How to plant bare root Sarracenia rhizome (video included!)
Dec 5, 2023 14:56:59 GMT -5
rmeyer, SteveS, and 6 more like this
Post by meizzwang on Dec 5, 2023 14:56:59 GMT -5
whether you are a beginner or an expert, if you want to know how to plant a bare root Sarracenia rhizome or want to see how others do it, you came to the right thread! Whether you have an established division that you received bare root during the grow season or a freshly cut up division during the winter dormancy period, the planting process is the same. Keep in mind, there are many other techniques and methods to planting rhizomes, this is just to give you the big picture of how to do it, especially if you're new to Sarracenia and wondering if you just planted your bare root rhizome properly. This grow guide is over simplified and focused mainly on planting. If you have other questions, always feel free to email me (Mike Wang) at meizzwang@gmail.com
SOIL MIX
The proper soil mix you decide to use depends on:
1) your preference
2) how you grow the plants (eg. your watering practices)
3) your environment
Personally, I prefer to use 100% peat moss. The reason is because there are less variables involved if something goes wrong and it's just way less work to prepare. Truth be told, you can grow them well in almost any of the carnivorous plant mixes out there so long as you care for them accordingly! For example, an all pumice mix will likely require a hydroponics setup where you're monitoring the water quality, whereas with pure peat, you don't need to do anything other than water them! They will do well in a mix of peat/perlite, horticultural grade sand/peat, peat/sand/perlite, 100% sphagnum, sphagnum/pumice, milled pine bark/pumice mix, etc.
Rhizomes:
For the sake of simplicity, here's what a freshly cut rhizome looks like. Expert growers can get these to produce nice sized traps by the end of the grow season, but for most growers, it'll take a full grow season to recover before it starts growing like an established division. There are exceptions to the rule, like getting a recent division that has extensive roots and was super healthy the previous grow season:
Here's the cut end of another recently divided rhizome. Notice the lack of extensive roots and higher ratio of brown roots to white roots:
Now in stark contrast, here's an established division that was "grown for Jesus." Notice how extensive the roots are and the amount of white roots versus darker colored roots, which suggests those new white roots were produced recently. Established divisions that are produced properly can save you 1-2 years of waiting: the size of the rhizome has almost nothing to do with how long it takes to recover and start putting on good growth! Just because you got a large rhizome doesn't mean you'll get a larger plant quicker, what really matters is how much growth momentum the plant had prior to you receiving it! Interestingly enough, a poorly grown, fully established division can take as long as a recent division to pick up on growth and produce nice traps.
Despite the medium size of this rhizome, it produced large spring traps several months after this photo was taken. That's because the roots are super extensive and the plant had incredible growth momentum the previous grow season:
How to plant Sarracenia Rhizomes
I didn't make up this method, I was actual taught how to do this by Ernesto Sandoval, who was the curator of the botanical conservatory at UC Davis! Here are the steps on how to plant a bare root rhizome:
1) get a pot, container, or prepare a bog. I like to slightly underpot the first season. There should be space for the plant to produce new roots in the pot for the first season, but just enough space, not excessive amounts! After one grow season, you can plop the whole thing out of the pot like a cake and place it into a much larger pot where it can stretch its roots and size up!
2) fill it up with your substrate of choice, and be sure to get it fully hydrated before planting If the substrate is dry, it'll be mostly challenging to water in later on.
3) once filled to the top, lightly press the soil down and fill it even more.
4) with two hands, carefully tap the bottom of the pot on a hard surface several times. This will allow the soil to settle and may make more space to add more soil. Fill soil to the top of the pot.
5) dig a hole and make sure the grow point(s) are in the middle of the pot. Why? Here's a good example: last winter, this was centered as well as I could: none of the grow points were in the middle due to the size and shape of the rhizome, but I kept them as far away from the edges of the pot as I could. This rhizome was slightly underpotted and I was expecting it to outgrow the pot within a season. Notice there are 3 dormant growth points in this picture. Look at the growth point to the right, it's about to hit the side of the pot and BAM! This forces Mike wang to repot because it's now out of space and will literally break the pot if I don't transplant it this winter:
6) Place the rhizome into the hole, but slightly higher than the top of the soil line (maybe 1-2cm too high)
7) fill in some soil around the roots, pound the bottom of the pot on a solid surface a few times. The rhizome will "sink" 1-2 cm and should be at the perfect height! The soil level will have dipped a little, fill in the soil until the pot is completely full. pack down lightly. HEre's the ideal depth of a newly planted rhizome. Notice the growth point is NOT under soil and the "back" of the rhizome is also not covered by soil. It is OKAY if a super thin layer(few milimeters) of peat cover the back of the rhizome
another picture. It looks like the rhizomes are buried under the peat, but that's misleading, when I water these in, it'll wash off that thin layer of peat and the rhizomes will be slightly exposed:
There are exceptions to the rule when it comes to how deep to plant a rhizome, a good one is S. minor, which can tolerate having the back of the rhizomes being covered completely, but don't cover them too deep!
