FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I haven't been around for a while. Just saying hey and wanted talk about what's been going on. It's been a long year! I've been battling to keep my CPs alive since late spring, even before that for some of them, and it has been depressing and difficult! Last year I moved some of my flytraps into an earthbox planter, complete with a sun shade, for a 3rd attempt and growing VFTs outdoors in Austin. They made it through a frozen winter and burst with growth early spring. But then they started going downhill like so many times before, except this time it was a mild spring/summer and it wasn't hot enough to blame burning, plus they had a screen shade. My indoor flytraps that I had repotted into a mix containing Quikrete silica sand were also doing poorly. Since the Earthbox planter outside also had this sand, I determined the sand must have contained something toxic...minerals or otherwise. I had also found that the water left over after tray watering the pots with sand had LOTS of nematodes that must have come with the sand. I still don't know if they are harmful. 3/4 VFTs outside were already dead but I pulled one out and saved it. It immediately started growing back after transplanting it indoors. So I also moved about 30 other flytraps into new soil and new pots. I rinsed them all off trying not to bring any nematodes over with them. I had been wanting to get them in matching pots anyway. Interestingly, the S. pupurea in the earthbox are still thriving today.

At this point I had 3 large pots and 1 small pot left with the sand still in it and I figured I'd replace all the soil in the earthbox and try again next spring w/out the sand. 2 of the large pots were declining as well. I had tried flushing them through with water several times but it didn't help. No matter how many times I did it, the water always came out a dark, nasty, rusty orange color. Much darker than the other large pot that was doing ok. Made no sense because I prepared all of that soil in one batch and split it up into the 3 pots. This had me racking my brain with ideas from freak accidents to spousal sabotage. Finally I replaced the soil in the 2 large pots when it was clear the VFTs were going to die w/out intervention. They too started growing back, confirming my sand diagnosis...except the other large pot seemed ok and the small pot was growing more vigorously than I have ever seen. I had planted 2 tiny little G14 flytraps in it and within a 6 months they had turned into a mat soil covering (like sphagnum moss does) and none of the leaves would ever die. Mysterious.

A little more time passed and the flytraps that appeared to be growing back had put up 3 or 4 new leaves but were now starting to look kind of sad. Well, the soil was all brand new so I knew it wasn't that unless my batch of peat moss (premier bale), specifically, was bad. So I started thinking about water. It was hot and evaporation was at its peak so I started watering them more often. I had been pretty beaten up by all the problems and had maybe gotten a little negligent in my loss of zeal for the hobby. They perked up slightly, but continued going downhill overall. "Well if its not that they need more water it must be the water itself", I said. Suddenly I remembered that I had been using roof runoff water for my indoor plants. The TDS was 9ppm, but maybe it has some chemical in it that's killing them. So I switched back to RO water, flushed them out, and started strictly top watering. Some of them gradually showed some improvement though they were growing a lot of deformed traps. The traps would never reach maturity before blackening or would start to open up but the cilia would stay turned in and the tisue would become mottled/speckly. This led me to believe it was the roof runoff and it was just taking a while for the flytraps to get the toxin out of their system (which sucked cause I had just collected almost 30 gallons of runoff water in various containers). Either that or they just all had a virus spread by the nematodes.

