A living gift · Jake's Plants
You got a sundew!
Drosera spatulata · the spoon-leaf sundew · a tiny predator for your windowsill
tap the garden · then open
Drosera spatulata · the spoon-leaf sundew · a tiny predator for your windowsill
Get these right and your sundew will thrive for years.
Sunny windowsill or grow light, 12 to 16 hours a day.
Keep it sitting in water. Distilled or rain only, never tap.
No plant food, ever. It eats bugs. That is the whole deal.
Everything a new sundew parent needs to know.
More is more. Full sun or strong grow light, 12 to 16 hours daily. Red tentacles mean it is happy. Green, stretched, dewless leaves are begging for more light.
Tray method, always. Set the pot in a saucer with half an inch of water and never let it dry out. Use distilled, rain, or RO water only. Tap water minerals will slowly kill it.
Poor soil on purpose. Half peat moss, half perlite. No regular potting mix, no compost, no fertilizer in the soil. Ever. It evolved for bogs, not gardens.
It hunts on its own. Those sparkly drops are sticky glue plus digestive enzymes. It will catch fruit flies and gnats by itself. Never feed it meat or human food.
Pretty but pricey. It will send up a stalk of tiny pink flowers. On a small plant, snip the stalk so energy goes to leaves. Big healthy plants can bloom and make free seeds.
No winter nap needed. This is a tropical sundew. It grows year round. Just keep it above 45°F, keep it wet, keep it bright, and it never sleeps.
Tap the symptom, get the fix.
It needs more light. Dew is the number one sign of a happy sundew, and light is the number one cause when it vanishes. Move it closer to the window or light. Morning sun is great.
Check your water. Old leaves die naturally, but fast browning usually means mineral buildup from tap water. Flush the pot with distilled water and switch sources for good.
Stretching for light. Give it more sun gradually so it does not scorch. If there is a tall thin stalk with buds, that is just a flower stalk, totally normal.
Needs airflow. Scrape the mold off, give the plant more air circulation, and avoid letting dead leaves pile up on the soil. It is ugly but rarely fatal.
Tap the firefly gnat. Dinner is served.
To impress your friends.