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What do you feed your plants?

G

Guest

Guest
Just curious- what do you feed your CP's? And do you feed them at all? I have heard so many conflicting opinions and vague suggestions lately.. I'm just wondering what works best for you guys.
Also, do any of you feed your aquatic CP's?
I've been thinking of ordering daphnia or something for that purpose. Maybe an ant farm for my other terrestrial plants..
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PS,
I don't actually have to feed my dews or pings. I have (maybe had at this point) a gnat infestation. I guess some of the pete or lfs I bought had eggs in it...Anyway, the above mentioned plants, as well as the sars and smaller VFTs have been eating quite well with no help at all.
I also give my sars and neps a little milk once every one or two months. The sars love it (total growth spurts afterwards), but I haven't noticed that it effects my neps one way or the other.
Durring the summer (we actually have that season in NY
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) I put most of them on the porch where they catch their own stuff.
 
summer??? what's that??
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*laughter*
Ok.. thanks for the info schloaty
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I guess I'll try milk. I really can't leave my plants out to catch their own bugs except for 2 months a year. So I've been looking for alternatives...
 
Be careful with milk, too much will not make your traps look good.
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Use an eyedropper, it helps alot! Well, I feed my plant the Can O Crickets and I have a live mealworm farm which is my winter and emergency growing season food source.
 
can-o-crickets for large neps, fruit fly cultures for everything. I also might try egg white for larger vfts.

joe
 
Where do you guys order the mealworms and fruit flies from? And are they easy to raise/ keep alive? Our local pet stores don't sell anything besides crickets..
Does anyone here have experience with Daphnia or other water creatures for aquatic CP's?
 
fruitflies... yes... the second invasion happened the other night... they are definatley attracted to neps... mine are filling up...
 
I feed my sundews bulb food that is a mix of bone meal, blood meal, and a few others. They LOVE it; I almost always get a growth spurt. For sarrs crickets work great. I do not feed my genlisea, utrics ect.ect, I have spring tails in all my pots, and I am sure they eat on those.

Cole
 
Should I refrigerate the crickets for a while first to slow them down enough to plop them in? Or do you use freeze-dried crickets?
 
  • #10
Small, live insects seem to work best (e.g. fruit flies for most sps.). Freeze-dried bloodworms, sold as fish food, are a good substitute. Then there is synthetic fertilizer: I often mist the foliage of everything but Dionaea and Utricularia 1-2 monthly with no more than 1/4 teaspoon per gallon water during the growing season.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Does anyone here have experience with Daphnia or other water creatures for aquatic CP's?[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

When I grew Utricularia radiata, I used Daphnia pulex (D. magna is too large) for food until, well, both of them died. (the daphs didn't like the acidic water and the utric didn't like me).

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Does anyone here have experience with Daphnia or other water creatures for aquatic CP's?[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

Cool...never heard of someone doing that. Do you just apply it in small amounts to the leaves? How's the humidity around the plants?
 
  • #11
I don't feed my plants during the winter. The Sars. & VFT are still dormant. The sundews catch the gnats that are in my other house-plants. My U. gibba is still recovering from being shipped from Texas. So everything is pretty much on cruise control for now.
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  • #12
Finely ground up overpriced commercial plant dealers. Happily, they are getting harder to find all the time. Ba ba boom!
 
  • #13
Ants and mealworms for my Nepenthes.
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Gnats for my sundews.
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  • #14
ha ha Tamlin
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  • #15
milk in the sarr's and neps? what kind, like 2%? whole? how much i'm interested...

technoracer
 
  • #16
Technoracer, I used a drop of whole milk in one of my Saracenia pitchers and noticed a growth spurt. I would not advise you to try this without reading the thread by RamPuppy et. al. that was done earlier this summer. He experimented with milk, as did several others. It has the potential to cause problems with your plant.
 
  • #17
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tamlin Dawnstar @ Dec. 02 2002,03:49)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Finely ground up overpriced commercial plant dealers.  Happily, they are getting harder to find all the time.  Ba ba boom![/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Tamlin!

Oh all right then, it's a good way to go.  Now where's that grinder...
 
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