How to produce Seed from your Venus Flytrap
If you have decided to allow your flytrap to grow its flower stalk you will need to ensure that it gets pollinated once the flower blooms. Generally a pollinating species of insect will pollinate your flower but for you can’t rely on this occurring if there isn’t a great deal of bees etc. in your area. I don’t leave it to chance generally and so I will get a small paintbrush and hand pollinate each flower so that I know what flytraps have been crossed and it also maximises the seeds you will get. Your Venus flytrap has put so much effort into trying to reproduce so you might as well make sure that it has every chance to do so.
Once you have pollinated a flower it will close up and look like its dying over the next couple of days and then you may notice that the ball part of the flower will begin to swell up. This is when you know you have been successful in your pollination of the flower. It will take a couple of weeks but once the top of the flower stalk is all black you can look at the swollen top and it will begin to open up and you will see a mass of tiny black and shiny seeds at the top. At this point you can cut the top off and I take it inside and over a piece of paper I will gently squeeze and roll the base of where the flower was and you will notice that all of the seeds will all pop out all over the piece of paper. These are now ready to be sown so that you can grow your very own genetically unique Venus flytrap seedlings.
How to Grow VFT from Seed
To sow your seeds simply spread them over the top of your growing medium (do not bury them!) and treat the same way as you have with your leaf pulling and cut flower stalk in a mini greenhouse. They will take a few weeks before they begin to germinate. After a month the majority of the ones that will germinate will have done so and you can then remove the cover of your greenhouse and start to treat them as you would your fully grown Venus flytraps.
If you buy seeds from the internet or from anyone else make sure you are buying them from reputable sources. There are people on eBay for example that claim to be selling VFT seeds nice and cheap but in fact they are selling something totally different. So please be careful and don’t get caught out. When I have new seed I will be selling some from this website so keep your eye out and follow me on Facebook so you can see when I announce that I have some seeds available.