What can VFT's and pitcher plants and sundews eat?
joediedrichs
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
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joediedrichs
8 years agoRelated Discussions
sundew and pitcher plant help
Comments (8)Hello dsmdan95, The usual Drosera you buy at hardware stores are the most common and easiest to grow, like D. adela, D. capenesis, and such. Some like full sunlight more than others and some simply cannot weather full sunlight as it burns their leaves. If you have D. adelae, it can only stand partial light like what it would get in an east or west window or under a shady tree. Full sun can cook it. Is this your sundew? If so, it is Drosera adelae and can be grown easily inside as a houseplant in a partial sun window or on a shady (not too shady, they still like good light) patio space. The big problem is humidity at this point since it sounds like you took off the goofy plastic dome that hardware stores often put on their carnivorous plant stock. If you took the dome off quickly, the plants are likely in humidity shock and will be sick for a couple of weeks until they adapt. To help them recover, you can replace the humnidity domes and then slowly remove them by lifting the sides and bracing them up a fraction of an inch or punching several 1/4 inch holes in the sides every 3 days until it does not hold humidity any more. After two weeks of hole punching or continuous dome raising, the plants should be adapted to low humidity and will be healthier. You can repot the plants into a larger pot with good drainage holes with the ingredients you stated. Just make sure the moss is of the Canadian premium sphagnum peat moss type in the dry bales and that the perlite is plain, no fertilizers added to either. Mix up the perlite and moss and dampen it until it is chocolate brown and then repot. It would be a good idea to place a water tray with 1-2 inches of water in it at all times under the pots to provide constant moisture as those plants are bog species that get continuous water. The plants also need to be adapted to high level light since they have been in low light in a hardware store. If the sundew is an adelae (Australian Lance Leaf Sundew), it can't stand full sun as I indicated before, so just give it more bright light, but never full sun. The Sarracenia Purpurea is the Purple Pitcher plant and it is a North American plant that actually requires full sun to develop as a healthy, vigorous plant. It would take a metal halide 400 watt lamp to provide even a close approximation of the light that plant likes if someone were to try to grow it inside. Anyway, just place the pitcher plant in a west or east window or in a shady spot under an awning or tree for the first week, then in less shade, like in a south window or further towards the edge of the shaded region, in the second week, then in full sun after that. Some leaf burn might still occur, but the plant will at least be on the way to recovery and adaptation to high light levels. The sundew needs light to produce dew, but if it is shocked by a humidity change, will loose it's dew. Give it time and the conditions I described and it should recover in a couple of weeks. Also, only water the plants with distilled, rain, or reverse osmosis water as too many minerals, like tap water usually possesses, eventually kills carnivorous plants as it alters the Ph of their acid soil mix....See MoreVenus, Sundew, and Pitcher plant appear to be dieing
Comments (11)Nycti: Misting really does not harm them, nor will it actually benefit them greatly. They do get rained on all the time, so what I use it for is just a means of cleaning them off. It does remove spores, dust, and dead bugs. Trio123: The 24 inch lights are too low wattage. You do not need to worry about spectrum if you go with cool white or true daylight as they simulate the natural spectrum of light that plants need anyways. I use the 48 inch shop lights with twin tube mounts. They are long and unwieldy, but they work great if they are set up on a shelf system and can provide good lighting for a number of plants along a 4 foot shelf. I would suggest placing the shelf in a window for added light. In any case, the tubes will come with a information list on the box that states the lumens... 40 watt tubes are about 3000 lumens according to who made them and what they were made for. You do not need anything specifically made for plants, like plant lights, as they usually are just more expensive types of florescent lights that are only slightly different from the cool white ones in shop lights. My lighting system covers a 4 foot shelf with four tubes side by side providing 12000 lumens to a number of plants. Total cost is about 24 dollars and the tubes usually take years to burn out.. though you should replace them once a year as they dim a lot after that. The pesticide might help as well if you have a bad sap sucking pest problem as Nycti indicated....See MoreWild Pitchers, Sundews, Broms
Comments (2)Enjoy this video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fk2sZ0AMPQ Apparently most are in the panhandle it seems, Florida folks can of coarse be more specific than I can!...See MoreNeed help w/ pitcher plant and VFT...
Comments (1)You need to slowly acclimate them OUT of the terrarium, then slow get them used to all day Sun outside. You CAN grow these outside but come fall, just before first frost they need to go somewhere where the temps will be 35-40 degrees F. until around Msrch. A cool basement, unheated garage or what I do, put them them in zip lock bags then in the fridge!...See Morejoediedrichs
8 years agopurslanegarden
8 years ago
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