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Ask questions about how to grow and care for Venus Flytraps

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By sanguinearocks101
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Posts:  1665
Joined:  Mon Jan 06, 2020 1:56 am
#362419
ChefDean, I only suggested he do the study because I have 2 Venus flytraps, 1 typical and a wimpy looking king Henry that I nearly killed. And I do not have a proper indoor grow space. I am also working 60-67 hour weeks so I have very little spare time on my hands. The question now is not if they can grow and propagate themselves indoors and do well in the long term, even if the main plant dies, it is if they will do better with or without a dormancy. I do not see how I am asking him to prove me wrong. I believe that they can be grown without a dormancy but the plants will divide faster than they die so it overall leads to an increase in plants, which I call success. Now that I believe that they can be grown without a dormancy I want to know if having one will lead to a greater increase in the number of plants than without one.
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By sanguinearocks101
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Posts:  1665
Joined:  Mon Jan 06, 2020 1:56 am
#362420
ChefDean, I only suggested he do the study because I have 2 Venus flytraps, 1 typical and a wimpy looking king Henry that I nearly killed. And I do not have a proper indoor grow space. I am also working 60-67 hour weeks so I have very little spare time on my hands. The question now is not if they can grow and propagate themselves indoors and do well in the long term, even if the main plant dies, it is if they will do better with or without a dormancy. I do not see how I am asking him to prove me wrong. I believe that they can be grown without a dormancy but the plants will divide faster than they die so it overall leads to an increase in plants, which I call success. Now that I believe that they can be grown without a dormancy I want to know if having one will lead to a greater increase in the number of plants than without one.
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By Cross
Posts:  1849
Joined:  Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:25 pm
#362421
hungry carnivores wrote:Time to end this pissing contest.

For credentials, I've got a paper I'm submitting to the Australian Journal of Botany regarding petiolaris and bryastrum plants and their evolution.

I have 12 plants. Typical.

They are going indoors on my countertop and also some will go into a mesocosm type thing, basically an outdoor simulator, to remove variables.

I will report results.

This should be enough to end pissing contest.

No special help will be given, it's obvious that a vft grown indoors with fertilizer will be better than an outdoor one without nutrients.

Well see.
Make your own thread for it, I'll keep up on updates. They say it can take a few years for it to kill the vft, how long will you be running this experiment? Another question, are you counting it as a win for no dormancy if the original dies? All plants have a shelf life, but if only divisions are living for a year or two, then would the conclusion that dormancy is required be accurate?

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By sanguinearocks101
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Posts:  1665
Joined:  Mon Jan 06, 2020 1:56 am
#362422
Cross wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:10 pm
hungry carnivores wrote:Time to end this pissing contest.

For credentials, I've got a paper I'm submitting to the Australian Journal of Botany regarding petiolaris and bryastrum plants and their evolution.

I have 12 plants. Typical.

They are going indoors on my countertop and also some will go into a mesocosm type thing, basically an outdoor simulator, to remove variables.

I will report results.

This should be enough to end pissing contest.

No special help will be given, it's obvious that a vft grown indoors with fertilizer will be better than an outdoor one without nutrients.

Well see.
Make your own thread for it, I'll keep up on updates. They say it can take a few years for it to kill the vft, how long will you be running this experiment? Another question, are you counting it as a win for no dormancy if the original dies? All plants have a shelf life, but if only divisions are living for a year or two, then would the conclusion that dormancy is required be accurate?

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I think it should be whichever has the most divisions, with extra points toward bigger divisions.
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By Matt
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Joined:  Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:28 pm
#362490
Jagasian wrote:Lot’s of dogmatic behaviors and beliefs in this community. I suggest people be open to those that challenge conventional wisdom, especially when those doing the challenging present evidence....Back to my original point: dormancy is NOT required to grow a thriving venus fly trap. But hey, maybe the dogmatic types here will be right and in 6 months I will have to downgrade from this 12.5 inch diameter pot back to the 3 inch diameter cup the plant started in. I am confident that in 6 months they will move the goal posts again.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiment here with us. You've definitely opened my eyes (along with what I've seen John Brittnacher do over the years) to what Dionaea can withstand if they are constantly fed and provided good artificial lighting. Again, it is very much like what they do in tissue culture -- continually grow and as long as they are provided new media with lots of nutrients, they never need dormancy.

