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Carniorous Plants have been POISONED!!
rachelharris1989
Posts: 1
I have 3 carnivorous plants; a venus fly trap, a pitcher plant and a plant with sticky leaves that I do not know the name of. As you are supposed to water them with rain water, I have been using a water butt from my garden. I've had them for a couple of years but as soon as I started watering them with water from the water butt they started dying. Now I have discovered that oil had been put in the water, The pitcher plant is the only one left with a fair few green tubes. The other two are brown and black - they've had it. Can anyone help me in saving my last plant?
0
Posts
The only thing I can suggest is that you try to wash the contaminated water out of the compost with clean water. Tap water is normally advised against, but in this case it would be better than nothing, Fortunately there is rain on the way so you could collect some of that.
Another option would be to repot it in fresh compost, if you have some available.
sink it in deep bowl of water overnight, any residual oil will float to the surface,
after you've poured the water off think about repotting using a 60% peat, 25% sharp sand, 15% perlite mix.
make sure the water butt has been completely emptied and cleaned out before using the water again, but as long as you are not in a hard water area you can use tap water until it rains again. if not fill a bucket with peat and add water, after a week the water can be drained off and used safely.
and remember that most pitcher plants go outside standing in water in full sun during the summer and only need protecting from hard frosts (below - 5)