Is it time to feed these little guys?

[mreaves311]

Are the big enough to feed yet? If not, when? Also what do you recommend I feed them? Its a 4inch pot Thanks
ps sry for the blurry pic.. couldn't steady the camera and get an up close shot

 

[nimbulan]

You can feed them as soon as they have carnivorous leaves, you just have to be really careful about portions so you don't have an outbreak of mold. The general idea is to keep the food smaller than the dew drops on the leaves. I feed mine crushed betta pellets.

 

[NemJones]

Ive only germinated from gemmae so far, But I left them unfed until about half maturity, in fear
of losing a few from using wrong foods. (I still need to invest in osmocote/maxsea.) They have been healthy their entire lifespan.
The feeding really made them shoot up though.

You can feed them as soon as they have carnivorous leaves, you just have to be really careful about portions so you don't have an outbreak of mold. The general idea is to keep the food smaller than the dew drops on the leaves. I feed mine crushed betta pellets.

How well does this work?
Ive experimented with Flake food, and crushed up koi pellets. Both of them seem to dry out
quite a bit. Also, I suppose a follow up question is Do you mist dews after feeding or leave them?

 

[SerMuncherIV]

I feed Drosera seedlings by crushing up beta pellets in a folded paper, touching the tip of a tweezer to a tiny particle, and transferring to the leaf. The particles usually stick to the tweezer without help, but if they don't a quick dip in water or even just exhaling on the tweezer tip will solve the issue. Like Nimbulan said, try to keep the food particles at the same size or smaller than the dew droplets, since food any larger than that can lead to mold issues in most cases. Your seedlings are definitely at the size where I would start feeding them.

Do you mist dews after feeding or leave them?

I wouldn't, since this can be counterproductive by washing the food particles and/or dew off the leaves. Healthy seedlings should have enough dew to digest the food properly anyway.

 

[Cruzzfish]

I don't feed my plants. I don't know how much they catch on their own, and I don't want to risk overdoing it.

 

[nimbulan]

Ive only germinated from gemmae so far, But I left them unfed until about half maturity, in fear
of losing a few from using wrong foods. (I still need to invest in osmocote/maxsea.) They have been healthy their entire lifespan.
The feeding really made them shoot up though.

How well does this work?
Ive experimented with Flake food, and crushed up koi pellets. Both of them seem to dry out
quite a bit. Also, I suppose a follow up question is Do you mist dews after feeding or leave them?

I've only grown D. scorpiodes gemmae, but they grow exceedingly slow without food. D. burmanii is the same way, I can have a mature plant from seed in 3 months with food and the ones without are still tiny after 6.

I wouldn't ever mist sundews. A lot of them simply don't like getting wet and you risk washing the food away or causing the fungus problems we're trying to stop by using small portions of dry food. If the plant is having trouble with the food, you probably need to feed it smaller portions.