With the "shorties" like purpureas and psittacinas, be sure the growth point is not buried and that the rhizomes are planted horizontally as shown above, NOT VERTICALLY! It's very tempting to plant the rhizomes vertically because they naturally are easier to plant that way, but you will almost for certain get rot that way!
CRITIQUE OF MY OWN PLANTING JOB!
NOW the fun part! Here is a critique of my own planting job! These are rhizomes that were planted a year or two ago and have been grown out all the way, they're now completely dormant. Were they planted at the right depth?
In this first picture below, the rhizomes were planted at a perfect depth! Notice the growth points aren't buried, the back of the rhizomes are just slighty exposed. This is ideal if you grow in full sun because once you chop off all the leaves during the dormancy period and the rhizomes are exposed to full sun, they can get sunburned before spring arrives!
Here are some S. leucophylla rhizomes. probably could have planted them deeper, but they're still okay. better to leave some leaves on during the winter dormancy period in this case to shade these rhizomes, otherwise they can get sunburned:
this one pictured below is pretty ideal. It has a bunch of old, dead "sheaths" on it, protecting it from the sun and is quite a bit above the soil level, which lowers its chances of rotting:
this guy is too shallow! notice the black "back" of the rhizome, got a little burnt but that's cosmetic, the burn didn't get into the fleshy tissue inside. If it was severe burn, that would be dead right now!
Last but not least, what most growers won't tell you is that a lot of rhizomes are awkwardly shaped and there's no way to plant them perfectly (aka for Jesus). here's a good example: the back end of this rhizome was planted way too deep, but I had to otherwise the growth point would be buried! In this case, I grew the plant on the drier side (eg. not ever sitting in water for long periods of time), otherwise that back end of the rhizome could rot very easily!
HOW TO PLANT RHIZOME VIDEO
Fingers crossed this video works! Pay closer attention to what I am doing rather than what I am saying, I mis-spoke a little bit but the way I plant the rhizome is exactly what you want to do! Click on the picture for the video:
Video on how to plant sarracenia rhizome by Mike Wang, on Flickr
SOIL MIX
The proper soil mix you decide to use depends on:
1) your preference
2) how you grow the plants (eg. your watering practices)
3) your environment
Personally, I prefer to use 100% peat moss. The reason is because there are less variables involved if something goes wrong and it's just way less work to prepare. Truth be told, you can grow them well in almost any of the carnivorous plant mixes out there so long as you care for them accordingly! For example, an all pumice mix will likely require a hydroponics setup where you're monitoring the water quality, whereas with pure peat, you don't need to do anything other than water them! They will do well in a mix of peat/perlite, horticultural grade sand/peat, peat/sand/perlite, 100% sphagnum, sphagnum/pumice, milled pine bark/pumice mix, etc.
Rhizomes:
For the sake of simplicity, here's what a freshly cut rhizome looks like. Expert growers can get these to produce nice sized traps by the end of the grow season, but for most growers, it'll take a full grow season to recover before it starts growing like an established division. There are exceptions to the rule, like getting a recent division that has extensive roots and was super healthy the previous grow season:
Here's the cut end of another recently divided rhizome. Notice the lack of extensive roots and higher ratio of brown roots to white roots:
Now in stark contrast, here's an established division that was "grown for Jesus." Notice how extensive the roots are and the amount of white roots versus darker colored roots, which suggests those new white roots were produced recently. Established divisions that are produced properly can save you 1-2 years of waiting: the size of the rhizome has almost nothing to do with how long it takes to recover and start putting on good growth! Just because you got a large rhizome doesn't mean you'll get a larger plant quicker, what really matters is how much growth momentum the plant had prior to you receiving it! Interestingly enough, a poorly grown, fully established division can take as long as a recent division to pick up on growth and produce nice traps.
