Stupid Question

Hello all,
I have been thinking of a carnivorous plant for my terrarium. I read the sticky, and a link in there suggested the Drosera's...pardon my ignorance as this will be my first ever carnivorous.....but....um....what do you feed them in the winter when there are no bugs???
Thanks, LeeAnne

Not a stupid question at all. These plants, although carnivorous, still photosynthesize like "regular" plants. No need to feed them anything but if you want to stick a rotten banana in your terrarium to encourage fruit flies, I'm sure they'd love the juicy morsels.

thank you soooo much...I had visions of starving the poor thing to death. Fruit flies? not a problem, they seem to appear majically at any given moment, this can be easily arranged.
Now I'm off to find some seeds of some kind of Drosera...lol
LeeAnne

Have fun eliminating those fruitflies that magically appear. I have a composter here at home and I am always tossing food scraps in it. Needless to say, it gets a lot of fruitflies in it because of all the strawberry tops, banana peels, pineapple tops, melon rinds, and everything else imaginable. I take my little pots of plants and wave them around in my composter. When I swish them around they grab snacks for themselves. If you have a composter, try it.

that sounds like fun !!! I can see it now, every morning..make coffee, feed dog, feed cats, feed plants....lol

There ya go! That's the spirit. Only... in my house it goes like this-
-Get caffeine fix by chugging down Diet Pepsi while hooking up dogs to leashes to let them pee.
-Wake up kids, let them make scrambled eggs or cereal (who cares as long as they eat something) and then make their own lunches for school.
-Toss leftovers from previous night's dinner in mouth while shoveling out food to dogs.
-Get another caffeine fix by chugging down more Diet Pepsi while filling cat bowls.
-Run around house like mad woman turning on plant lights and sprinkling this and sprinkling that like Tiny Tim tiptoeing (sp?) throught the tulips.
-Hook up dogs one last time to take them out to do #2 while kids start car and load in.

I must admit I only swish them around above the compost in the warmer months. That's the only time there are fruit flies hanging out in the composter anyway but the kids like to show their friends how to do it. My husband would go nuts if he saw me intentionally leaving a banana in the house as a breeding ground for fruit flies but shhhhh.... what he doesn't know won't hurt him. I do it downstairs in my propagation chamber. Must feed my babies.

WOW...busy,busy,busy...I knew there was a reason I never had kids....lol. Bad enough with 1 dog, 6 cats and a man. I got a chuckle picturing you running about though.

I don't know why, but I get fruit flies all winter....maybe has something to do with where I buy my fruit? Makes me think I could be a good mom to a few carnivorous plants.

What type of propagation chamber do you use, if you don't mind me asking?

What don't I use would be the better question. I have kiddie pools in my basement with metal halides hung over them. I've got shelves of plants with T5s suspended over them. I've got converted student desks in front of windows with supplemental gooseneck clamp lamps trained on the plants and modified aquariums throughout literally the entire house. I, like many people you will run into in these forums, am hopeless. The chamber (probably a poor choice of words) is a framed out area sided with insulation board with grow tubes suspended from above. Home made project that happens to work for starting Sarracenia but I toss a few pings in there too from time to time. It's the pings that have me slopping mushy bananas in there. The fruit flies don't last long. Sooner or later they land on a ping leaf.

I'm just having really funny visuals of Equilibrium waving her plants over the compost pile. I gotta try that sometime. My neighbors don't think I'm crazy enough. I'm about to start up a terrarium to grow some of my favorite hooded pitcher plants. I'm creating a mini wetland in my backyard since it's pretty much a wetland anyway, and I want to add lots of hooded pitcher plants. I went hiking at the nature preserve near my house but all the pitcher plants have gone dormant. I miss them. I like to pet them like they're little people so I had to go to the botanical garden to get my fix. Maybe you have to be a little strange to like carnivorous plants?

My compost pile is in the back of the house behind the garage. Unless you see me in action behind the garage with a small potted ping... I look like any other neighbor around here. tee he.

Gonna try some Darlingtonia californica are you? Have fun with that one! Pixy grows them effortlessly.