FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi, sorry I haven't been on here lately, things have been busy. My baby weenie sister had to go under and lose 9 teeth at 14. She okay, but we're still waiting for the hole in her gum to close and she might have a sinus infection, but she's better.

But a few days ago I decided to buy some fertilizer to try on the plants (also on some orchids I have. I have no idea what I'm doing with them)
It seems like it's similar to Maxsea. It's 16-16-16 and it's made with seaweed. And I can actually find it at Armstrong's. So, I decided to give it a go and see how it turns out.
This is going to be the victim test subject. I decided on this one because it hasn't grown much. Until about a week ago it just kept putting out flower stalks. It also has some divisions in another pot already, so that's good.

The bottle says to give container plants 1 teaspoon per gallon every 10 to 14 days, so I'm going to give it 1/4 of a teaspoon every 2 weeks starting tomorrow.

I guess we'll see how it goes. Hopefully, it won't die.

Don't be surprised if it dies. Flytraps and sundews (barring Drosera regia) are the most sensitive to soil/water minerals and I can't say I've read about anyone successfully fertilizing them. An unhealthy plant will be even less tolerant.

Yeah, I know there's a chance of it dying, but I wouldn't say the plant is unhealthy exactly. Those traps are from last year (and they were also in a box for 2 days) and then it decided to put up 2 or 3 flower stalks instead of new traps. But it's getting plenty of sun and the trap that's coming up now is growing fast.

And I've heard of people being able to use Maxsea at 1/4 strength to fertilize flytraps. I'm actually planning on giving it a little less to be on the safe side.

Yeah I understand. I have one flytrap with nothing but old dying leaves on it right now as well. I was mainly concerned about all those brown spots on the leaves as I've never seen anything like that before.

Good luck!

Yeah, it's weird, but I've seen it on a couple of plants before. I went out and looked and there's another flytrap that has the same thing on a couple of its leaves, but it came from the same place this one did. There were also a couple of succulents that had the same thing. One just had it on a few random leaves on one branch (and it was on the same table as the flytraps) and the other had it on its oldest leaves (and it was in a completely different spot).

So is that not a normal thing for some plants to do? Could it be something else? I don't think it's a virus because it never spread to the flower stalks and the new traps seem fine so far.

I sprayed a bit of the fertilizer on the plant. Now we just wait.

Check the plant for small slow moving red dots, it could be spider mites

I didn't see anything that was red and moving or any webs. But on another plant I found these small shiny black bugs. They're about the size of aphids, but they were faster and more shiny. I saw them the other day too in the same spot, but I figured as long as they're not aphids or mealy bugs they're probably nothing. I could get a picture of them because they already wandered off.

Hyenafan wrote:Yeah, I know there's a chance of it dying, but I wouldn't say the plant is unhealthy exactly. Those traps are from last year (and they were also in a box for 2 days) and then it decided to put up 2 or 3 flower stalks instead of new traps. But it's getting plenty of sun and the trap that's coming up now is growing fast.

And I've heard of people being able to use Maxsea at 1/4 strength to fertilize flytraps. I'm actually planning on giving it a little less to be on the safe side.

Good luck. I hope it works out. I've heard of a few CP nurseries in Australia who fertilize Dionaea and Drosera species with 4ml seasol per 1 litre of water. They do this every 8 weeks however. So maybe every two weeks might be a bit too frequent.

Did you check out this posting?http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/how-o ... 10571.html
I suppose if you were to just apply it carefully to the underside of a few leaves it might be okay. I have read multiple articles cautioning not to get it on the rhizome or to the roots. Good luck...

I "paint" mine on with a hobbyist paintbrush. that way it just gets on the leaves and not the soil...

Doesn't look like mite damage, but could be some sort of fungus or rust?

Yeah, maybe I'll do it every month instead in case.

I know I have to be careful with fertilizing, but the reason I want to do it is that it gets pretty hot and dry during the summer and I've had too many plants (especially smaller ones) just burn up in a day and I don't even have a chance to save them.

Matt wrote:Doesn't look like mite damage, but could be some sort of fungus or rust?

I don't know how it could be rust since they're in styrofoam and have been at least since I've gotten them. And I have no idea if it could be a fungus.

Hyenafan wrote:I don't know how it could be rust since they're in styrofoam and have been at least since I've gotten them. And I have no idea if it could be a fungus.

Rust is a type of fungus. It typically causes brown spots on leaves or fruit similar to what we see in your picture.

nimbulan wrote:

Hyenafan wrote:I don't know how it could be rust since they're in styrofoam and have been at least since I've gotten them. And I have no idea if it could be a fungus.

Rust is a type of fungus. It typically causes brown spots on leaves or fruit similar to what we see in your picture.

Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. I was thinking either the stuff that gets on metal or the game.

I tried to take a couple of close-ups of it:



I don't know if that helps.

Well, it's been about two weeks now since I've fertilized the plant.

Here's how it looks now:
So, it certainly hasn't died yet.