Vegetative Propagation
There are many different ways you can cultivate your Venus flytrap collection.
Natural Divisions
The easiest way is to do nothing at all.
When your Venus flytrap gets large enough it will naturally divide creating new plants separate from the main rhizome. When repotting during its dormancy you can separate the plant into individual plants. You may find that there is 2 or more plant divisions that you can separate from the main rhizome.
Leaf Pulling
Another method of propagation is to take leaf pulling’s from your main plant and create many identical clones of the same plant.
To do this you will need to get a nice and healthy looking plant and remove it from its pot then gently pull a healthy leaf from the main rhizome and pull it in a downward motion to the bottom of the rhizome. You will want there to be the white part of the rhizome at the bottom of the leaf. Cut the trap off of the leaf and place into your regular potting medium as you would plant a full size plant.
Keep it moist and it needs lots of light. I generally do all of this inside one of those mini greenhouses (these generally come with a 24 space insert for seedlings) that you can buy for around $10 from pretty much any gardening supplies place. I always cut out one of the corner cells so that I can use the space that it has left as a guide to seeing how much water is in the tray. I will fill up the rest of the cells with my potting medium and then plant in them each of my leaf pulling and then put the lid on the greenhouse and I place it underneath a fluoro light that I have set up on a timer which automatically turns on for 14-16 hours per day.
It will take a long time before you get any results from your leaf pulling but be patient and you should have success.
Flower Stalk
You can also create a clone of your plant from the flower stalk of your flytrap. When a Venus flytrap decides to put up a flower stalk in the spring you can give yourself a pat on the back as you have been supplying the ideal conditions for your flytrap to thrive. When a Venus flytrap puts up a flower stalk though it uses a great deal of energy up in this process and if your plant is quite small or not doing well it may actually put all its energy into growing a flower stalk and afterwards it may die from the effort.
Also the flower that a Venus flytrap produces is not very spectacular so the only reason that you would let it grow would be for the sole purpose of producing seed.
So unless you are interested in producing seeds and growing more flytraps from seed it is best to get a sharp pair of scissors and cut the flower stalk off once it has reached a height of about 2 inches or so. You can then treat the flower stalk as you do with leaf pulling’s and place it into your growing medium standing in the same way as it was growing and keep it under the same conditions. You will notice that the top may go black and wither but the remainder of the stalk remains green (or red, depending on the variety of flytrap you have). Be patient as it will take a few months before you actually see any growth but if you are lucky you will be rewarded with an identical clone of the mother plant you cut the flower stalk from.
Water Propagation
I have written a step by step guide on how to perform the water propagation technique which I have found to be much more successful than the traditional leaf pulling technique.
You can find this guide HERE or visit my BLOG page to see the rest of my posts.