Carnivorous Plants

[PowerHobo]

I've always loved pitchers and VFT plants, but have never kept any. I've gathered that the carnivorous plant hobby seems to be much like the US coleoptera hobby (lots of "experts" with conflicting methods). Was just wondering if anyone knows of any good resources or communities.

[Acro]

Terraforums.com is the best Carnivorous Plant forum I've found.  Most members agree on ways to grow plants there and I've had much success with help from those members.  Also a great book is: The Savage Garden.  

 

Good Luck! 

[PowerHobo]

1 hour ago, Acro said:

Terraforums.com is the best Carnivorous Plant forum I've found.  Most members agree on ways to grow plants there and I've had much success with help from those members.  Also a great book is: The Savage Garden.  Good Luck! 

Excellent! Thank you very much!

[Acro]

You are welcome!  If you join terraforums, look me up and say "hello".  The name is the same.

[JKim]

Just in case, if you are getting carnivorous plants to remove any small flies including fruit flies and mushroom flies around your beetle containers, that is NOT a great idea. Carnivorous plants are commonly known to feed on insects and small animals for nutrition, however, that is so wrong... Their regular diet is nutrition from soil and photosynthesis from sunlight.

As the name says, they can digest insects or small animals (rat sometimes do fall into the nepenthese), however, they actually use up similar amount of energy to digest to consume. Therefore, if the plant is fed up with too many insects daily basis, they can die off from it (which is kind of funny for the name).

I used to harvest some venus fly trap variations, but lost my interest after an year as I couldn't find the good forum to discuss or buy more things... It was way before the Facebook gotten popular to people. I'm pretty sure there is a group in Facebook as well.

[Boris The Beetle]

On 1/22/2019 at 3:05 PM, JKim said:

Their regular diet is nutrition from soil and photosynthesis from sunlight.

Hate to call you out on this but CPs do best in low/no nutrient soils. In fact, soils with too many nutrients/minerals/salts will kill the plant. You are correct that they require sunlight - in fact, most CPs require HIGH intensity light (full sun or extremely bright artificial lighting - I use both). Some CP species such as nepenthes can tolerate lower levels of light but something like a sundew, american pitcher plant, or VFT requires high levels of light to grow well.

While most CPs can tolerate extended periods without feeding, you will get the best growth with regular infrequent feeding. For example, feed your pitcher plants every 2-4 weeks but not with every watering. Do not fertilize the soil. You can introduce insects to the pitchers or traps.

Like the soil, the water used must be pure and nutrient-free so a TDS of <50ppm is preferred. The closer you get to 0ppm TDS, the better.

[JKim]

On 9/10/2019 at 1:33 PM, Boris The Beetle said:

Hate to call you out on this but CPs do best in low/no nutrient soils. In fact, soils with too many nutrients/minerals/salts will kill the plant. You are correct that they require sunlight - in fact, most CPs require HIGH intensity light (full sun or extremely bright artificial lighting - I use both). Some CP species such as nepenthes can tolerate lower levels of light but something like a sundew, american pitcher plant, or VFT requires high levels of light to grow well.

While most CPs can tolerate extended periods without feeding, you will get the best growth with regular infrequent feeding. For example, feed your pitcher plants every 2-4 weeks but not with every watering. Do not fertilize the soil. You can introduce insects to the pitchers or traps.

Like the soil, the water used must be pure and nutrient-free so a TDS of <50ppm is preferred. The closer you get to 0ppm TDS, the better.

Yes, you are right. I was wrong about the soil part..  I only knew that they don't consume bugs trapped as the main source of nutrition, and since I was aware they require full sunlight, I thought sunlight AND SOIL is what they mainly absorb nutrition from. I found this out far later, couple months ago, when I found some Drosera brevifolia on my backyard. They were growing on sand, so I noticed they barely get any nutrition from soil.

[Boris The Beetle]

On 9/11/2019 at 6:17 PM, JKim said:

 I found some Drosera brevifolia on my backyard. They were growing on sand, so I noticed they barely get any nutrition from soil.

That's so cool! I've only ever seen CPs in private collections - never in the wild. 

[JKim]

On 9/24/2019 at 7:21 AM, Boris The Beetle said:

That's so cool! I've only ever seen CPs in private collections - never in the wild. 

I know right??? It was such a surprising finding to me too! I didn't actually realize that there are CPs in my area. I just noticed some red spotty mold-like things on lawn where it has less grass, so I took a closer look, and there you go~~~!!

Here is an image of one in 4 oz deli cup I dug up to take some photos.