Venus flytrap crossing 101:
- Seed
growns are typicals, no matter who their parents are.
Unless they are
special enough and you named them as new cultivators. Please don't name your seedlings by their parents' names.
- The A x B notion means A is the mother plant, B is the father plant.
So
in this case, the seeds are harvested from G16 mother plant, and the
pollens were from either G16, G17 or DCXL.
I hand pollened all flowers
on mother plants, but since my plants are outside, bees might mess up my
plans a bit. Fatherhood is not strictly tracked, but I can assure I
only hand picked the pollens I listed. Mother plant is guaranteed
to be G16.
- Mother
plant is the dominator on descendants' genetic traits.
It means the
seedlings have higher chance to be like mother than father.
- There is no guarantee of seedlings will be like parents.
Just like
there is no guarantee of 2 pretty human parents can have beautiful
children. However they certainly have better odds. For these seeds,
since both parents are giant cultivars, the seeds have better chance to
grow bigger than average.
Grow instructions are the same as typical seeds, copied from typical mother seeds- Freshness is the key, aged seeds' germination rate drops rapidly
- Pure water only, distilled water, RO filtered water or rain water. (PPM needs to be below 50, if you have a PPM meter)
- Nutrition free medium only. Prefer to use New Zealand Sphagnum Moss or Peat moss based mix for other carnivorous plants
- High humidity and some air flow. (For example covering the pots with
clear plastic food wraps and punch a bunch of holes on them)
- A lot
of light. For seedlings, it is better to use grow light rather than
sunlight in order to reduce the heat. With the food wraps under sun,
they can be cooked quickly, do the best to avoid the high heat
- Warm, but not too hot. 80~100F is a good range. Going over 100F is
dangerous, blow 80F won't kill them, but will slow down the germination.
- Germination takes 2~8 weeks in average, depends on your growing conditions.
- Slowly take off the wraps after 3~4 traps open up.
- Slowly introduce to full sun after taking off the wraps
- A lot of patience, they grow slow
- VFTs from seeds are typicals, no matter they look stunning or boring.
The fun of growing from seeds is, you don't know how exactly they will
look like. And you might get some special ones that you want to name
them to become new cultivars.
If
this is your first time growing vft from seeds, and you are not too
crazy about the trap size. It is recommended to start with typical seeds (see the link above), because they are cheaper.
If you
already have experience on growing vfts from seeds and pursuing after large
traps, you will get better chance with these giant crossed seeds.
Seedlings in the listed pictures are one year old. They are grown from my named cultivars crossed seeds from 2017.
20 seeds in the package and free shipping by USPS First-Class Mail letter (with no tracking).
Happy Growing!