Pir's Carnivores (Pic Heavy)
- Thread starter Piranha86
- Start date
Seeing where you live, as far as your VFTs are concerned you should think outside the box. Or at least outside your house. With winter protection VFTs are hardy in my area, and I'm a USDA zone colder than you. I have mine in a half barrel on a heavy duty dolly so I can move it in to the garage if it gets really cold,. They can be grown in the ground and overwintered if you mulch them heavily, and nothing beats the sun for growing them during the growth period. Mine went from a garden center special I bought in April with about 8 or 10 tiny little traps to a monster with about at least two crowns that has had upwards of 30 large traps at once. Supposedly there are established populations in the NJ Pine Barrens, but I've never seen any myself. I have it in with some hardy Dews (rotundifolia and filiformis), some sub-tropicals (spats and capensis) and some Sarracenias, along with Cranberries and a few associate wetland plants. Also some nice healthy Sphagnum. I'll get pics up.
sweet plants, good luck with them! Obviously it's hard to put a measure on something like this, but how would you compare them difficulty wise to maintaining a planted tank? Thinking about getting a couple now that I've downsized on fish stuff.
Essentially you have to actually worry about watering and in turn less about feeding, really. Other than that I don't see a major difference as you still have to make sure they are under decent lighting and in good media.
Watering? I thought so too when I set it up, but so far this season I've only had to water 2 or 3 times, and it has been somewhat of a dry year overall around here. Not severely so, but well under average. More of an issue has been draining off excess water after heavy storms. I've gotten very good at that! I agree that media makes a huge difference. It's the slightly higher % of peat to sand that allows my garden to retain moisture so well. I have a second container set up with a more even mix but it's fairly new so I'll have to wait until next season to see how it goes.
Growing tropical to even sub-tropicals year round up here pretty much limits me to growing inside. Summer is rather short....thus I have to supply my own water.
At the very least water is more of a concern than growing plants underwater LOL
At the very least water is more of a concern than growing plants underwater LOL
The feeding my plants get is insane. I've walked out many a morning to find my D. capensis practically black with little gnats, midges, flies and what have you. And of course any bug stupid enough to be in the wrong place becomes food for something. It'll be nice next year to have some large Sarracenia Pitchers around. I had to waste about 20 Carpenter Bees a few weeks ago because they were too big for my VFT and first year Purple Pitchers!
I agree, even indoors I never target feed mine unless a housefly catches me in the wrong mood...
I pitcher feed my neps and sarrs with a weakly mixed orchid fertilizer. I've definitely seen improvement in their growth and pitchering.
