Question
My Venus Fly Trap.
Hello, My pitcher plants are producing pitchers at a fast pace but some of the pitchers are browning or blackening once or before they fully developed. I water them with water paced through a reversed osmosis unit because our water has a hardness of 2770 ppm:( I live in West Texas and the tempetures are very hot. I keep them in a tray of water about an inch and a half up the pot. Some of them are in 6 inch pots and the rest in 4in.Iam also having this trouble with my Venus flytrap where all the trap are blackening before they even open. I have had them for about a month growing in my backyard where they get full sun all day long. Thanks for your help.
AnswerHi Levi,
Is that reading correct, 2770 ppm? That's extremely hard. The hardest I recorded was about 650 ppm in Las Vegas. Our well water is on 120 ppm. If the water is indeed that hard, then the RO unit might not be suitable for this purpose. RO units remove 90-98% if minerals, depending on the quality of your unit. At your original levels of 2770 ppm, your filtered water would be any where from 55 ppm to 277 ppm, which is still high. Have you tested the filtered water too?
In your case, you may need to use bottled distilled water. Look for a grocery store that sells the water from large machines. It'll be much cheaper that way.
The symptoms you've described is very consistent with excessively hard water or fertilizers in the soil. Did you repot your plants? If you did, make sure you used only peat moss and perlite without added fertilizers.
Please send me a follow-up. This is very unusual, and I'd like to make sure your filtered water is safe enough for your plants. If the filtered water is the culprit, you'll also need to replace the soil.
Good growing!
Jacob Farin