Great experiment! I love that people are willing to challenge dogma!!

Still -- I think the subject of this thread is a bit misleading, particularly for those new to the hobby of growing Venus flytraps. I would guess that Venus flytraps in nature absolutely do need dormancy and most growers lack sufficient resources to provide conditions where flytraps could be healthy without a dormancy. Time spent feeding flytraps would be a major consideration as well in the case of a grower with hundreds or thousands of plants.

However, in some cases when certain care conditions are provided (as you have done here or in tissue culture), dormancy is NOT necessary. I would say that has been proven here in this thread, by anyone who has done tissue culture, and by John Brittnacher for many years now. If grown in cultivation under very good lighting, fed constantly, and provided ideal conditions, Dionaea can outgrow their need for dormancy. Thus, I might alter the thesis statement (or the subject of this thread) to the following: Flytrap dormancy is not necessary when growing indoors under artificial lighting when plants are fed regularly.

That would be a slightly different (perhaps more complete?) statement than the subject of this thread.
Shadowtski, MikeB, sanguinearocks101 and 2 others liked this
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By Cross
Posts:  1849
Joined:  Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:25 pm
#362516
Matt wrote:
Jagasian wrote:Lot’s of dogmatic behaviors and beliefs in this community. I suggest people be open to those that challenge conventional wisdom, especially when those doing the challenging present evidence....Back to my original point: dormancy is NOT required to grow a thriving venus fly trap. But hey, maybe the dogmatic types here will be right and in 6 months I will have to downgrade from this 12.5 inch diameter pot back to the 3 inch diameter cup the plant started in. I am confident that in 6 months they will move the goal posts again.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiment here with us. You've definitely opened my eyes (along with what I've seen John Brittnacher do over the years) to what Dionaea can withstand if they are constantly fed and provided good artificial lighting. Again, it is very much like what they do in tissue culture -- continually grow and as long as they are provided new media with lots of nutrients, they never need dormancy.

Great experiment! I love that people are willing to challenge dogma!!

Still -- I think the subject of this thread is a bit misleading, particularly for those new to the hobby of growing Venus flytraps. I would guess that Venus flytraps in nature absolutely do need dormancy and most growers lack sufficient resources to provide conditions where flytraps could be healthy without a dormancy. Time spent feeding flytraps would be a major consideration as well in the case of a grower with hundreds or thousands of plants.

However, in some cases when certain care conditions are provided (as you have done here or in tissue culture), dormancy is NOT necessary. I would say that has been proven here in this thread, by anyone who has done tissue culture, and by John Brittnacher for many years now. If grown in cultivation under very good lighting, fed constantly, and provided ideal conditions, Dionaea can outgrow their need for dormancy. Thus, I might alter the thesis statement (or the subject of this thread) to the following: Flytrap dormancy is not necessary when growing indoors under artificial lighting when plants are fed regularly.

That would be a slightly different (perhaps more complete?) statement than the subject of this thread.
Does this mean I can get really good lights and keep my trevs Dracula alive all winter? Because I really like him.

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By Cross
Posts:  1849
Joined:  Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:25 pm
#362518
Jagasian wrote:Lot’s of dogmatic behaviors and beliefs in this community. I suggest people be open to those that challenge conventional wisdom, especially when those doing the challenging present evidence.

To continue to fuel the debate, I wanted to post an update showing my SD Kronos that I have been growing indoors for 2.5 years under artificial lights (high PAR LED). A year ago I went on vacation for 2 weeks and screwed up my watering system, so the plant had considerable die back. I lost about half the total biomass, but the plant has bounced back after a year of proper care.

I had to transplant into a 12.5 inch diameter pot because of over crowding. The plant has so many mouths to feed that I could feed it every day and still have unfed, open mouths wanting to be fed.

My experiment shows that dormancy is not required. My experiment also shows that venus fly traps geow VERY well indoors. The most important thing for indoor growing is to have a PAR meter to ensure your plant is getting enough photosynthetically active radiation. Also, indoor growing, of course, requires feeding. I use blood worms. This causes the plant to grow more vigorously than it would in the wild and it creates new divisions, which take about 6 months to reach adulthood under my set up. Much faster than the conventional wisdom shared in this community.

