Cool beans

You should be fine in the terrarium, mabey get your hands on one of those zoomed (or whatever brand) humidity sensors (they like $3.00) and pop them in the terrarium to check on the humidity, just slide your cover enough to give enough of an outlit to get the humidity to where you want it for your plants.
They should do nicely.

Im just waiting for them to ship my batch, what VFT did you get (typical, red dragon....)

Hope they do well

Cheers

Sheldon

I have one of those temp/humidity things in my terrarium and my humidity hovers at around 50%, and it raises to about 70% at night. I guess I was asking because I've heard from many people (including the guys over at cobraplants.com) that Venus Flytraps and certain sundews/pitcher plants (some of the ones I have) do much better outside than in a terrarium. We'll see...

As for what flytrap I got, it seems to be looking pretty typical. Green with some light red coloring on the inside of the traps. Seems to be a young plant, but it's very healthy.

Be sure to post when you get your shipment of plants. I want to know what you get!

I also wanted to know:

Could you post a picture of your setup? I want to know what you have going on, because it seems like you know what you're doing, and I sure don't! Hahahaha! Do you have a fan blowing over your setup? What kind of temp/humidity do you get? Any and all details would be great.

Hi, me know what Im doing? LOL HAHAHAH

No, Im new that this, I read as many books as I can, and when Im not sure I ask.
I grew my VFTs and sundews permenently in a terrarium that had about 80% humidity, they grew quite well.

It was cobraplant (Jeff) that told me that this story of them needing such high humidity is nonsense.
I followed his direction and started hardening them off.
I have no fan or fancy equipement, only 6" pots, the grow lights, my small R/O unit and my perlite and peat.

They do all the rest.
Just took some pics now.
Ok my VFT's all where pretty much trapless (me and overfeeding, MY BAD!!!!)
This is only growing with no humidity (the humidity indoors might be about 20% with the furnace) and with foliar feed once a week.

When things are not going right I ask the guys at cobra plant and at here.
You will see 1 humidity dome, that is on the D. Adalae which is very picky, I have split the plants (they spead to 4 different plants) so I will experiment with hardening them off to humidity indoors and see what happens.

Ok pics are uploaded, sorry about the poor quality, only have my camera phone on hand.
They are:

ButterWort (Ping Primuflora):
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/butterwort.jpg
Typical VFT:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/typical.jpg
BigMouth VFT:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/bigmouth.jpg
Dente VFT:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/dente.jpg
Drosera Capensis (Typical, Broadleaf and Alba):
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/dcapensis.jpg
Drosera Adelae dome:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/dadelae.jpg
My setup on the window sill:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/setup.jpg
Red Dragon VFT:
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/reddragon.jpg
Drosea Adelae (the plant, damn thing is like a weed :) )
http://www.51pics.com/images/necro1234/dadelae2.jpg

So there ya go, from the setup as you can see, I just have a very shaded windowsill (thanx to the aspens outside) with the light fixture which has 2 X 40watt Verlix bulbs)
The plants are still young (I got them in about Jan-Feb (all my VFT's), I have since abused them with over feeding to the extent that they mabey had 1 trap left, after this I have not fed them at all other than foliar feed, they have recovered to the state they are in now in less that 2-3 months, which I think is pretty good.

Let me say one thing though, I have a N. Ventricosa which WAS groing indoors, it was developing new leaves and was happy, the opening of a new leaf (it uncurls and there is another curled leaf inside it) took about a week.
I put this plant with a Broad Leaf D. Capensis on a table outside that only gets morning sun, the aspins block the hot heat after that as the sun moves.
This plant is doing far better outside, a new curled leaf literally opened overnight!!, and the new one is about to start as well all with nice little pitchers that are doubling in size.

I like my plants indoors, but depending on what cobraplant.com give me for my free gift, I will start growing alot of them in the open as well.
My littls D. Capensis has been hammering the flies, they land, try to get out of the situation, but those last hairs on the leaf always seem to curl around them and finish them off.

I'm not an expert at all, but I am happy to share what I have learnt from myself and others and then ofcause learn more from those I help.

If you need any info or suggestions you are welcome to either post here or email me at: necro1234 at yahoo dot com

Cheers

Sheldon

Thanks a lot for all the info and pictures! Seems like your plants are doing very well. I must say I've been guilty of overfeeding in the past. The 'cool' factor always gets the best of me and I feed one more bug to one of my plants. Oh well, as long as it's fun right? That's the reason I got into these plants in the first place!

