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When should you cut your plant?

Hi everyone,
I have a few questions about the cutting topic in the forum

1) Does not cutting your plant effects it's growth?


2)IF SO- How long should you let your plant go without cutting months, weeks, or years?

This is a different subject---


3) When your plant's leaves die, should you just cut the black(or dying) part off or should you cut all the plant down close to the bulb(without cutting to form a new plant)


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Thanks
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Juniebugg!
Welcome to the Forums!

I'm not quite sure about the first two questions so I'll leave them alone.

As for question 3. . . I always cut down to the bulb for two reasons. It doesn't look very nice to have just a big (probrobly dying) stalk in the middle of your plant. Also, that stalk that you left will problably decay and die too. So, save yourself the trouble of having to cut again.

Cheers!
 
First off, <span style='color:red'><span style='font-size:27pt;line-height:100%'>WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!</span></span>

Second, I disagree. You should only cut off the black parts. Say you have a half-dead leaf. Well, cut at the line that the black/brown meets the green. Never cut off any green, wether or not it saves you another clipping. Cutting off green makes your plant lose valuable energy. The green parts of even half-dead leaves still photosynthesize, which is quite important.

Good luck!
           FTG
 
Hi JunieBugg

I'm not sure what you are referring to about cutting a VFT. You don't ever need to cut or trim the plant other than cleaning up dead material. As FTG said, you can snip off the blackened parts as they are dead, but leave any green portions as they still make food for the plant (they don't live exclusively off bugs, they still photosenthesize like other plants do).

Perhaps the term "cuttings" has confused you. Some people take "leaf cuttings" to propagate their VFT and make babies. However this usually entails gently pulling a leaf off at the base so you get some of the white material down at the very bottom near the bulb. You would do this only if you wanted to make more VFTs from your plant.

Other than that, there is no cutting, trimming or pruning for a flytrap.
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Suzanne
 
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