how to grow carnivorous plant seeds.

last April i bought venus fly trap and Sundew SP Pretty Rosette seeds. i put them in the fridge and forgot about them. anyway i am ready to try them. i had it all researched when i got the seeds off ebay but i have sort of forgot, so any tips welcome.

soil i will be using is jiffy organic seed starting mix. ingredients are 40-50% sphagnum peat moss vermiculite lime for ph and wetting agent. so no fertilizers. i've used this before a couple years ago on some carnivorous plants i ordered but unfortunately left outside and they baked

so any help would be great.

oh, i also know to use distilled water.

Chicken Farmer said:

lime for ph and wetting agent

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Carnivorous plants almost always like acidic, bog-like conditions. Acidity and slowly flowing water guarantees no nutrients hence they have adapted to find nutrition otherwise. Peat/sterile sand and fine vermiculite (or just skip and do sand and peat, my bod is outdoors because those plants, at least some Drosera and Sarracenia species are native to my area and are exlusive to pine seeps and bogs= low pH and fresh water with no nutrients), bright bright sun all day long. Rare to find either of those not in full sun because they are wetland plants in general.

Definitely NO LIME, they will never survive that. I'm not sure where that idea came from, but it's definitely a quick way to kill them so don't believe whoever told you that. The pH should be around 4, maybe 5 at highest. You want acidic, very very acidic so much so a body would mummify if it fell in the substrate lol. That's practically vinegar.

the soil from the store has the lime,

so just sand and plain old peat moss and sand will work?

Many good links around the net, but ill just give u some tips.
Wash ur media, sphagnum moss/peat, this will hopefuly remove moss/algae spores. Algae will coat ur seeds and they will be useless.
After u rinse, place nmoist media in pots/tupperwares (i use tupperwares) and then sow some seeds. Once the seeds are sown, lightly mist the seeds. Place them under light in a humid condition and they should germinate. I have success with drosrras only, not sure about VFTs though.

Stratify VFT seeds (stratification is a period of cold, near frosty temperatures) for about a month, I usually do this by placing them in the fridge on moist 50/50 peat/sand mixture inside a sealed 1 gallon sandwich bag. Stratification is also necessary for Sarracenia seeds. You seem to already know that fertilizer is the bane of CPs (carnivorous plants), and as others have stated, so are alkaline materials. The Drosera seeds probably won't need stratification.... indeed, most of my Drosera spread like weeds without any additional care. Also, a great place to learn about carnivorous plants is the Carnivorous Plant FAQ, it's where I started about 11 years ago.

thanks for the replies. the seeds have been in the fridge since may. so that is their cold period.

the Tupperware is a good idea. unfortunately some i had with out lids just got thrown out.

Yes, sand and straight up peat and/or spahgnum. That's usually what natural bogs are made of, hence the uber low pH. Usually the are very very slowly moving too, undetectably slow. But the pH leaches the nutrients out of everything and then the slow moving water caries it away. That's why these plants have adapted other mechanisms to get their nutrition.

---------- Post added 03-21-2012 at 10:16 AM ----------

Hendersoniana said:

Many good links around the net, but ill just give u some tips.
Wash ur media, sphagnum moss/peat, this will hopefuly remove moss/algae spores. Algae will coat ur seeds and they will be useless.
After u rinse, place nmoist media in pots/tupperwares (i use tupperwares) and then sow some seeds. Once the seeds are sown, lightly mist the seeds. Place them under light in a humid condition and they should germinate. I have success with drosrras only, not sure about VFTs though.

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Shouldn't have trouble with algae or mosses, both are found in the native condition right along with germinating CPs. The seeds need to be on fairly moist substrate and in the bright, all-day full sun. Bogs where those plants occur (they are native to my area and surrounding areas- venus fly traps a bit to the north, three or four species of Drosera here and the center of diversity for Sarracenia species as well) are quite open, nothing obstructing the sun at all. For germinating, they just need to be moist, warm and bright.

They don't need long stratification either. We might get less than a single freeze here where I am and they successfully colonize a boggy area with no problem. We cannot ever ensure any set duration of cold, some years we don't get more than a few linear hours of temps under 50 and others we freeze and stay below 40 for a week. Yet they persist as long as it is sunny, moist and the pH of the substrate is very low. No reason to over-complicate it. Think of the warmer parts of the Carolinas, that's where VFTs occur most abundantly in the wild. Can be 100 during the day, can get to 0 in the winter and may or may not be cold for long periods. Only thing guaranteed is not too much cold, a very warm fairly long period during the year for growing and acidic, moist soil.

Do not use the soil that has lime added. Roses will like it, your carnivorous plants will cry.

i bought venus flytrap seeds and put em in the fridge for 2 weeks then put them ontop of moist soil and put a VERY thin layer of sand over seeds, 3 montys went by with NOTHING but i was half hoping they would sprout and half to lazy to throw em out. finnaly they appeared! DONT GIVE UP!!!!

Thanks. I wan't going to do this for a little while so I put them somewhere so they would't get thrown away. They are in little tiny zip lock bags.

I can't find them now. Great .. Just great