Hmmm. Could you just sprinkle grated Parmesan on top of the leaves?!

I think cheese and chocolate might be a mistake, it ain't natural. But I know The Savage Garden is a very respected book...

Ok, the key word here is small. You can feed your sundews cheese chocolate and powdered milk... but it must be in small amounts.

I personally use the milk for my sundews but you only want to put tiny little specs of it, the size of grains of sand on the leaves. (one box of powdered milk has done me for 6 months so far and I'd venture to say seeing how much of it I've used will do me till my great great great... add a few more greats... grandchildren have kids.) I would say that the cheese and chocolate would go bad long before you'd feed more than a table spoon of it.

(So far the only way that box of milk will ever get used up is if I spill it)

Here is a link that might be useful: Tangled Web of Aracknight

Ok, thanks for the input. I think I may give it a few specs of swiss and maybe a little cheddar....mmmm! I did catch a spider the other day and my sundew seemed to like it. I'll have to get some powdered milk for the remaining winter months.

I wouldn't mess with people food, since it contains a lot of harmful metallic salts. Instead, I would buy a small container of freezed dried bloodworms or tubifex, from your local pet shop. A little bit of pulverized food goes a long way.

Oh, just FYI. I picked up a Lowes sundew at one point myself. The species I keep seeing from them is D. adelae. It may not look it when you first get it home because the lowes cubes tend to leave them looking a little out of sorts. I bought two back when I got them and I bought the large cubes. Had I known at the time how hard they'd be to kill and how fast they grow new plants off the roots, I'd have bought a single small one instead.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tangled Web of Aracknight

In previous winters I've fed my sundews (also Cephalotus, Nepenthes) crushed fish food sticks (in very small doses) and all the plants seem to apprecialte it.

The D. adelae you see in the "Lowes cube of death", is normally a green , etiolated (light-starved) plant, which doesn't look terribly "lance-leafed" until it has time to recover from the neglect.

the lance leaf i got from lowes was in such bad shape it died before it made any dew.

My first one died a couple months or so ago...about 2 weeks after I got it. It got some fungus and wilted away. But, I left it in the light and sealed in the cube and two new plants sprouted out of the dead parts and are each about 3/4 of an inch high now with dew! I still have them in the cube, but will bring them out when they get a little bigger.

ok, so cheese and choco might not be the best option....how about freeze-dried mealworms or freeze-dried crickets? Also, I have lots of fish...will sprinkling dry fish food on my sundews help them?

..or bloodworms and tubifex. That is acceptable for sundews and butterworts.

yep, i know about the bloodworms but the mealworms are easier to find and my bro has some. And the fishfood I will always have around as well (and it is dirt cheap). Plus, I can easily sprinkle the flakes on them. I just don't want to harm the sundews. You don't see a problem with this do you? Thanks in advance!!

I can only speak from using the bloodworms, personally. I have a friend who pulverizes the food first. Don't know about flake food, though. That may have salts in it, which could be a problem. Just not sure. Also, go easy on feeding them, so as to avoid rotting and mold.

ok, thanks. I found a really weird looking dead centipede in my basement that I fed my sundew yesterday. I've never seen one look like this...short (1"), thick, black, weirdly shaped...but good food for my cp. I'll look for bloodworms next time I go to the pet store.

Well, I feed my sundews human hair.... they seem to like it (Don't ask).

I fed them some powdered milk the other day, they seemed to like it also.

For some reason, the leaf on my Marston's Dragon that I've been feeding hair has a much deeper red color than the others. o_o

Good luck!

my sundew isn't producing duw droplets.What should I do?

Hello james 001,

Sundews not dewing is a common problem brought on by two main factors.

Light: If the plant does not get enough light, it will stop making dew as light gives the plant the energy it needs to sucrete sugars and enzymes to attract and digest insects. Give the plant the required amount of light.

Humidity: Humidity does not help the plant make dew, but if the humidity drops too quickly, like when you buy a covered plant at a hardware store then take the humidity cover off, then it can make the plant sick by shocking it. This shock is like what happens when you jump in a swimming pool of ice cold water. The plant would stop making dew if it were shocked from low humidity change too quickly. When a plant is in a humidity dome, you can take the dome off slowly by lifting the dome a bit and bracing it up or punching holes in it a few at a time every 3-4 days. Every 3-4 days, lift it a little higher or punch more holes in it and make the holes a little bigger. After about two weeks, the dome should be lifted a couple of inches or look like swiss cheese enough that it can be removed and the plant will be adapted to low humidity.

