FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Do you thinking using a mix of Dawn dish soap + water to spray on infested VFT's would do more good than harm? I've read Dawn will kill aphids and is great for outdoor plants, but I wonder if its great on VFT's as well? I don't have any aphids problems right now, but would love to know for future chaos. & if anyone has tried this.

& is deer park water brand safe to use for watering VFT's

I've heard soap can cause trouble for carnivorous plants. I would use a systemic pesticide like acephate. You can get it from most hardware stores under the Ortho/Orthene brand. It's a black bottle with a yellow lid. It comes as a white powder, about a tablespoon to a gallon of water should do it. Just spray your plants and saturate the soil. I would wait until you actually have a problem though, no use killing off a bunch of beneficial bugs for no reason.

As for the water, if it says deionized(DI) or reverse osmosis(RO) and doesn't mention and minerals added for flavor than you're fine.

I'm using one of those tanks that you leave in the fridge and you pull the cap and water spills out.. It doesn't say anything about the ingredients, just that its natural spring water. I used this water on most of my Venus flytraps today and then googled online and saw that Deer park water does have minerals in it o_o Unless it says "Distilled" water on the bottle o_O!!!!!!


Now I don't know what to do

.. this shows the minerals found in the deer park, will it hurt the VFTs?

http://www.nestle-watersna.com/asset-li ... DP_ENG.pdf

Over time the minerals will build up and burn the roots, so yes. Get some distilled or ro water, and flush the pot with that, then just use it instead.

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Do you think it'll be okay till later on tonight to flush them out? Does it take a long time to build up? Thank you!

& I just bought a TDS meter off ebay, hopefully it doesn't end up being total junk! (Crosses fingers). It'll be very useful in the future.

happiness wrote:Do you think it'll be okay till later on tonight to flush them out? Does it take a long time to build up? Thank you!

& I just bought a TDS meter off ebay, hopefully it doesn't end up being total junk! (Crosses fingers). It'll be very useful in the future.

You're fine. Just get some clean water and flush it through the soil a few times and don't worry about it.

Depending on the TDS minerals take a while to build up to problematic levels.

I think something people often forget, or maybe don't realize, is that it's all variable. If your plants are outside and you get a lot of rain you could in theory use water well over 100ppm without ever having issues because the rain flushes the soil for you. And on the other end of the spectrum if your plants are indoors or outside where it doesn't rain than even 10ppm water will cause build up over time. Think about it, 50ppm is the quoted limit for "safe" water. If you fill a tray with 50ppm water and after a few days half the water evaporates, well now you have plants sitting in what is essentially 100ppm water since the dissolved solids don't evaporate with the water. But no one panics about the ppm of the water after some has evaporated since they were only concerned about the ppm when the plant was watered.

I'm not saying this to make you concerned about ppm raising with evaporation but to point out that at any given time the water your plant is sitting in may be well above recommended levels and your plant will be fine as long as it's regularly flushed with low ppm water.

Parker makes an excellent point! I keep mine outside and while I only water with distilled or rainwater, if I bad to use tap for a few days, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Rainwater would eventually flush my media for me, even if I didn't, though I don't think I'd wait for that to happen unless there was a pretty good rainstorm imminent.

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