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VFT leaf pulling plan (yay/nay?)

I did some research on the best times of year to do a leaf pulling and it seems there are two "better" times of year - early spring and in fall before dormancy. If done in fall, uprooting the plant is risky so you can try to do a leaf pulling by holding the rhizome in place with your thumb - I'm going to try this.

I think I'm going to try a few leaf pullings in the next couple days if I can do so without uprooting -

1) 1:1 peat/sand, moist not wet, spray bottle very occasionally only if necessary.
2) Strong fluorescent light, 14 hour cycle.
3) Leaf pull; cut trap off, lay leaf pulling on soil and place a pinch of medium over the rhizome end of the leaf, just enough that it's buried.
4) Cover pot with plastic wrap and poke several rice-sized holes in it.

Am I missing anything? Should I use a different soil mix?
 
I'm of the opinion that a well grown VFT will do plenty of dividing on its own in the span of one growing season. I've never really had an inclination to do leaf pullings because at the end of the year, there's generally 3 or 4 VFTs clumping together where there used to be one.
 
^Then why isn't my perfectly healthy VFT showing this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying my plant is as vigorous and well-cared-for as anyone's here and I've never had that.
 
Well, maybe you're not growing it as right as you thought you were. Generally by the end of the season there will be many plants clumping together around the mother plant as seen here in my VFT pot:

vft01.jpg
 
hey judging by the looks of yours i think i had one division this year. but what could i be doing wrong? gets full sunlight all day, 1 inch of water, growing in peat and perlite 50:50 and using distilled water
 
Well, the thing that seems to encourage new growth is a good meal. Don't overdo it, but maybe a fly every two weeks will really help improve the health of your plant and cause it to divide.
 
my plant also catches tons of flies on its own, it had every trap closed two days ago... so that's also covered. -shrug- maybe my plant hates me.
 
Most of my VFT's did divide this year (some twice), but I want to do a few leaf pullings just because I've never done it; I have recently germinated VFT's from seeds, so leaf cuttings seemed the next logical progression in learning all of this first-hand.
 
Well, maybe you're not growing it as right as you thought you were. Generally by the end of the season there will be many plants clumping together around the mother plant as seen here in my VFT pot:

-Image Snipped-

Did you divide those clumps, or did they naturally grow that far away?
 
  • #10
i've had many plants divide over the course of a growing season , i think we also need to specify the age of the plants. If their fairly young even if grown perfectly they may not divide within that season. I notice mostly my older more mature vfts are the ones that produce more offshoot divisions.

the benefit I guess of doing pullings as compared to waiting for divisions is the sheer number of pullings you can get...

I took a healthy typical vft one year just for experiments sake and took the whole thing apart leaf by leaf. i may have had anywhere from 7-10 healthy leaves. I placed them all in a bowl of soggy LFS and just waited... and waited... and waited...

in the end I had about 25 seperate plants emerge from that container... so thats potentially the benefit..

Good luck.
 
  • #11
yeah mine is a walmart buy so most likely young.
 
  • #12
I got these plants in February. Maybe there was clumping when I received them, but I don't remember. After having them outside for the past half year, ~2/3 of them have multiple plants (clumping).

Picture015-5.jpg


Picture001-13.jpg
 
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