FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

We all know that feeding venus flytraps undoubtedly accelerates their growth rate, and similar results can be achieved with foliar feeding with liquid fertilizers. My question though is, has anyone experimented with soil fertilization? My friend grew vfts from seed to maturity using maxsea where the entire plant was drenched, and as a result some got in the soil as well, but I am curious to know if anyone has experimented with solely using soil feed, whether that be with osmocote, maxsea, or another type of fertilizer.

I personally use Maxsea on my CP's with good results but accordingly and lightly where I would then flush out the soil with distilled water. As we all know, the roots of most CP's are sensitive to minerals which is why on a TDS meter, you don't want it to read more than 100. And to be on the safe side, you want it to read 50 parts per million or below. There's people that uses tap water for their CP's with a high reading and would say, "It's been a few months and my plants are fine." But we all know that it's going to inevitably die sooner or later. Now, I just tested my diluted Maxsea which reads a high level of 194. And that's been properly mixed with distilled water and 1/4 teaspoon per gallon. So, anyone that fertilizes their soil with that will kill most of their CP's sooner or later. There's few exceptions for some such as Drosera regia.

I have to wonder if doing this occasionally followed by a thorough flushing of the soil would be effective? My understanding is that it is more of an extended exposure that will cause death...I would be interested to see if anyone tests this out.

Patrick

I used "Peters orchid food" to soil fertilize some vfts a while back just to see what would happen and it did not end well for the vfts. If I recall, I used 1/2 teaspoon to the gallon and watered twice a month. All the vfts were dead by the end of the summer. I also watered some of my Sarrs and Drosera at the same rate and had no problem with them at all and, in fact, they grew quite well.