Upon arrival, pull the plant out of the box, and carefully unwrap and remove the plastic lid on the top. Carefully replace any soil that has fallen out of the pot. Bottom water with ONLY distilled water (but NO other types of bottled water), reverse osmosis water or clean, collected rain. NO TAP WATER! Tap water contains dissolved minerals that will slowly kill your plant. This is one of the more tricky parts of sundew plant care. Drosera cannot tolerate as much tap water as Nepenthes can, and you should attempt to never use tap or well water on your carnivorous plants.
After cutting out of the bag, place the pot in a bog garden or shallow dish and bottom water with the appropriate water leaving enough water to go about ½ inch up the side of the pot. Drosera prefer boggy, humid environments and acidic, moist soil with little to no nutrients. Never use fertilizers that have not been recommended for carnivorous plants and use them at the appropriate strength. We carry carnivorous safe fertilizers if you feel that you need them. Remember, with carnivorous plants that less is better.
Upon arrival, the plant may be stressed out from the trip. While we attempt to do everything we can to keep the plant as stable as possible, the post office is not always as caring as we would like and your plant may need time to adjust. If it comes out of the soil, just place back in the pot and rinse any soil off the top with appropriate water. There may not be any dew left on the leaves, but it will return quickly with proper care and appropriate light. If it is not making dew after 10 - 14 days, then it is not getting enough light. It may wait to may dew until it has time to acclimate, but once it has acclimated, it needs lots of light to survive and lots of light to make dew. If it’s not making dew, give it more light. If it still is not making dew and you are following the directions, I promise you are not giving it enough light.
Sundews do best with 6 to 15 hours a day of bright light. They are used to being in shade and don’t necessarily do well in full sun without acclimation and may start to burn, so bright indirect light from a window or from a shaded edge of a bog garden and maybe some supplemental light from grow lights are good, but outside would be best for growing sundews if your temperatures allow. Spatulata do not require dormancy and are cold hardy year round in zones 8 - 10, need protection outside in zones 6 - 7 and should be brought indoors before temps dip below freezing in all zones. Filiformis go dormant in Winter and should be allowed to remain outside year round, but may need protection from Spring frosts as they are coming out of dormancy.
Plants will arrive in the appropriate medium, however if you would like to repot, do so in a carnivorous mix or a 50:50 mixture of peat and perlite. Never use Miracle-Gro or fertilized perlite or potting soil, as you could burn them up and NEVER give your plants people food. If your drosera is not catching enough food, once a month take some fish food and crush it up to a dusty consistency and sprinkle on the top of your plant, or use carnivorous safe fertilizers. If the plant is outside, it will likely catch everything that it needs. Traps that are eating bugs are easily spotted by their brighter color, caused by the leaf wrapping around the bug and concentrating the color of the dew.
It takes a lot of energy for your plant to open and close their traps, so it is best not to tamper with them and allow them to simply catch what they need. While it may be tempting to wipe off the bright colored dew on the leaves, the plant needs that dew to attract it’s meals and keep them there while they digest them. Bodies of bugs that have been eaten will blow away or be washed away by rain and watering.