FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I got my D regia today (super excited!) and I'm wondering about a few things.
I've heard people say that they easily die of starvation, apparently easy enough that putting 3-4 osmocote pellets in the soil is necessary. Is this true?
About how high are the nutrient requirements of regia? I usually give my other sundews some "aqueon shrimp pellets" once in a while to snack on (especially in winter when there's no bugs around.) Would the regia require a pellet or 2 once a week or every two weeks? More food? Shorter feeding intervals?

Also since people grow theirs with osmocote, could you just water regias with water high in TDS?

Oh, and how necessary are the cold temps? I have it inside right now (stays around 75 all the time) but can put it outside if necessary (recent lows vary from 45 to 60 degrees)

Im also wondering if regia's would like foliar fertilization. I might try it out on a clump of my extra capensis sundews first. Give the leaves an osmocote pellet, spray with dissolved orchid fert or 20/20/20 fert and see what happens.

using tap water:
no dont use tap water

starvation:
depends. if you have time to feed it every week (or even more often ) then you will be able to go w.o osmocote, it will survive but it may not grow as healthily as it should. but if you want the plant to reach its full size, possibly flower and grow vigorously then you will most likely need osmocote
mainly its seedlings who die from starvation as well as neglected plants, where as some species like spatulata for example, who can go years only eating an occasional gnat every month or so
an adult plant will most likely just look unhealthy and grow slowly until it slowly dies from a different cause because its weak to handle it, like dry soil or hot temps.

cold temps: not that drastic, I have extremely high summers, in the 110 -120s outside, indoors under the t5 lights in summer can reach 90 easily and my regia is still living 2-3 yrs strong,
ofc ideally you want to keep it around 70-80 f like most african dews, the regia if fed well it shouldnt just up and die on you if the temps get in the 90s for a few days


foliar fertilization:
I dont do this so I wouldn't know, but my regia is just fine with fishfood, I only recently added osmocote to see if I can get my plant to full size and glory, maybe flower for me aswell
the article that mentions using fertz for regia also mentions the reason. because that specific grower didnt have the time to feed all his regia as much as they needed so if you keep up with feedings you may never need osmocote,
although from what I read and like I mentioned earlier your plant may not flower or get to its full height with only leaf feedings, but it also wont starve as long as you don't forget about it

Your regia's were just fed 3 osmocote pellets buried in the soil about two months ago, so they should be good for another month or two yet. My mother plant gets quite cranky if the summer temps get too high, it doesn't die, but it starts to look rather shabby. The ones that I sent you are from root cuttings that I did in Oct. 2013 and could probably be repotted into individual pots in the fall. If you do repot them then I would suggest taking a few root cutting at that time and you should be able to have more than twice as many by next spring. D. regia are super easy to propagate from root cuttings, and after they start putting up growth I put a couple of osmocote pellets in each pot to give them a boost. I assume they made it in good shape. The pings you sent me got here today and they survived the trip pretty well.

Thanks. I'll see what happens if I leave it outside in the summer, and I'll bring it inside if it starts to look like it's declining from heat.

I was also concerned that if i put osmocote in the regia's soil that nutrients would leach out into the "community water tray" and my other Cps might get root burn from it.

Yeah they looked good! Dewy right out of the box. I wasn't sure how humid you keep yours so I put them in an "almost sealed" terrarium to raise the humidity.

Glad to hear the pings made it!

SundewWolf wrote:I was also concerned that if i put osmocote in the regia's soil that nutrients would leach out into the "community water tray" and my other Cps might get root burn from it.

I wouldn't put them in the community water tray because the osmocote pellets will leach into the tray and not be good for your other CP's. If possible I would get one of those individual water trays for them. I kept them in a humidity range of 70 - 85% during the winter while they were under my T-5 grow lights, but in summer the mother plant was outside in full sun with whatever the ambient humidity and temp was at the time.

ok. I'll see if I can fit a mini water tray into the terrarium. If not I might just keep them in their own mini tray or terrarium (until they get huge or acclimate I guess)