The fact that the old divisions may die after a couple of years with no dormancy is a non-issue because the original mother plant is technically a meristem that has been proven to die after flowering. So what people think is the original mother division is technically a clone of the mother meristem after flowering, just like new divisions are clones of the mother division. In my frow set up, so many new divisions get created all the time, and there are always energetic young plants that have only been alive for a year. Some divisions flower. Some divisions are small. Some divisions are giants.

Attached are two pictures. The original plant in its 3 inch diameter cup 2.5 years ago, and the plant now in a 12.5 inch pot.

Growth is so rapid that I may need to transplant a second time this year! Oh and notice the live sphagnum? It grew on its own from the dry Besgrow spagmoss brand sphagnum.

Back to my original point: dormancy is NOT required to grow a thriving venus fly trap. But hey, maybe the dogmatic types here will be right and in 6 months I will have to downgrade from this 12.5 inch diameter pot back to the 3 inch diameter cup the plant started in. I am confident that in 6 months they will move the goal posts again.

Dogma never landed a man on the moon.
They do look spectacular. So what lights are you using? I'm looking to fully upgrade my set up this fall. Can you link me the lights and the meter? And other special things you got going on with your set up? And do you think your bloodworm type had anything to do with the growth? Or would any bloodworm do? How long did you leave the lights on for per day? And how often did you water? Also, about that drosera in the cup behind in the second picture? Can I see it?

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By steve booth
Posts:  1221
Joined:  Mon Jul 18, 2011 11:15 am
#363302
The following publication may assist
Carnivorous Plant Newsletter Volume 48 number 4 dated December 2019 by John Brittnacher

Cheers
Steve
By Adriana
Posts:  126
Joined:  Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:47 pm
#363323
To answer the question about the meter, the best PAR meter for LEDs is the Apogee "quantum flux" meter but it's very expensive. Regular (cheap) light meters measure brightness to the human eye, which isn't what helps plants. Last year another company started making a PAR meter that works for LED but I don't remember the brand.

The best (I think only!) book on this is Gardening Under Lights by Leslie Halleck.
By mhal408
Posts:  72
Joined:  Mon Aug 31, 2020 7:02 pm
#364172
after reading this topic from start to finish, it helps me a lot. im trying to grow a flytrap here in a tropical country, and dormancy is not an option as i might kill the plant trying fridge dormancy with no experience.

Thanks to the OP for bringing up this discussion. :D
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By Matt
Location: 
Posts:  22523
Joined:  Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:28 pm
#364184
mhal408 wrote:after reading this topic from start to finish, it helps me a lot. im trying to grow a flytrap here in a tropical country, and dormancy is not an option as i might kill the plant trying fridge dormancy with no experience.

Thanks to the OP for bringing up this discussion. :D
Yes, this would work great for those people in tropical climates that have indoor grow setups and only want to grow a small collection of flytraps!!
By evetssnomis
Posts:  3
Joined:  Sun Feb 14, 2021 7:18 pm
#376938
"Dogma never landed a man on the moon." But they DID put a dog in space!
Jagasian wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:18 pm Lot’s of dogmatic behaviors and beliefs in this community. I suggest people be open to those that challenge conventional wisdom, especially when those doing the challenging present evidence.

To continue to fuel the debate, I wanted to post an update showing my SD Kronos that I have been growing indoors for 2.5 years under artificial lights (high PAR LED). A year ago I went on vacation for 2 weeks and screwed up my watering system, so the plant had considerable die back. I lost about half the total biomass, but the plant has bounced back after a year of proper care.

I had to transplant into a 12.5 inch diameter pot because of over crowding. The plant has so many mouths to feed that I could feed it every day and still have unfed, open mouths wanting to be fed.

My experiment shows that dormancy is not required. My experiment also shows that venus fly traps geow VERY well indoors. The most important thing for indoor growing is to have a PAR meter to ensure your plant is getting enough photosynthetically active radiation. Also, indoor growing, of course, requires feeding. I use blood worms. This causes the plant to grow more vigorously than it would in the wild and it creates new divisions, which take about 6 months to reach adulthood under my set up. Much faster than the conventional wisdom shared in this community.

The fact that the old divisions may die after a couple of years with no dormancy is a non-issue because the original mother plant is technically a meristem that has been proven to die after flowering. So what people think is the original mother division is technically a clone of the mother meristem after flowering, just like new divisions are clones of the mother division. In my frow set up, so many new divisions get created all the time, and there are always energetic young plants that have only been alive for a year. Some divisions flower. Some divisions are small. Some divisions are giants.

