FlyTrapCare Forums

Maybe more airflow (fan) and increased light exposure will help with the mold? I use small fans in all of my grow boxes and pretty high par - never had mold when using humidity domes.

i love these kind of projects,
good way to expand your collection.

Another update. Most of the flower stalks have died but a few perservered and are now putting out very tiny flytraps of their own.

The mold has completely died back both in the treated azoxystrobin and untreated. Honestly, I don't see much difference between the two. The vigor on the treated vs. untreated seems to be about the same as well.

Also, the B-52 cuttings were significantly more successful than the maroon monsters once again (they did exactly the same thing last year). Not sure why I have so many problems with that strain but it seems to be a challenge for me.

Dan, I think you're right about with the need for better airflow. I'd love to know more about your setup if you're willing to share. I do have multiple holes melted in the humidity dome but they don't seem to be good enough. I always have condensation on the humidity dome even with the lights off so maybe that's my biggest problem.

One other interesting observation is that the flower buds themselves seemed much more successful when planted at ground level than the stalks. Maybe it's an issue of extra plant matter for more photosynthesis. Don't know but it seems significant.

Lots of pics ...

Bummer - surprised the azoxystrobin didn't prevent the mold since it is a type of fungus, I have no clue.
I think your using open wire shelves - right? so adequate air circulation could probably be accomplished by a single strategically placed box fan or oscillating fan - whatever you might have around the house. All of my indoor growing is done in enclosed areas like 2X2 ft. and a 2X3 ft
grow tents but I just used cardboard boxes ha ha I'm cheap! so I found that small 40mm 12vdc fans worked well for me with variable 12vdc power supplies so the fan speed can be adjusted, probably wouldn't work well for open shelving though.

Thanks Dan! That is an absolutely beautiful setup! Looks like you modded out that cardboard box quite a bit!

So, if I'm seeing the pic correctly it looks like you're venting in regular outside air over the plants and have huge light levels in there with 2 led grow lights? How are you hanging the grow lights? Did you rest some wire mesh on the box and hang the lights from it?

I am growing on wire shelves but have used humidity domes to jack up the humidity for the flower stalk cuttings and even though there's some openings for airflow, it's not enough movement to prevent mold. I suppose I could try growing without the domes and see what happens. As long as I keep the trays filled with plenty of water I think that should keep them moist enough. Something to try for next year!

I agree on the azoxystrobin. It seems disappointing across the board but it could be that I'm just doing something wrong. Maybe my concentration is too low or I'm not applying it often enough. Don't know. I'll post another update later on today for the azoxystrobin vs. control experiment but spoiler alert: I'm still not seeing much difference between the two, even under a DLI of ~40.

Here's a couple pics of the propagation trays "in action", one with me pointing to the air holes.

Dan V wrote:Bummer - surprised the azoxystrobin didn't prevent the mold since it is a type of fungus, I have no clue.
I think your using open wire shelves - right? so adequate air circulation could probably be accomplished by a single strategically placed box fan or oscillating fan - whatever you might have around the house. All of my indoor growing is done in enclosed areas like 2X2 ft. and a 2X3 ft
grow tents but I just used cardboard boxes ha ha I'm cheap! so I found that small 40mm 12vdc fans worked well for me with variable 12vdc power supplies so the fan speed can be adjusted, probably wouldn't work well for open shelving though.

Dan V wrote:Bummer - surprised the azoxystrobin didn't prevent the mold since it is a type of fungus, I have no clue.
I think your using open wire shelves - right? so adequate air circulation could probably be accomplished by a single strategically placed box fan or oscillating fan - whatever you might have around the house. All of my indoor growing is done in enclosed areas like 2X2 ft. and a 2X3 ft
grow tents but I just used cardboard boxes ha ha I'm cheap! so I found that small 40mm 12vdc fans worked well for me with variable 12vdc power supplies so the fan speed can be adjusted, probably wouldn't work well for open shelving though.

Thanks. To hang the lights, I used some 1/2"X 3/4" wood trim from HD and some scrap wood for two of my grow boxes and for the largest box (which was tall with two 200W leds) I attached the lights to the floor joists. You are correct, I leave the top of the boxes uncovered so exhaust fans are not needed and blow outside air over the plants.
I use humidity domes as I think it helps but requires some air movement. You might try fans for your shelves, I've seen some "clip-on" desktop type fans that might work using one per shelf.
Ha Ha, I think you're the one with huge light levels at a DLI of 40, I'm only at a DLI of 35.

Look at those beauties! Very nice collection. It looks like you're in a basement, which is awesome. We don't have many basements here in NC due to the high water table and lack of frost line so I grow mine in our living space which sadly means slightly warmer temps and more inconvenience.

You're spot on about the DLI 40 light setup although I've got the flytrap cuttings under a different set of lights so they're only getting about 16 DLI or so. Much gentler while still providing good light for growth. The maroon monster babies are a nice deep red. I'll post an update in just a bit.

