white, then we are done. This one would be junk. It pains me to remove one of these, but if I can have another plant, it will be worth it. I recently had that feeling with the baby Venus that came from one of these kinds of surgeries.
Zooming back out...
I use skewers to hold the plants up on windy days, but today I am using the blunt end to push on the little white soup ladle an the base of this leaf.
Then I move the leaf side to side and pull gently.
That is what we are looking for! If you look closely, you can see that the end of this one had some roots attached. That is perfect. When we put this in the tray of babies, it will have a very nice head start at growing new roots right away.
Here is the tray filled with plants that came from seed or propagation. This is where our Sarracenia leaf will sit for some time, at least six weeks but up to three months. It is possible, but highly unlikely, that this leaf will grow baby pitchers at the base and be part of the new plant. If and when a new pitcher starts growing, it will use the stem and insects of its parent to start catching bugs and to grow its own roots.
The tray has seeds planted in the upper right - plants I no longer have but I saved their seeds.
The right side has Venus waiting to grow baby traps
The middle has some pitcher plants in pots and some out.
The upper left has baby red Drosera plants, and left has the greener species.
A quick update on our baby Venus Flytrap...
It is such a tiny little plant. I was not about to use tweezers to pluck a bug out of another plant and feed it to the baby. But...
Last time I bought moss, I remember opening the bag and seeing a lot of gnats inside. I put it in a bag and sealed it. I do not want gnats in my garden! But, I do want my baby Venus plant to spend an hour inside a gnat filled bag of moss.
I left the whole pot in there for ten minutes and the plant managed to eat one of them.
So I leave you with the mother plant and her baby. Both recently ate! I just put them close together so you could see how they look with full bellies.
For all of you that have been following along, I show you new things and constantly update you on my recent posts. Summer is at its peak here in the deep-down-under. Growth is abundant too.
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