REPOTTING CARNIVOROUS PLANTS; AN EASY METHOD
Through a process of trial and error, I have found a simple and relatively easy way to repot carnivorous plants. This method is very useful if you are ordering plants bare-root via shipping. Most important is to be gentle during this process; carnivorous plant roots are thin and fragile, and liable to break. Take your time, go slow and above all give them time to adjust to their new home!
THINGS YOU WILL NEED
The Drosera aff. lanata on the right are in serious need of repotting. The peat they were potted in was of poor quality. It has compacted and consequently soured, resulting in them entering dormancy and also having some peat buildup. As such, we will give them a new home to live in!
To repot them, I've set aside what I need first; carnivorous plant media on the left (2:1 perlite:peat to provide them more aeration), and a bowl of distilled water. Lastly, I have my coarse media sieve (see the article on making carnivorous plant media for more information) and a pair of fine tweezers set to the side off frame. This is all done near the kitchen sink, for reasons you will see soon.
SOAKING THE POT
Next, I place the coarse media sieve over the sink, then put the potted plant in the coarse media sieve. This will catch most of the old media in the pot. You can vaguely see I have balanced it on top of some tupperware; this is just for my personal ease of access as without doing this I have to reach over quite a bit on account of being short in stature.
Then, I use the tap and gently run room temperature water into the pot. You may have to pull apart a top layer of moss/algae/etc off the top so the water can really penetrate down through the peat. The goal is to make the pot as waterlogged as possible, as you can see in the picture. Add more water as needed.
I like to gently squeeze the sides of the pot as well to speed up the process, though this is not strictly necessary. Eventually, you want to end up with a kind of peat slurry inside the pot.
TIP: Keep count of how many plants are in your pot if you have multiples; this way you can be sure you got them all and they are not hiding in a pile of peat somewhere.
REMOVING PLANTS FROM THE OLD MEDIA
If you did everything correctly, the plants should now be sitting in a slurry of peat. You can test this by VERY gently pulling on the plant. They should move without any resistance. If it feels like they are stuck on something, this means the lower layers of peat have not been soaked thoroughly enough. Repeat step 2 in this case.
Eventually, you will be able to wiggle out the plant like you can see in the picture. Run it under a low stream of water from the tap to rinse off the excess peat from the plant. Be careful with rinsing the roots! If a little peat sticks on the roots, that is fine.
It is also during this stage that I check the overall health of the plant. If there is a mat of dead leaves under the crown (as is often the case), I try to remove it with tweezers as they can promote mold and algae. If there is a damaged leaf I also tweeze it off for the same reason. I also check the roots for signs of pest or root damage.
In this particular instance, I had to remove some leaves from the base that were molding and wash the crown of the plant of peat build up. After the plant is cleaned to your satisfaction, put it in the bowl of distilled water to keep it happy while you clean up the rest of them.
REPOTTING THE PLANTS
You should now have a pile of bare-root plants in your bowl of distiled water, and a pile of old media in the sieve. I personally like to re-use my old media. What I do is give the mix a rinse as per step 4 on the mixing media article, then I sterilize the old media in the microwave on high for 10 minutes in a microwave-safe takeout container.
While that is being sterilized, I clean out the old pots, scrubbing them with soap and water until they are thoroughly clean. Then, I fill them up to the top with the new media. I find that running tap water on a low stream through the media helps once its in the pot, as it helps the media settle in and also removes any excess peat dust. After doing a run with tap water, I flush the media with distilled water to remove any tap water and excess minerals/nutrients that might have built up. Lastly, I find having a tub to put these pots in helps immensely, so you don't end up with a mess of water and peat everywhere in your kitchen.
ACCLIMATING/FINISHING UP
Now that the plants are all repotted and happy, I like to flush the media with a little distilled water. I find this helps the roots settle into the media better and helps level out the plants as well. If you find the plant floating up to the surface or kind of dangling around on a bit of root, you haven't put the roots into the hole far enough; if this happens to me I adjust as necessary with tweezers as per the previous step.
These plants are now in their new home! However, what they have gone through is analagous to surgery in humans and can be quite traumatizing for them. As such, I highly recommend giving them time to recover and acclimate to their new homes.
How I do this personally is put them in a sealed ziploc bag. I put a thin layer of water on the bottom of the bag, put the pots in, then seal it. As you can probably tell, I re-use my ziploc bags; after all, they are only being used for plants at this point and as long as you rinse them out between uses I have found no problems re-using them. I start re-opening the ziploc bag after I start to see growth resuming, usually about 2 weeks with sundews.
The key to acclimating plants in this way is to NOT rush them. I cannot stress this enough. Too often I have lost plants because I got impatient and opened their bags too quickly, only for them to stop growing, or worse, die back. If you see growth slow, or leaves start to turn brown at the tips, just seal the bag up a bit more and wait for the plants to recover. Patience is key! Remember, this is analogous to them having undergone surgery; they will need time to recover before they can show to you how happy they are in their new homes.
Good luck and happy growing!
POTTING THE PLANT/FEEDING IN THE ROOTS
Now is the time to finally put the plants in their new home. For this step, I normally use both hands; one holding the plant, one handling the tweezers.
Gripping the roots gently with the tweezers as in the picture, I feed the roots into the hole I just made in the previous step. Do it gently and hold the plant above the soil level so it is not dragged along the media as you do this, or you may break some roots in the process. If you encounter any resistance, that means your hole is probably not deep enough; in this case remove the plant, deepen the hole with your tweezers, and try again. Also, try to keep the roots going in smoothly and not bunch them all up near the top.
Repeat this until the plant is flush with the surface of the media.
POTTING THE PLANTS
Now that the pots are filled with media and ready to go, its finally time to pot up the plants!
Poke the fine tweezers into the media to make a hole for the roots to go into. Depending on the depth of the roots, adjust how deep you stick the tweezers in accordingly. I also wiggle the tweezers back and forth a little to make a wider hole in the media, depending on how large the roots are.