FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've had any kind of photo thread.

Since after a bout of depression I neglected my collection and virtually all of it is gone now. It sounds sad, but really I'm fully recovered and it was mostly easy drosera species so don't feel too bad. Anyway, I'm redoing my plants, and have a load to post on so I'll take it slowly (most of it is seed anyways).

I'm going to start of with a progression thread on Drosera indica, as requested by Tish.

I hope you guys can see this okay. My camera is pretty good, but its zoom is not amazing







Soon enough I'll have to feed all of them, as indica is a species that does not do well without a first few initial feedings. Instructions are posted in thread.

Great! How many weeks till germination did that take? Where should I post pictures when the one you gave me germinate?

I think it probably took 3 and a half weeks or maybe 4. That's a really rough estimation, I just sowed and forgot about it.

Katya, I can make a thread called "Drosera indica giveaway photo-progression" if you want.

That's fine, I can always do it on my seedling photo update thread.

Hi David, thanks for starting the thread. I hope I didn't give you pressure over this. Wow! those are some cute little seedlings. I can't wait till mine to start bursting with life too. Let see some updates from everyone. Ill post my pot of seeds tonight if you all don't mine some boring pot of peat photo haha

No it's all good Tish, it's time I got sharing my plants. When my plants are happy it's generally a symptom that I'm happy, and vice versa.

It's good to see that people are interested in seeing them.

And as far as where we should put ALLL the photos, I think it would be cool to have them in the same place. So I'll definitely start a thread for that.

Thanks guys, and Tish those indica are gonna do great for you in your climate, just make sure to not excessively water them and they should thrive.

If they make any flowers for me I personally plan on snipping them since I'm starting them at a weird time in the year. Maybe I can get them growing and flowering all summer if we grow them through the winter indoors.

Good luck guys.

David F wrote:Thanks guys, and Tish those indica are gonna do great for you in your climate, just make sure to not excessively water them and they should thrive.

Hmmm. I thought Drosera always like to sit in water? I always left my drosera pots in water but less than 1cm. Sometimes they dry for 1 day and I'll fill it up again.

Anyway I will heed your advise.

6Dec14 Here's my pot of your effort Once again thanks for sharing!

Less than 1 cm? You'll probably be okay. Usually I let mine almost get bone dry in the greenhouse, refusing to water them unless the soil got stiff or unless it was a really hot day.

Hmm, why would you do that? Is the humidity high in the green house? If my soil starts to dry, it gets dangerous here. the heat always kills them, any maybe 60-66% is too dry here?! Thats why I learnt my lesson from past dried sundews. Now i keep them in water tray. I was refering to young ones btw.

It's just this particular species that likes it drier.

Ohh ic. Thanks

Feeding baby sundews:




First you're going to take fish flakes, dead powdered insects, or some other form of sundew food, and powder it so it's nice and dust-like. I'm using freeze-dried blood-worms because they're awesome!

You can use some sort of object (nursery plant label in the picture) like tweezers pencil tips (mechanical and wood). If you don't have anything on hand-- use your creativity, it just has to be precise.

Make sure the powder that you scoop up is dry, and that you get as small of specs as possible.



Now, with great care, carefully, and slowly "dab" the spec of dust onto the sundew's leaf.



Some things I've learned are:

-Try to hit the center of the leaf, a spec of dust on one or two tentacles might be too hard for the plant to curly around and digest.
-If the spec becomes wet with water or dew, remove the dust and dry off the tip (usually with your shirt)
-If the specs are not sticking to the object you are using, you can try and blow onto the tip and condense a tiny bit of moisture from your breath.
-If you have a lot of sundews, break this up over the day or the week, and don't try to overwhelm yourself as it can be a lot of extra work.
-If the spec didn't land very well on the sundew, it may be worth it to lightly push and massage the dust onto the leaf better.

I keep my plants drier and cooler at this stage, which keeps them a bit hardier and less prone to fungal growth.
Often times keeping them this way will reduce their amount of dew greatly. So I artificially "moisten" the dust I've fed them.



To do this, I take a very fine sprayer (very very fine mist) and spray the surface of the pot, you want the fine particles to settle onto the sundews so I can't emphasize enough that you do this at distance with a very very fine mist.

I then take a plastic bag and spray all around the inside.
I shove the pot in there, and put it closely under some bright florescent lights. This should boost the humidity temporarily allowing these guys to chomp down on the food.

You don't have to do this, but it should increase the amount of sundews which actually get effectively fed. However, a disclaimer, you should not leave them in these conditions for more than half the day. If you did this in the afternoon and morning, open the bag, or remove the pot from the bag for the night.



A few days ago I put some springtails (tiny mold/dead stuff eating insects) from my cultures into the pot, they'll help keep the mold down and feed the occasional sundew.



Before the indica are fed, you can keep them a bit cooler to slow their growth, this will delay the weeks you need to start feeding them.
If you feed this particular species, it will do much better and become much more robust than in un-fed conditions.

You should do this once or twice a week after the first or second carnivorous leaves form.
Move the indica to very bright and warm conditions a few days after the first feeding.

If mold forms, you should decrease humidity and water, but you can also try to use hydrogen peroxide to eliminate any local mold spots.

This is how these shots were taken:



Thanks for reading!

Very delicate job feeding. I'm afraid i dont have the patient but i will try 1 day Thanks for sharing the method. I guess i would be using a toothpick.


Sent from my SM-N9005

Was told to post here haha, here are mine!

Good for you! Mine have germinated, or at least one has, can't wait till I can feed.