Attached are two pictures. The original plant in its 3 inch diameter cup 2.5 years ago, and the plant now in a 12.5 inch pot.

Growth is so rapid that I may need to transplant a second time this year! Oh and notice the live sphagnum? It grew on its own from the dry Besgrow spagmoss brand sphagnum.

Back to my original point: dormancy is NOT required to grow a thriving venus fly trap. But hey, maybe the dogmatic types here will be right and in 6 months I will have to downgrade from this 12.5 inch diameter pot back to the 3 inch diameter cup the plant started in. I am confident that in 6 months they will move the goal posts again.

Dogma never landed a man on the moon.
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By VFTnoob94
Posts:  19
Joined:  Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:46 pm
#428251
Jagasian wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:18 pm Lot’s of dogmatic behaviors and beliefs in this community. I suggest people be open to those that challenge conventional wisdom, especially when those doing the challenging present evidence.

To continue to fuel the debate, I wanted to post an update showing my SD Kronos that I have been growing indoors for 2.5 years under artificial lights (high PAR LED). A year ago I went on vacation for 2 weeks and screwed up my watering system, so the plant had considerable die back. I lost about half the total biomass, but the plant has bounced back after a year of proper care.

I had to transplant into a 12.5 inch diameter pot because of over crowding. The plant has so many mouths to feed that I could feed it every day and still have unfed, open mouths wanting to be fed.

My experiment shows that dormancy is not required. My experiment also shows that venus fly traps geow VERY well indoors. The most important thing for indoor growing is to have a PAR meter to ensure your plant is getting enough photosynthetically active radiation. Also, indoor growing, of course, requires feeding. I use blood worms. This causes the plant to grow more vigorously than it would in the wild and it creates new divisions, which take about 6 months to reach adulthood under my set up. Much faster than the conventional wisdom shared in this community.

The fact that the old divisions may die after a couple of years with no dormancy is a non-issue because the original mother plant is technically a meristem that has been proven to die after flowering. So what people think is the original mother division is technically a clone of the mother meristem after flowering, just like new divisions are clones of the mother division. In my frow set up, so many new divisions get created all the time, and there are always energetic young plants that have only been alive for a year. Some divisions flower. Some divisions are small. Some divisions are giants.

Attached are two pictures. The original plant in its 3 inch diameter cup 2.5 years ago, and the plant now in a 12.5 inch pot.

Growth is so rapid that I may need to transplant a second time this year! Oh and notice the live sphagnum? It grew on its own from the dry Besgrow spagmoss brand sphagnum.

Back to my original point: dormancy is NOT required to grow a thriving venus fly trap. But hey, maybe the dogmatic types here will be right and in 6 months I will have to downgrade from this 12.5 inch diameter pot back to the 3 inch diameter cup the plant started in. I am confident that in 6 months they will move the goal posts again.

Dogma never landed a man on the moon.
Jagasian- feel free to send me a clone of that bad boi :D
By PancasilaPillar1
Posts:  4
Joined:  Fri May 12, 2023 11:37 am
#435250
Hi! I live in Indonesia, it’s between 26 and 30 degrees all year round, almost zero changes on when the sun rises and when it goes down all year round. Humidity here is a in and about 85% or so, all year round, well, half of the year it’s probably higher. Loads of VFT growers here. Zero dormancy. No need. The plants, I suppose do require dormancy if they’re going to go through a winter: no insects, less sunlight hours, lower temperatures, so they are genetically predisposed to go dormant under such conditions. That is, only when and if those conditions do exist. The plant needs to be dormant IF they go through winter. But here there is food flying around all year long, 12 hours of sun every day and never extreme heat or cold. What happens when they do not go dormant in a permanent summer like this one in the tropics (from what I see) is that they grow, and grow well, all year. I am no expert. I am a beginner owning 4 VFT and 4 Nepenthes. I just say what I see. Best regards to all from Bali!
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By Intheswamp
Location: 
Posts:  3305
Joined:  Wed May 04, 2022 2:28 pm
#435255
Welcome to the forum. If your flytraps are doing well with no dormancy that's great, keep doing whatever you're doing! :) How long have you been growing flytraps? Also, be sure to check the Seed Bank out...free seeds! Be sure to read the info regarding international users' seed requests.
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