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Supplementary feeding


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     Hi all.

     Out of intrest do any of you guys supplementary feed your carnivorous plants, and if so what products do you uese?

 

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I have a few plants in my garden that attract bugs. I place my carnivorous plants that stay outside, next to them in the summer. I let them catch their own bugs as much as possible. I'm growing all my plants in my windowsill or outside. I find that most CP dont really need extra feeding if they have the possibility to catch the occasional bug in the summer. It depends on the plants you have. I also got freeze dried bloodworms from the bird feeding section in the petstore for my hungriest plants. I take out the core of the worm and put tiny bits of that in the pitchers. My Venus Fly Traps and sarracenia's dont get any extra food (even all winter), same with my drosera, except for drosera regia. I do feed my nepenthes maybe 2 or 3 times in the winter. Im not sure if it is necessary but it has never harmed them. they are all happily growing. I have the impression professional growers do use fertilizer sometimes (even the coffee method seems to work with nepenthes), but as a less experienced CP grower, I think its better to stay away from them, since it is easy to damage your plants rather than help them.

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Fantastic, it sounds like you have some nice plants there.

I to have to supplementary feed my cps (freeze dried bloodworms aswell) simply because they are indoors, and don't get much of a chance to catch there own food. 

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I let my Sarracenia, Drosera, Pinguicula , Cephalotus and VFTs feed purely on the insects that they catch for themselves.  I use Verve liquid seafood fertilizer very sparingly for my Nepenthes that live in the terrarium, as I doubt I'd be very popular if I gave them live insects. :rolleyes:  The few Neps that live on the kitchen window ledge though only get what they catch.

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I feed my plants and I observe that If You do it they grows better and stronger and flower soon (expecially droseras, pinguiculas and cephalotus, but also dionaeas and heliamphoras)... I've tried with fish food, but it often make moulds on The leaves... So I prefer To catch ants, fungus gnat, drosophilae and, for dioneas, flies and butterflies

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I tried the maxsea,seaweed and also the growmore slow release pellets in the compost(only two or three pellets per pot) over the years,and I can't say l really noticed much difference as I didn't     Give them any last year and they seem to do just aswell but they all get plenty of flies  drawn in to the greenhouse with bait early in the growing season

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These days I rely on nature and let my plants do there own thing, it helps that my plants are in greenhouses and not indoors like yours are of course.  I do add orchid fertilizer to my Ping's water occasionally and this seems to have given them a boost over non-fertilised plants.   I occasionally drop the odd ant into my Cephs but I can't say that it makes them grow any better.

In the past I bought crickets from reptile suppliers for a couple of Neps I had at the time, it wasn't very successful but my wife's chickens loved them.  I've tried fish flakes on Drosera but always found it went mouldy, and bloodworm didn't help my plants but I probably didn't stick with them for long enough to give a very scientific opinion.  A couple of things I found best avoided was caterpillars and spiders in VFTs as it invariably rotted the traps.

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I did have a few spiders in my home once. Im absolutely terrified of them, so i took my VFT and chased them into a corner and helt my VFT up to catch it. I found them very helpful allies in my quest to make the home spider-free. My VFTs seemed to ask for more spiders as well, they grew larger traps after that.
I put them outside where they catch their own bugs and the occasional spider. I have never tried caterpillars before, so I can't say what effecct those would have on my VFTs.

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From my experience, they benefit a lot from insects. That's not a surprise either, after all that's what they evolved to do. I never understood why some people think that all they need is sun, water and the poor nutrient soil. That's not true in my case. I had a sarracenia that was doing ok-ish, but was not fed. As soon as i fed it, it started making bigger traps and even started to flower. So, i'm trying to grow all carnivorous plants outside so they can catch their own food. Even if i had a greenouse, i would let the door open for the insects to go in. As for the plants that are growing indoor, i use bloodworms or random flies i can get my hands on. I guess it depends from plants to plants but insect feeding is an important element for these plants.

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On 2/20/2017 at 3:18 PM, Gaz said:

These days I rely on nature and let my plants do there own thing, it helps that my plants are in greenhouses and not indoors like yours are of course.  I do add orchid fertilizer to my Ping's water occasionally and this seems to have given them a boost over non-fertilised plants.   I occasionally drop the odd ant into my Cephs but I can't say that it makes them grow any better.

In the past I bought crickets from reptile suppliers for a couple of Neps I had at the time, it wasn't very successful but my wife's chickens loved them.  I've tried fish flakes on Drosera but always found it went mouldy, and bloodworm didn't help my plants but I probably didn't stick with them for long enough to give a very scientific opinion.  A couple of things I found best avoided was caterpillars and spiders in VFTs as it invariably rotted the traps.

do you grow them indoors? because i had that problem with some plants, but once i got them outside in good air circulation, that problem went away. In a house, air circulation is pretty bad and if you combine that with humidity, you get yourself a fungi problem.

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2 minutes ago, Scuipici said:

do you grow them indoors? because i had that problem with some plants, but once i got them outside in good air circulation, that problem went away. In a house, air circulation is pretty bad and if you combine that with humidity, you get yourself a fungi problem.

yes in a greenhouse, your theory could be right, air circulation is a problem I've struggled with for some time particularly for my cactus and succulent collection.

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Just now, Gaz said:

yes in a greenhouse, your theory could be right, air circulation is a problem I've struggled with for some time particularly for my cactus and succulent collection.

I think that's the problem. I had droseras and vft struggle to digest the food and it just rot, eventually causing the whole trap to die. Once I fix the air circulation, everything was fine and my plants were able to digest the food properly and react very positive to it.

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