So your Lance-Leaf Sundew gives you problems with humidity. I just assumed so because you have it in that dome. I have mine in my terrarium and it seems to be doing fine without excess humidity.

As far as growing the plants outside, I'm sure it is better for them. However, I really like having my plants closeby so I can appreciate their beauty. If they're outside I'm positive I wouldn't go look at them as often. I bet they'd catch more bugs though!

Anyways, thanks again for the post. I enjoy talking with you and look forward to doing so in the future on these boards!

No problem :)
Well I got the lance leaf with a drosera aliciae (my baby) and a dente flytrap from meanplants.com originally with a fishbowl terrarium.
The VFT was tiny and the sundews looked like a few roots with 1 leaf, the lance leaf was specially barron.
I planted them as instructed and was so scared because of the "scary" tales I was told and read about low humidity.
All this bull about low humidity will cause your VFT to have deformed traps, HA HA HA, what a load of nonsense!
My bigmouths traps are about 5cm in length, are they deformed?
The VFT's are growing faster out of the terrarium after been hardened off than when they had all the humidity.
I am foliar feeding until they get alot of leaves, once they in good shape Ill feed them again, 1 fly at a time per trap until the trap reopens,then the next trap.
This is the recommended feeding that Ive read.
The answer to your dilemma is simple, since you dont have enough traps to feed all at once, you need more plants! :)
cobraplant are awsome guys, but they pretty much have the standard VFT's available.
One thing cooks does have is nice plants, but also many many species, I LOVE THE GIANTS!!!!!
The LOW GIANT and BIG MOUTH species just make you go "WOW", they have huge traps, a nice one is also called VIGOROUS which is a breed of GIANT that grows low like the LOW GIANT and grows quite fast.

bestest sundews that I love are the south african types (place of my birth)
The D. Capensis is great in the way that the tentacles go after the insect, if that not enough the leaf curls after it.
The D. Aliciae though is such a beutiful little round sundew that looks awesome full of dew.
This one makes the D. Capensis look like the turtle in the story of the race between the rabbit, the leaf curls around the victim very fast compared to its other south african brother, it is not a good sundew for catching big insects due to its size, so it makes up for this with its vigour in wrapping around anything it can.

The D. Adelae I must say grows very very fast and sends up massive amounts of baby plantlets, it also is the gooiest plant I have ever seen.
When it overgrows and touches the sides of the dome, removing the dome looks like the plant has a BAD BAD COLD!!, lol
Its kinda gross but looks amazing in the light, no insect can escape it, there is just too much glue.
I have noticed that this sundew does not curl its leaves nor does it seem to curl its tentacles.

My poor D. Aliciae got very sickly and has died :(
I was so sad over this plant, Im waiting for cobraplant to get theirs ready for sale and I will try again.
I think my downfall was that it sent up 2 massive flowerstalks and I them took it out of the terrarium and put my plants in the pots.
The flowerstalk I think tired it out and stressed it out, I also had no SuperThrive at this time.
I have taken good leaf cuttings and root cuttings from before it passed on, Im hoping these may grow plantlets.

If you want an awesome sundew to watch that is so hardy it is scary,get yourself a D. Capensis (or 1 of each type, Im just missing the all red type), dont even bother about hardening it off.
Plant it in the pot, put it under some good light, itll lose some dew for the first few days, after this more dew develops, aoon enough its full of goo and is growing like mad.
It is an awesome killer of insects, taking on large insects most sundews cant handle, I gave my broad leaf a pillbug a while ago, these bugs are pains in the butt, they are like mules, pulling their way out of everything.
Well the bug never gave up pulling its way down the leaf toward the stalk, well the plant never gave up either.
The leaf started curling from the tip down, and the tentacles started falling down toward the centre, the bug got to the base of the leaf and the remaining hairs pinned its head down just before the rolling leaf wrapped it around.

Was just as amazing as scraching your head while seeing a VFT snap shut on its prey.

Cheers

Sheldon

Oh oops, forgot something.
The lance leaf is very picky, it does not like foliar feeding at all, I know it does not like heat, heat in the 80 range I have read kills it.
I am not sure about himidity, my 1 plant has split into 4 full sized plants and there is 2 more baby plants coming up from the mother plant now.

Im going to attempt to harden off 1 of them now that I seperated them into their own pots.

