Venus Fly Trap

I planted the Venus Fly Trap seeds, along with banana plants and Birds of Paradise.  There was extra space in the seed tray, so I added in some of the perennials I collected in the Fall:  hostas, daylilies, tiger lilies, ricinus (castor oil plant).  I have them in a domed propagator which keeps the moisture in and retains a slightly higher temperature.

The dome traps in the moisture so the seeds and soil won't dry out.
Water droplets sit along the inner surface of the dome and make it hard to get a good picture.
A secondary light sits on top to help raise the temperature a bit for a couple hours everyday.

 

The dome is marked in magic marker so I won't forget what is planted where.
And I can get a temperature reading from the little silver gadget in there - 20.3°C
(Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it quite as hot as I would like,  >22°C)

 Today, I created some more space for the lilies to sit under the window of the utility room.

I still have about a dozen plants in other rooms.

A few of them aren't doing so well.  After I watered and fertilized the other night, I will probably give up on the ones that haven't grown any shoots yet in the next 7-10 days.  I also need to extend the other shelf out from the window to make floor space for the remaining plants in my living room.  I don't mind having a coupe around the house, as they spruce the place up a bit, but now that they are big enough, they can sit under the window and do just fine.

They are all getting too big for the shelves. I'm constantly pulling them out and putting them on the floor all around the house so I finally got rid of some of the shelves and gave them more floor space where they belong, under the south-facing window.

Interestingly, when I was dismantling the shelving units, I checked out the seed tray I had set up  several weeks ago (and which had no success).  It turns out that the seeds did not really fail, they never even began to germinate.  The canna lily seeds are still perfectly good.  Some of the smaller seeds would be too hard to find in the soil to bother trying to salvage, but the bigger ones can still be tried out.  This time, I started the seeds with a better compost soil mixture instead of the peat.  I was never too confident that the peat would be a good growing medium in the first place, so I'm at least glad that the seeds are in fine condition to be tried again in proper soil.