Winter is nearly over and I am getting ready to move this overgrown Sarracenia minor (the hooded pitcher plant) to a slightly larger pot.
Moss has grown all around its base. I am sure the roots are all bound up in this little pot. I got this one as winter set in and it is best to repot them when they show new growth, little baby pitchers sprouting up out of the core.
I do not want to disturb the roots and their bond to the moss, so I push down around the edges of the little pot which will compact the moss around the roots - just a bit.
Then I grab my long-nose pliers and open them wide, wanting to pinch the moss at a level of just one inch below the surface. As seen in the first photo, I already have a slightly larger and deeper pot filled with moss and I pressed a hole that is about the size of the material that I am planning to bring up with the pliers.
I am accustomed to repotting Venus and Drossera plant, which do not develop huge root systems. This little Sarracenia seems to be older than I expected. I can tell that by the root development - they are as long as some of my very large drosseras. Take a look at what came up with this plant.
This plant was truly pot-bound. I could not really grab another, larger pot and prep it while holding the plant in the air, so I went through the repotting process. The new pot is twice as big as the old, but it will need to be repotted again in a few months. Larger plants are not lifted out of a pot. I have another technique for repotting established carnivorous plants. I will demonstrate that process when I do a larger one soon.
The moss that these plants require, if left undisturbed at the surface, will begin to grow. It turns green and can cause problems with the purity of the environment needed to raise carnivorous plants. I removed the greenest parts of the moss growth, the outer most parts of it. I will give it a week or so before I pick out the rest of the live moss.
Look at the baby leaves that are starting to develop. Temperatures are moving up in the hive 50's, sometimes hitting 60 in the afternoons lately. I expect lots of new growth as the insect population starts to thrive in the warmer temperatures.
Last post, I had shown you some baby drossera plants that had grown out of trimmed drossera leaves. Today, I plucked a serracenia leave from our freshly repotted beauty, and I am putting that lone leaf into its own pot. This is called "propagation" and it works about 30% of the time, in my experience. It has never worked when trying it with venus fly traps as far as my very few attempts with them. This is the first attempt with serracenias. I hope to have an update on this single stalk in the future. If you do not see one, then it failed.
If propagation works at all, its best chances are in the spring time.
Here is the last photo for this repotting project.
It was taken in ambient light. I live in the city and tall buildings keep me in the shade the whole winter. My plants will not see any direct light for another month or so. Despite that, their translucent beauty still shows through their tubular leaves. I am hoping for much more spectacular shots once the sun hits them.
My goal is to build a knowledge base for the care of carnivorous plants, sandwiched in with the rest of my garden content so that people will not be shy about trying new things. These are some of the easiest plants to care for, but they go by a different set of rules (moss only - distilled water only). Once you know that, they grow like weeds and remove mosquitoes from your outdoor living spaces.
Finished Product
Thank you for the massive support I got on the last post. Keep that up and I will be doing videos on 3speak rather than typing out everything. Thanks again!