A shorter amount of time passed. The large pot that still had sand was now declining but what was killing me was that the other two large pots were too! I had already repotted out of the sand into fresh soil, only used rain water on them a few times, and flushed the crap out of them w/ RO water. It made no sense but I bit the bullet, made more new peat/perlite soil, and repotted the big pots one more time. They had no good leaves left but to my surprise, they had nice big healthy rhizomes. The rhizomes had grown deeper than normal and the leaves that were dead on top extended a long way below the soil and were still alive there. Like they were hiding down below where it was safe.
Some of the smaller plants barely had anything left so I had to put them in VFT ICU (small containers I pay extreme attention to, sphagnum moss, etc.). Again, the repotting helped for a little while and then they started dying again! All my flytraps were now dying including the G14 in the small pot with sand. It died back to almost nothing. My sister had sent me some new VFTs and even they were following suit. A couple young pitcher plants started growing deformed pitchers too. Whatever it was, it was contagious. Fungus! Mottled leaves, contagious, affecting leaves the older they are...it must be! Many of my flytraps were on the brink of death. One FTS maroon monster had lost all signs of life. I would've counted it dead but I knew when I repotted it it had a really large & healthy rhizome. So I went and bought some Bayer Natria "Fruit & Vegetable", sulfer-based, insect, disease, & mite control, sprayed them down...hoping the spray wouldn't finish them off. There was nothing left I could do but wait and hope they lived cause I was out of ideas. They instantly started doing better! It was like in a movie when they're doing mouth-to-mouth on a person who was drowning and, after a drawn out pause, they finally gasp for air...for me and my flytraps. Many of them started growing faster and with larger new sprouts. It was a good sign, but I wasn't convinced until I started seeing some actual traps open. Finally they did start to show up. After getting some decent time for uninhibited photosynthesis, many are now almost looking good. Enough that I'm starting to remember what it's like to grow flytraps with traps and why I love growing them.One of the pitcher plants was also instantly cured and is growing its largest pitcher yet. The maroon monster was still showing no signs of life but just 2 days ago had 3 new leaf sprouts appear. Amazing! Start to finish I've had at least 4 VFTs die, which is a surprisingly low mortality rate to me given the amount of time they've been ill. I came vary close to losing all of my Korrigans, Wacky Traps, Lunatic Fringe, Bristletooth, Coquillage, DC XL, Red Piranha, FTS Maroon Monsters, Akai Ryu (still crossing fingers), and more. Luckily I have not yet lost my only instance of a given named cultivar.

So apparently they had developed an invisible foliar fungus at some point. Or tiny pests that I couldn't see...there was what I assumed were spider webs around the soil surface in a few pots, maybe there were mites. I don't think that was the cause of the original problems but I really have no idea what happened. And were did the fungus come from? The roof runoff water? The sand? Nematodes? I'm actually wondering if it's just in the air around here. If maybe that has been what has thwarted my attempts at growing outdoors all along. I'm now thinking I've also seen this on some of my fruit/vegetable plants and not realized it was a fungus. With my Bayer Natria spray in hand, I will test it out next spring if I have a few VTS to donate to the cause by then. For now, it's a race against the clock to get them healthy enough to make it through dormancy. That's what I've been up to! How's your growth season been?

Wow, what an unfortunate experience! That really stinks! It's amazing the number of problems one can encounter when trying to grow living things. We've not had anything like this, but we've certainly had our share of setbacks as well.

xr280xr wrote:This had me racking my brain with ideas from freak accidents to spousal sabotage.

I laughed out loud at this

Hey xr280xr, im right down the road from you in San Antonio, and I have seen what roof runoff can do to a VFT. My mom started growing some VFTs a couple of years ago and she would save the empty gallon jugs to collect rain water. She lives a block away and when it would rain, I would get like 2 gallons of rainwater I collected and she would have like 12 gallons. Turns out she was getting the roof runoff which gave her a lot more than me. She used this rainwater on 3 VFTs and in a matter of about 3 days killed all 3. No telling what comes off the shingle roof during rain, but apparently it wasn't VFT friendly.

Matt wrote:

xr280xr wrote:This had me racking my brain with ideas from freak accidents to spousal sabotage.

I laughed out loud at this

That stinks Toyz! I think in my case it most likely was just carrying the fungus. It doesn't seem to kill my grass or bushes, which is where I'll be dumping it all now .

Here are a couple more pics of some of the deformities. These were traps growing while I was treating them, otherwise they would've died before maturing this far.

Patience paid off there. I don't know If i were in your shoe. i could have given up half way. Good job identifying the problem, the last photo you showed, I suspect there were some spider mites because of some tiny speck of dust on it and the way it was damage. I had similar problem. I use "Floramite SC" found in ebay. It seems to be working well against spider mite.