Ill let everyone know what happens.

Cheers

Sheldon

To tell you the truth, I've come to appreciate the trapping mechanism of the sundews much more than even the Venus Flytrap. There's just something so cool about the tentacles and the goo! I also think Sundews are the prettiest of the carnivorous plants.

I do agree with you about the Lance-Leaf Sundew and it's ability to move. I've fed my plant a few bugs so far, and while it does seem to digest them, there appears to be no movement in either the tentacles or the leaf.

Now my Water Sundew moves like crazy when it captures an insect. I can remember one time in particular it caught a mosquito that was buzzing around in my terrarium and in a matter of about 20 minutes, the whole leaf had folded up on the poor guy, tentacles and all! Just amazing to witness.

It's funny that mention getting a Cape Sundew. I actually have one that I ordered from Cook's a few weeks back. It was in pretty 'meh' shape when it arrived and it seems to be finally getting out of shock. It has sprouted two new leaves and seems to be happy and full of dew. It also caught a mosquito and it was very fun watching the whole leave wrap around the prey.

So far my Venus Flytraps seem to be doing the poorest. I don't know if it's that they're still in shock from the store (I bought these two at Home Depot a few weeks back) or perhaps they're not liking my growing conditions, but they just don't seem to be thriving. I'll give it a few weeks and see how they do. I'll also be watching the flytrap I got today from Cobraplants.com to see how well it does coming into conditions that are pretty good (as opposed to the other flytraps who entered my collection when my conditions weren't the greatest-I still didn't have the right light and water).

You speak of this folier-What is it and where do you get it? Is it something you put in the soil or the water? It seems like it might be a good idea since I want my plants to really do well in this setup.

Well foliar means leaves, and feeding is obvious, its "leaf feading" the plants.
Because the CP's have evolved to absorb their "soup" via their leaves, we can feed them certain fertilizers this way, but NOT via their root system.
brands like MIRACID are fine for plants like VFT's, I use EPIPHYTES DELIGHT that I got from www.californiacarnivores.com, this is what Peter talks about in his book.

You just read the directions, and halve it for CP's.
There are directions for weekly and monthly mixes, as I said just halve this then you can either give your plants a "sponge bath" with a Q-tip or spray it on all over them.
Just try to not get alot on the top soil, you dont want alot getting to the roots.
Your plants will absorb the fertilizer via the leaves you apply it too.
You will notice some good growth spurts from this.
You can apply this instead of food or with combination with food.

Cheers

Sheldon

PS: Not all fertilizers or foliar feeds are fine for CP's, EPIPHYTES DELIGHT and MIRACID are ones that have been tested with CP's and have found to do fine.

Oh another thing since Im still on here, ye those poor creatures sold at Lowes and Home Depot Im sure would not be very happy.
I doubt they are taken care of or even given pure water.
Something that you should have in your CP toolkit is SuperThrive, any new plant you get from such places and even plants from Cooks or CobraPlant that needs to be planted or replanted should be soaked in a mix of superthrive (as per directions) for 15-30 minutes.
It does make a difference.
My D. Capensis from Cobraplant.com (3 of them) arrived FULL of goo and in beuriful shape, each in a 2" pot FILLED with pure sphagnum moss with a small plastic cup covering to protect it.
I soaked them all for 30 minutes and planted them in their pots, I already had a Typical D. Capensis, so I added a Broad Leaf and a Albino Capensis to the pot on my windowsill.
The remaining Broadleaf got put in its own 6" pot and was placed outside.
Since these are so hardy and where in such fine shape I gave NONE of them hardening off.
For about 3 days they lost some of their dew, but before 1 week had gone by they are sprouting new leaves and the remaining ones are filled with glue.
The broad leaf outside is harassing all forms of flying creatures with 3 kills to its name already.

I would highly recommed SuperThirve as a must have for plant growers, it is something that will give your plants that extra edge in getting back to shape when transplanting.

Cheers

Sheldon

PS californiacarnivores also sells this.

Oh ye

Got my plants today, all looking beutiful.
Got a nice sized Yellow Picher (another one) with 3 nice sized pitchers, the another one that Ive grown from a bulb has a nice flower that is in blossom now with 2-3 small pitchers that are foruming.
I also got a Judith Hindle, a CobraNest (small one but looks beutiful) a S. Rubra (FREEBIE for $25.00 or over) and a Drosera Northern Dewthread (FREE for computer crash)

I've planted them all out doors in my big pot and am just waiting for them to get big enough to start gulping down on all these damned yellow jackets (hate these things!)