Despite the medium size of this rhizome, it produced large spring traps several months after this photo was taken. That's because the roots are super extensive and the plant had incredible growth momentum the previous grow season:
How to plant Sarracenia Rhizomes
I didn't make up this method, I was actual taught how to do this by Ernesto Sandoval, who was the curator of the botanical conservatory at UC Davis! Here are the steps on how to plant a bare root rhizome:
1) get a pot, container, or prepare a bog. I like to slightly underpot the first season. There should be space for the plant to produce new roots in the pot for the first season, but just enough space, not excessive amounts! After one grow season, you can plop the whole thing out of the pot like a cake and place it into a much larger pot where it can stretch its roots and size up!
2) fill it up with your substrate of choice, and be sure to get it fully hydrated before planting If the substrate is dry, it'll be mostly challenging to water in later on.
3) once filled to the top, lightly press the soil down and fill it even more.
4) with two hands, carefully tap the bottom of the pot on a hard surface several times. This will allow the soil to settle and may make more space to add more soil. Fill soil to the top of the pot.
5) dig a hole and make sure the grow point(s) are in the middle of the pot. Why? Here's a good example: last winter, this was centered as well as I could: none of the grow points were in the middle due to the size and shape of the rhizome, but I kept them as far away from the edges of the pot as I could. This rhizome was slightly underpotted and I was expecting it to outgrow the pot within a season. Notice there are 3 dormant growth points in this picture. Look at the growth point to the right, it's about to hit the side of the pot and BAM! This forces Mike wang to repot because it's now out of space and will literally break the pot if I don't transplant it this winter:
6) Place the rhizome into the hole, but slightly higher than the top of the soil line (maybe 1-2cm too high)
7) fill in some soil around the roots, pound the bottom of the pot on a solid surface a few times. The rhizome will "sink" 1-2 cm and should be at the perfect height! The soil level will have dipped a little, fill in the soil until the pot is completely full. pack down lightly. HEre's the ideal depth of a newly planted rhizome. Notice the growth point is NOT under soil and the "back" of the rhizome is also not covered by soil. It is OKAY if a super thin layer(few milimeters) of peat cover the back of the rhizome
another picture. It looks like the rhizomes are buried under the peat, but that's misleading, when I water these in, it'll wash off that thin layer of peat and the rhizomes will be slightly exposed:
There are exceptions to the rule when it comes to how deep to plant a rhizome, a good one is S. minor, which can tolerate having the back of the rhizomes being covered completely, but don't cover them too deep!
With the "shorties" like purpureas and psittacinas, be sure the growth point is not buried and that the rhizomes are planted horizontally as shown above, NOT VERTICALLY! It's very tempting to plant the rhizomes vertically because they naturally are easier to plant that way, but you will almost for certain get rot that way!
CRITIQUE OF MY OWN PLANTING JOB!
NOW the fun part! Here is a critique of my own planting job! These are rhizomes that were planted a year or two ago and have been grown out all the way, they're now completely dormant. Were they planted at the right depth?
In this first picture below, the rhizomes were planted at a perfect depth! Notice the growth points aren't buried, the back of the rhizomes are just slighty exposed. This is ideal if you grow in full sun because once you chop off all the leaves during the dormancy period and the rhizomes are exposed to full sun, they can get sunburned before spring arrives!
Here are some S. leucophylla rhizomes. probably could have planted them deeper, but they're still okay. better to leave some leaves on during the winter dormancy period in this case to shade these rhizomes, otherwise they can get sunburned:
this one pictured below is pretty ideal. It has a bunch of old, dead "sheaths" on it, protecting it from the sun and is quite a bit above the soil level, which lowers its chances of rotting:
this guy is too shallow! notice the black "back" of the rhizome, got a little burnt but that's cosmetic, the burn didn't get into the fleshy tissue inside. If it was severe burn, that would be dead right now!
Last but not least, what most growers won't tell you is that a lot of rhizomes are awkwardly shaped and there's no way to plant them perfectly (aka for Jesus). here's a good example: the back end of this rhizome was planted way too deep, but I had to otherwise the growth point would be buried! In this case, I grew the plant on the drier side (eg. not ever sitting in water for long periods of time), otherwise that back end of the rhizome could rot very easily!
HOW TO PLANT RHIZOME VIDEO
Fingers crossed this video works! Pay closer attention to what I am doing rather than what I am saying, I mis-spoke a little bit but the way I plant the rhizome is exactly what you want to do! Click on the picture for the video:
Video on how to plant sarracenia rhizome by Mike Wang, on Flickr
Here are images of plant progress on 03/16/2023