FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

So here's what my setup for growing Drosera looks like. I grow them indoors under an artificial light, no terrarium. If you have any advice for me I'd appreciate it. I'm still relatively new to Drosera and CPs in general.






I'm growing them on my dryer, got an LED square light above, white cool light. The light is about 50-55 cm above the plants, maybe I should move it closer?








Here are some of my D. Capensis, I recently repotted them from their original pot. They were grown from seeds from a friend's D. Capensis. They're very green with almost no red coloration. Also very little dew on a majority of them. I'm assuming it's shock and adaptation to new pots, but if anyone has advice on how I could get my Capensis "redder" and "dewier" I'd highly appreciate it. I feed them dried bloodworms once a month. A couple also have flower stalks which I decided to keep instead of cutting.






I have a pretty severe aphid problem in a couple of my pots, I try to clean and remove the bugs mechanically with my fingers and a brush, but they always come back! I'm considering insecticides but I fear that it might do more damage to my plants than the aphids themselves. They can be seen in these pictures pretty clearly.






Here I'm trying to germinate a couple of seeds, D. Capensis Alba and D. Venusta. The seeds were sown about 2 months ago.





And here's my pot with a couple of young D. Aliciae. These are around 7 - 8 months old. Grown from seeds. Again, like my Capensis, I wish they were "redder" and had more dew.



That's it for my small setup. I've been having a lot of fun growing these guys the last year and a half . I will definitely keep growing these and I think I've found a life long hobby.

If you have any tips please send them my way. Thank you for reading.

You should move the light closer. That will make all your sundews redder and dewier.

As a point of comparison, my sundews are 6-8” (15-20 cm) under my lights. I grow under fluorescents instead of LEDs, but they should need to be a similar distance from the plants.

I’ve never really dealt with pests inside in all my years of growing, so I don’t really have any suggestions there. I know my potted non-carnivorous plants are fine with a spray of diluted dish soap to get rid of aphids. I do rinse them afterwords though (and carnivores might be damaged by the soap).

bananaman wrote:You should move the light closer. That will make all your sundews redder and dewier.

As a point of comparison, my sundews are 6-8” (15-20 cm) under my lights. I grow under fluorescents instead of LEDs, but they should need to be a similar distance from the plants.

I’ve never really dealt with pests inside in all my years of growing, so I don’t really have any suggestions there. I know my potted non-carnivorous plants are fine with a spray of diluted dish soap to get rid of aphids. I do rinse them afterwords though (and carnivores might be damaged by the soap).

Alright thanks for the info I will move the light closer and see if that will make my plants more colorful

Not sure about the soap water though, I might give that a try if all else fails with the aphid problem. I also read that Neem oil is a good natural pesticide but that will be really hard to find in my small rural town.

Boarden wrote:

bananaman wrote:You should move the light closer. That will make all your sundews redder and dewier.

As a point of comparison, my sundews are 6-8” (15-20 cm) under my lights. I grow under fluorescents instead of LEDs, but they should need to be a similar distance from the plants.

I’ve never really dealt with pests inside in all my years of growing, so I don’t really have any suggestions there. I know my potted non-carnivorous plants are fine with a spray of diluted dish soap to get rid of aphids. I do rinse them afterwords though (and carnivores might be damaged by the soap).

Alright thanks for the info I will move the light closer and see if that will make my plants more colorful

Not sure about the soap water though, I might give that a try if all else fails with the aphid problem. I also read that Neem oil is a good natural pesticide but that will be really hard to find in my small rural town.

I’d be really careful if you want to try the soap water on your plants. Definatly try a somewhat dilute solution on just one of your plants if you’re going to try it. That’ll let you see if it works and/or if it will damage your plants.

I used a neem oil based spray from the hardware store (can be ordered online also) with our aphid invasions we've had with good success.

i keep our LED lights approximately 6" from most of our sundews that we have inside under lights. we use two 100W equiv daylight bulbs in reflector lamps pointed diagonally inward on the same 10"x10" or so growing area - all our sundews and plants get fiery red under them (assuming they are types that turn red)

I've put orthene on sundews, pitchers and VFTs, and it hasn't seemed to phase them. Might not be the best indoors though as it's stinky.

riveraXVX wrote:I used a neem oil based spray from the hardware store (can be ordered online also) with our aphid invasions we've had with good success.

i keep our LED lights approximately 6" from most of our sundews that we have inside under lights. we use two 100W equiv daylight bulbs in reflector lamps pointed diagonally inward on the same 10"x10" or so growing area - all our sundews and plants get fiery red under them (assuming they are types that turn red)

I've lowered the light now, it's at about 18 cm from the plants, I'll see how it works, I'm also thinking about wrapping some aluminum foil around the plants to direct more of the light back at them?

I've also decided to order some neem oil online.