It's really good to feed your sundews

I've been very good about feeding my sundews lately. I've been able to give a number of them good solid feedings, and am planning on doing more going forward. One of the good things about feeding is that it really increases seed production. When I really got into growing sundews I wanted to get a decent stock of seed available to sell, since finding seed to buy was difficult when I first started collecting. I should be updating my sales page with additional seeds soon.

One of my favorite species to feed is always Drosera burmannii, since they always respond so dramatically to being fed.

You go little guy!

Check out that brand new leaf on D. burmannii (Gunung Keledang). This is the first feeding for these seedlings. Should be able to do even more feeding soon.

These D. burmannii (Hann River) flowered out a bunch, so they were really in need of a feeding.

Nice new growth everywhere.

All the pale leaves are new growth from feeding. That one plant on the left of the picture is what happens if you let D. burmannii flower out without feeding – they sort of melt away by blooming themselves to death. Whoops!

The closely-related Drosera sessilifolia is almost as enthusiastic about feeding as is D. burmannii.

I love me some Drosera Subg. Thelocalyx.

I still need to see if heavy feeding can get these guys to size up. I haven't yet met Fernando's challenge.

Drosera natalensis tan up really well when they're not fed, but it's fun seeing the color contrast after a round of new growth.

So dewy!

This is a very nice, low-maintenance pot of plants. It just sort of does its thing, which is great.

I've also fed my pings, and been pretty good about taking pullings lately. Look at this brand new baby Pinguicula gigantea.

Soon I'll be propagating pings properly, just you watch.

The other plantlets in the pot are only 6 months old, and they're already pretty big. Pings are really fun to propagate.

Finally, the one group of plants I never have to think about are my Utricularia, especially the terrestrial species. Generally you just need to leave them alone, keep them wet, and let them colonize the media. Then eventually you should get some flowers.

One of my favorite species of Utricularia, easy.

Utricularia pubescens! Funny little flowers and weird "leaves" (utrics don't technically have leaves as such). Unfortunately it's really hard to take a picture of the leaves, but there's a great picture on this page of Barry Rice's Carnivorous Plant FAQ. I wish this pot wasn't quite so mossy, but I certainly don't mind the flowers!