Let us know what type of sundew you have and we can help you more specifically. Some sundews, like Drosera adelae, likes only partial sunlight or strong flourescent light, but not full sun, others, like Drosera capensis, can tolerate full sun. Again, if the plant was in less light to begin with, adapt the plant slowly to full sun if it is a type that likes full sun by placing it in a partial sun (shady) window or under an awning on a patio. Leave it there for one week, then place it in a sunnier location, like a south facing window or further towards the edge of the awning where it is less shady. The week after that, place it in full sunlight and it should be fine. that is only if you have to put it in full sun. Many tropical sundews do well indoors as house plants under 100 watt equivalent compact or 2 40 watt cool light tubes shop flourescents about 5-8 inches from the light or in west or east facing windows.

Look up the type of plant you have and find out what it requires so you can provide those conditions.

Where did you get the plant? Often times people buy plants from a Lowes cube and the plant had been kicking around for weeks, without any care whatsoever. By time of purchase, it is suffering from lack of light and no air circulation. It is in a weakened state and when its environment changes by its owner, it is easily put into shock, from the change in humidity and temperature. It loses its dew. What you want to do is provide it with the best conditions you can, with adequate lighting, and inch or so of distilled water, and open to the air. And then.... wait for it to repond, which could take several days. Don't worry about existing growth. It's pretty much trash. But look to new growth.

Yeah petiolaris,

I was recently in a hardware store that had just received a new shipment of carnivorous plants about a couple weeks back, just long enough to kill most of them. They had a bunch of VFT and Hybrid Sarracenias. The Sarracenias were all dry and shriveled, the info tag actually stating to fertilize them and let the pot dry before watering them, and to give them partial light... they had the dying things indoors under a shelf, basically no light at all. I got so mad I yelled at one of the gardening employees that their plants were dying and told them what conditions they required... I am pretty sure they just killed all of the Sarracenia stock of 9 dollar plants quite efficiently. A waste of money, plants, and time.

My sundew is a drosera adelae.I already replanted it in a big pot and placed it in a window.It came from Lowes and part of its stem is brown.The moss I Replanted it in is spaghnum peat moss.It also came from Lowes.I gave it two moths and they stuck,and still sticking, but they didn't fold up.I gave them to it four days ago.

Hello james 001,

Drosera adelae will grow like a weed and be difficult to kill once you get it healthy. It will actually be hard to find enough room for all the young plants the adult will make from it's roots. In any case, that sundew does not close or fold it's leaves much if at all. I have seen only slight leaf bending in young adelae plants, but not in adults. They tend to enjoy lots of smaller insects like gnats and fruit flies along with the occasional mosquito.

How does my sundew eat bugs?Is it in the right moss?

Hello james 001,

Sundews eat insects by sucreting digestive enzymes from the glands that make glue on the tentacles. When the insect gets stuck, it's struggles and the contact of the insect body against the tentacles causes more glue to be sucreted to drown it, then digestive enzymes are produced to break down the juicy parts of the insect. When the inside of the insect is soup, the released nutrients, nitrogen, potassium etc., are absorbed through the leaf of the plant.

Sphagnum peat moss is the correct type of moss, just make sure it does not have anything added to it, like fertilizer. The moss sold in dry bales in plasic wrap is the kind you want. You might add some perlite in a 50/50 mix to the moss to give more drainage and aeriate the soil better.

Thanks!I put a florescent bulb about 8 in. over my sundew.I'll see how it turns out.Also, do tou think it's ok to put a venus flytrap in the same pot as a sundew?

Hello james 001,

The sundews (Drosera adelae) you have are tropicals that will grow very rapidly all year round. I bought one plant about 5 months ago and it has now multiplied to 21 plants from root clones.

The Venus flytrap is a temperate that needs to go dormant in winter and should be grown in stronger light than the adelae. VFT actually do best in full sunlight, but if you bought it at a hardware store, it needs to be slowly acclimated to full sun over a couple weeks after you acclimate it to lower humidity. It would be best to pot the Venus flytrap in a separate pot so you can put it in higher light and allow it to go dormant with the seasonal changes and colder weather. Other than that, the VFT can be grown in the same type of soil (peat and perlite 50/50 mix) as the adelae and given distilled, rain, or reverse osmosis water.

O.K. because I was also thinking about getting a VFT.It was the first carnivorous plant I ever got.Thanks for all of your help.

New addition to my group, beautiful plant! Now what kind of a diva is it going to be? Any advice and info would be greatly appreciated!!
marian
twotut