You know, the more I've thought about this the more I'm convinced that air movement while maintaining high humidity is key. So what I'm going to try in the spring is to use a large, fully enclosed, transparent container such as a storage bin with put a small fan in the bottom and then elevate the trays up to the top of the container. That way they'll get decent airflow, lots of bright light, and have 100% humidity. Hopefully that will make a positive difference. Maybe throw in some fungicide early on in the process to help keep the grey mould at bay.

Quick update on progress. The B-52's struck fairly well and the FTS Maroon Monsters did better than last year i.e. not a complete fail. King Henry was a complete bust. I had sporadic results other than that.

I didn't notice any difference in the the azoxystrilobin treated FTS Maroon Monsters vs. regular and the strike rating seemed about the same, which lines up with my other experiment on whether azoxystrilobin has any effect on plant vigor.

The higher lighting this year (16 DLI vs. 10 from last year) has definitely improved their growth and the plants are well on their way already even without maxsea or manually feeding them. I plan to skip dormancy this winter for these plants as I did for the crop prior and expect that they'll be looking decent quickly.

Enjoy!

Congrats on another interesting experiment!

Puzzling results, I'm surprised by the different results for the three cultivars, you would think that what's good for the B52 would work just as well for the Maroon Monster and the KH. The surviving baby plants look very good - congrats.

I like your plan of using a transparent "sealed" storage bin with the fan inside - interesting concept and genius if it works!!!

Keep up the good work - please!

Thanks! I was surprised by the poor showing on the FTS Maroon Monster cuttings as well. I'd be willing to write it off as a one time thing except I got these same results last year as well (although to a greater degree). I thought maybe FTS MM needed more light so bumped it up this year and maybe that helped some since more cuttings struck. Don't know.

The one thing I'm very happy with is positioning the cuttings upright. That was very effective. When I oriented the cuttings horizontally they would frequently curl up and deform, sometimes losing contact with the soil. By positioning them vertically, I could squeeze in more cuttings in a given space and the babies sprouted in a more consistent pattern. The key was to only insert about 1/4-1/2" into the soil. I've noticed that the vast majority of babies sprout from the shaded portions of the cutting ... so the underside of the stalk (when planted horizontally) or the underground section (when planted vertically). By inserting the cuttings shallowly, the callouses are guaranteed to form near the soil surface and won't have to reach up through too much soil to get to the nourishing light at the surface. That was a problem I had last year when positioning the flytrap cuttings ... the ones I planted vertically and deeper had babies that formed 1-2" below the surface and had to stretch out very far to reach light. That was wasted energy and they frequently were so etoliated that they didn't survive repotting.

On another note, I think it's also safe to say that cutting the flower stalks on a slant is not useful since I've never seen a baby form on the cut section of the flower stalk. The thinking was that by cutting the flowerstalk on a slant that would provide more surface area for the plant to form callouses but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, it may be causing additional damage to the cutting by exposing more of the inner tissue.

And that concludes my caffienated rank of the day,
davinstewart

Thank you for sharing your experiments and detailed photos, very interesting!

Thanks for the continued updates. You've provided some good information for prospective growers! You mentioned in the beginning that your cuttings were one to two inches long. How long were the flower stalks when you harvested them for propagation? Before flowering stage? I'm a rank newbie so I'm not embarrassed to ask newbie questions.

Glad you're enjoying the thread!

I waited until the flower stalks were about a foot tall before harvesting. It was right before the first flowers opened. The normal reccommendation is to sever the flower stalks when they're just a few inches tall but I wanted to see what would happen if I grew them out. The longer stalks seem to be just as effective but I'll do a side-by-side comparison next spring to see if there's any significant difference.

I wonder whether a long horizontal stem cutting, maybe with tiny nicks every inch, and almost buried in medium, would do? Perhaps pinned down with old-fashioned hairpins or bent twist-ties?

When I oriented the cuttings horizontally they would frequently curl up and deform, sometimes losing contact with the soil.

Something else about horizontal placement... I was trying to start some d. filiformis cuttings a week or two ago and @optique mentioned something that made very good sense to me. It was that laying the sundew (just wanted to be sure and note the different plant here) horizontally would indeed start more plantlets than planting the filiformis leaf cuttings (as opposed to the VTF flower stalk cuttings of this thread) vertically. BUT...that the vertically planted cuttings would produce larger plantlets, and more quickly.

The thought is that the cutting represents a "battery" or a storage bank of energy for the plantlets to feed from. When only a single plant is consuming the energy it can grow faster and bigger...with several plantlets pulling energy from the cutting the energy is divided among them so they don't grow as fast or as large. In my situation I was not worried about size as much as I was looking for quantity so I went horizontal with the sundew cuttings. VFT flower stalk cuttings may be entirely different from sundew leaf cuttings but it seems the same idea may apply. Dunno for sure, though, I'm just a rank newbie. Maybe I said all of that correctly.