My next order now needs to be Drosera Aliciae's and Drosera Binata's (either Giant or Dragon)

Infact if anyone here has experience with D. Binata's, Im looking for a BEEEG sundew that can handle full sized flys, yellow jackets and the like, and can stay outdoors in the full sun here in Salt Lake.

If anyone has info on wether they think these would be up to the job please let me know.

Thanx

Sheldon

Sheldon, where did you get your R/O unit? I live in an apartment so I can't "monkey" with the plumbing so I need something that I can attach to a faucet. I'm tired of hauling gallons of distilled water home from the store. I saw a bunch on eBay and am wondering if they're quality units - half the price as at the big box stores.
Alan

Hi Alan

Ill sort you the link now.
The company site is at:
http://www.watermakermini.com/
Donno what the direct price is, I got mine for about $80.00, the ppm of TDS of the ware is makes is at 001 from a tap TDS of 085.
Here is the site I got mine from:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/aquamallusa/watminrevoss.html

Replacement filters are about $40.00

Its a WONDERFUL unit, JUST ONE THING.
When you open your packaging, you will notice the tube that comes out the top side where you put the tube on to collect your clean water is black, THIS IS A PLASTIC COVER, PULL IT OFF!!!!!
I thought it was plastic, but I was worried when no water was coming out of the tube, I then found that the "black tube" was aplastic cover that covers a stainless steel tube.

Just thought Id share my stupidity :)

Cheers

Sheldon

Oh also, you will see they say you should send in water from it every 6 months for testing, it costs $8.00 + shipping.
You can go get yourself a TDS meter as I did from waterfiltersonline.com, I got this one which is quite cool:
http://www.waterfiltersonline.com/detail.asp?product_id=TDS-Meter-4-HMD

Ok, I meant to say that the TAP water is at about 65-86 ppm TDS here, the watermaker mini measures in at 001 ppm TDS which is at the same level as my distilled water from the store.
Ok next, when the unit is not in use (you just clip it off the fosit, its nice and compact.
You put it in the fridge when its not been used, if I put it on at 4pm, by about 11pm I have over 2 gallons of loverly clean water.

Leave the other R/O units, they big, heavy, ugly and need installation, this can be carried by hand and clips neatly on the tap.

Its GOOOOOOD stuff :)

Cheers bud

Sheldon

Thanks, yet again, for the information! I just ordered a Mini and meter. I'll be glad to not need to buy more jugs.
Question: how do you repot a Drosera without getting all the dew everywhere? I've got one that I need to repot and don't know how to proceed. And what about all the debris that is stuck to the leaves? Can it be rinsed off with water? Same question about butterworts.

well butterworts are easier because they dont have long tentacles.

I pretty much put the plants stalk between my index and middle finger with my right hand (ontop) and then use my left hand on the base of the pot.
I give it a couple of soft sudden shakes until the soil moves out the pot into my hand in the shape of the pot.
Because the plant is sticking between my middle and index finger not to much gets on it.
I then turn it upright and carefully remove excess peat from the sides, careful not to go near the roots.
I always have left some old peat on the roots then simply pot the plant in the new pot (I make a hole in the new peat to sink it into)

I too have issues with getting perlite and peat on the leaves sometimes, I normally carefully take off the big chunks of stuff with tweezers, I then use a toothpick to carefully nock off the rest if needed.

If you had to wash the plant off with distilled water it would certainly not kill it, I mean they live in bogs, it may loose its dew for a day or 2 but should recover perfectly.
I know my P. Primuflora dont mind flooding at all, I always water mine from the top and they love it, so no worries with that.

I know what you mean about the distilled water, running back and forth to albertons spending about $2.00 per 1.9 gallons was becoming a pain in the butt, these cool toys have become a real life saver.

About how not to get dew everywhere, well that one I have never managed, lol, my hands always need a good wash afterwards, just try to keep the dewy leaves above your fingers and your hand under around the stalk to support it when it falls out of the pot.

I suppose you could even use some clear saran wrap, remove all sphagnum moss, put the saran wrap on the top covering the whole top surface of the peat moss, then put your hand ontop and pop it out.
This would stop peat soil falling to the leaves atleast, never tried it but just thought of it now, should work.

Cheers bud

Sheldon