Plant Care Info

This is just a copy of what I would send with any eBay orders, much better one coming soon...

Carnivorous Plant Care Instructions - Drosera/Sundews, Sarracenia/Trumpet Pitchers and Dionaea Muscipula/Venus Fly Trap.

There are plenty of excellent instructions and care tips online and in multiple CP books and this is just what works for me but everyone's setup, location, environment & situation will be different so only use this as a rough guide and try to experiment and figure out what works best for you.

Firstly if your plants arrive and you don’t have peat moss, perlite or whatever else handy then you don’t need to stress and run out to the nearest Bunnings or nursery asap, they will be happy in their tubs for a fair while as long as they get some light and extra moisture if they start to dry out at all. I have kept some for several weeks like this to see how they’d go and they were all fine. Occasionally some of the original outer leaves may start to go brown and die off after a week or so which is just from a combination of shipping and repotting stress but it’ll start throwing new growth out at the same time and recover quickly.

Media/soil - 

DO NOT use potting mix or “dirt” as they need a mineral free/nutrient deprived media or soil.

The default "CP mix" that works for the majority of carnivorous plants is an equal mix of Sphagnum peat moss and coarse (washed) propagation sand or perlite but the ratio of the mix is not that critical.

Plants that are kept inside or are protected from heavy rain I will use either perlite or sand or a mix of both with the peat moss, plants outside and exposed to the weather 24/7 I will use more sand over perlite in the mix as I find it doesn’t float to the top in heavy rain like perlite can if they pot gets flooded.

I also tend to put a layer of scoria at the base of the pots (also in all my non-carnivorous plants as well), only a cm or 2 for some extra drainage.

For Pings I use a mix of pumice, perlite, vermiculite & maybe some crushed leco clay balls if I have any.

Water -

You want to keep the media constantly damp to wet so sitting the pot in a water tray/dish is the easiest option, only a couple of cm deep and top it up when it's almost gone. You can let it dry up for a day or 2 to give the roots some air but with the scoria in the bae of the pots I don’t usually find this necessary.  

Add water into the tray rather than top watering into the pot to avoid washing sediment out and dew from the leaves of drosera.

If kept outside in full sun then you want to keep it fairly topped up all of the time and especially during very hot days, I keep the majority of my Drosera, Sarracenia and VFT (apart from small seedlings and few temperamental types) outside all year with 5-6 hours/day full sun with no issues as long as the trays are kept topped up.

As for water types there are MANY opinions on this as far as tap, rain, filtered, distilled or reverse osmosis water goes and yes you do want the water to be as mineral & chemical free as possible to avoid “over-fertilizing” and “burning out” the plants so tap water is best avoided. 

I used to only use distilled water for all of my carnivorous plants in the past but that eventually became less feasible as plant numbers increased and I now use collected & filtered rainwater for everything. I have however tested identical plants of the same species and size with either distilled water and tap water in each for over a year and the ones with distilled water were slightly healthier overall but not by a lot and if my rain tanks run dry after extended dry periods I will use tap water on any of my plants as any water is better than none but I recommend getting a TDS meter to check its PPM before using tap water regularly and I would still rinse everything out with rain or distilled water every now and then to avoid any mineral build up.

Light - 

As a general rule most carnivorous plants grow best in sunny conditions although many will do well in partial sun but full sun helps bring out the red pigmentations more in some of them.

Window sills are usually fine as long as they don’t get too much sun/heat or too little light and you may have to move them around a bit to find the spot that works best for you and with all the cheap LED grow lights available now you can pretty much grow them wherever you want indoors plus sundews as well as pings are great at helping control fungus gnats when placed with other indoor plants along with other house invading bugs.

 

Fertilisation - 

I don’t fertilise or feed my drosera, sarracenia or dionaea (or any CPs) that are kept outside as they catch plenty of insects on their own, the drosera I keep inside or in my greenhouses always seem to have an unlimited supply of random small flying things to eat but if they do manage to thin them out enough I will give them the occasional freeze dried bloodworm - 1 per plant every few weeks.

Liquid and pellet type fertilisers are best avoided for these plants but I have tried a half strength seasol/powerfeed mix (4ml/2ml per litre) which a lot of people swear by for CPs and found it did help with growth on some but generally was unneeded plus it tends to increase algae blooms in the water trays and pots.

So basically, outside plants you shouldn’t need to feed & indoor plants only feed if they aren’t catching anything themselves or just put them outside for a few hours each week if you are able to and they will usually catch enough during that time.

Pots -

Any plastic pot will usually do as long as it has drainage holes for it to take water from the water tray and anything that holds a few CM of water from take away containers to plastic pot bases will work as water trays..

Glazed ceramic or terracotta pots can be used as well but avoid unglazed terracotta pots as they absorb too much moisture and can leach minerals into the water and media.

Dormancy -

Sarracenia and dionaea/VFT both need a winter dormancy period as well as some temperate drosera species, basically several months of cool/cold weather, less water, less light, etc. As mine are mainly kept outside year round I don’t find this an issue and any inside ones are simply placed outside for the winter which seems to keep them happy but again this will vary greatly on where you are and I feel like here on the Central Coast of NSW is probably just about as far north as you can get away with that and with the increasingly milder winters we seem to get it might not be too long before that's not enough for them.

Further south then you should have no issues but if you're up north then I would look into some of the links at the bottom for ideas or info on wintering your plants.