> John Walker
> jorwa@ix.netcom.com
The secret of success in growing VFT is (IMHO) to use LARGE pots! Don't
know why, since the soil is as wet as in smaller pots (at least with my
plants) but I killed two or three plants until I read the advice in
Slacks book and tried it. I don't grow the plants any different now
compared to the ones I killed. But since I use larger pots, all my VFT's
are doing well. Last year I got seeds from one and currently 2 of them
are flowering again. They are planted in peat in pots about 13 cm wide
and 14 cm high in 1 cm standing rainwater. In my opinion (Slack doesn't
mention this :-) ), height of the pots is more important than width!
BTW: The last couple of weeks dormacy of VFT's was mentioned a few
times. The general opinion was that with VFT's dormacy is
necessary. Otherwise the plants would suffer in winter and eventually
die (Did I get that right?). Last year I decided to leave two VFT's at
my window just above the heating. East window, no artificial light (I
know, but I wanted to try ...). Both plants continued to produce
leaves. They grew very slowly, the leaves were very broad and the traps
small, but otherwise they looked healthy. As soon as the days got longer
again they started to grow normally again and produced the typical
summer-leaves and really big traps: This summer they even caught wasps
and the traps survived and opened again.
-Walter