FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Bobioden wrote:Do you guys prefer to topwater or fill the tray with 1 inch of water and refill when it dries out?

For me, it kind of depends on a few things including the time of year, the time of day I find time to water, the size of the pot, the health of the plant, the robustness of the plant, and perhaps a few other things I can't think of right now.

I typically topwater most of my flytraps most of the year now and rarely put any water directly in trays unless the entire tray is nearly dried out and it is evening time. I usually try to topwater, particularly if it is morning or mid-day and I normally will wait to water plants until that time of day even if they are nearly dry in the evenings. Stretching their water and keeping them on edge of needing more through a night results in much more robust and healthy root growth.

There is a small chance of inducing crown rot when top-watering, so it is best not to do it when it is cool and damp, particularly in the evening. However, I do topwater almost all of my plants even in the winter months when it is cool and wet. I am just sure to do so in the morning or before noon so that they have a good chance to dry out fairly quickly, and thus minimize the chance of rot starting.

Also, the larger pots hold water for a long time, so it is relatively easy to topwater them until water flows out the bottom, then let them go until they're almost dried out again (the top starts looking dry) before watering. Watering in this way without any tray at all also provides the added benefit of flushing any mineral build-up out of the pots with each watering.

Some plants, in particular, are more susceptible to crown rot and for those plants I'll sometimes avoid top watering, particularly at certain times of the year. Here in southern Oregon, we see the most crown rot taking place in late summer, usually sometime in mid to late August (not sure why but I have a theory that it has something to do with a type of mold or bacteria that presents itself at that time of year here). So the Venus flytrap cultivars that I know to be less robust and more likely to rot, I'll only tray water and be sure to keep them on the drier side if possible. Of course, the soil of Venus flytraps should never ever be allowed to dry out entirely, so use extreme caution to prevent that from happening. Drying out entirely is the only thing that is almost instantly fatal for Venus flytraps with no chance of recovery.

Panman wrote:@Matt, could you clarify, when you tray water, how deep is the water in relation to the depth of the pot? I could leave a 12-inch deep pot in 2 inches of water but that would drown the same plant in a 5 inch pot.

Good point. I normally never leave any flytraps sitting in water ever, if possible. So when I do tray water, I try to estimate how much water to put in so that the moss will soak it up but leave nothing in the tray (or very little). After doing it for so many years, I have developed a good "feel" for how much water to put in the trays based on how hot and dry the weather is.

If I need to take a trip and leave the plants sitting in water, I'll just fill the trays up with 2 inches of water. In the winter, that will last a long time. In the summer, we almost never travel anymore because it is impossible to leave the plants. When we do travel, I have someone come over and water our plants for us daily and ask them to leave an inch of water in all of the flytrap trays.