Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Spent a couple of hours in the afternoon spring cleaning my Drosera grow chamber. Been neglecting it for a while, making the water trays a playground for algae.

Just so happy that the place is all neat and clean now. :) Also did trimming on my plants, removed dead leaves etc.

That's my 3-year old son. He was pointing out to me the differences he noticed after the spring clean. Was surprise how he remembers the difference... a CPer in the making... haaa, haaa...
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Here are the plants...
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My mini Drosera gardens...
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Some of my favourite "pets" together with dried carcass of termites still on the leaves. I fed it to them a few days ago...

D. capensis "giant"
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D. capillaris
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D. ericsoniae x pulchella
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Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

As usual, spectacular David! Cool that your son is already taking an interest! A couple of your pots (first, second and third pictures) look almost like they have the same levels of algae on the media as I was having...or is that just more black silica? I can see it sure looks like silica in the D. capensis "giant". I especially like the 'mini-Drosera gardens' and all the Utrics ground cover. It looks great. I have a dense batch that I'm very worried about drying up while I am away...will tray to transplant into a closed terrarium tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration!

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Shawn,

Thanks! Those are the black silica with sphagnum peat. For seedlings pots or pots where I use to germinate seeds, the topping is pure Sphagnum peat and it is very wet.

I just have this thought today of mass propagating utrics to be used for topping on all my Drosera pots. I think it will look cool.

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Very nice collection of droseras David! How I wish I can have one myself :)

May I know what types of light you are using?

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Impressive collection! Well done! :1thumbup:

It's amazing how well Dros grow if they're well fed! I use frozen "blood worms", which are some kind of mosquito larvae, which are available in small blister packs in various pet supply stores. I pop out a portion, thaw it out, and pull out a few with my stainless steel needle tweezers and I use a 4X jeweler's loupe, and load up the dews with them. They seem less prone to get contaminated with fungus afterward. In a week or two, the plants make a leap in growth. - Rich

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Hi Arvin,
I am using two 4-feet florescent plant light from Germany and two Hitachi florescent lights. The florescent lights are 6000k to 6500k. I also have one 40 watt PL light at one corner of the setup. I am thinking of changing the whole setup using only PL lights.

rsivertsen,
I used blood worms before and you are right. The plants love it, but my "Minister of Home Affairs" did not want worms to be kept together with other food stuff in the freezer, so had to forgo that practice. :mad: I tried with dried blood worms and it works as well. I can see a spurt of growth after I feed them the dried worms. But most of the time I just go around the house and look for ants.

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Thanks David for the info about your lights.

I have not thought of feeding my droseras, as they are outdoors and should catch food for themselves, but I do have quite a few live bloodworms in some of my daphnia containers (for my aldros rich) and I'll try to have a go from time to time. I understand they are larvae of a "midge" or something.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Nice..........I love those community pots with the urtics....Was there by any chance your urtics went into the pot of paradoxa u gave me last time? It was doing well so i repotted it and all the sand....Before that there was those leaves emerging from the soil...Now the sand is bone dry so i guess if it was urtics its dead :( Anyways nice (your son is soo cute :p )

Ken

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Nice dews collection and David you kept it so clean free of weeds and also algae. Very inspiring. :2thumbup:

Ed

Re: Spring Cleaning of my Drosera Grow Area
 

Thanks Ken. I can't remember whether there were utrics in the parodoxa I gave you the last time. It could be form seeds. I realised lately that they will suddenly grow in a pot that does not have utrics before. I am thinking of using those tall plastic cups to barricade them so the seeds do not spread to the other pots in my growing area.