My wife has a saying she likes to use: "When will you learn that all my ideas are good ones?" I usually hear that whenever I eventually take her advice on something I was hesitant to do. Most of the time it turns out I agree with her assessment of whatever the situation is. Point being, because of her I end up trying a fair number of new things I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
So when Mandy gave me a book for my birthday that introduced me to all sorts of bizarre plants that I didn't know about before, it's a foregone conclusion that I'd try to grow some of those plants sooner than later. She probably wasn't trying to plant any specific idea in my head, but it happened anyway. Way to go, dear!
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| The book is well worth a read - look for a review in an upcoming post. If you can't wait for then, order it off Amazon.com. |
The first chapter of the book covers carnivorous plants. Turns out, there are quite a few plants that not only will grow in temperate regions of North America, there are a lot of carnivorous plants that natively grow here! Well, I didn't need any more incentive than that to hunt down some bug-eating plant life and try and grow my own. Here's how I got started:
My First Mistake
When it comes to carnivorous plants most people will first think of Venus Flytrap, and I was no exception. Where have I ever seen some of these for sale before? Oh yeah, that big box store with lots of blue and a bad reputation for killing plants. You know the one I mean. That's the store that you have to be careful about buying generally low-maintenance outdoor plants from, let alone carnivorous plants that need some special attention. Common wisdom says not to buy plants from there.I didn't listen to common wisdom:
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| That logo and box design is killer! Get it? Killer packaging? Heh... |
My first indication that it probably wasn't a good idea to buy these was by their location in the store. I didn't get a picture of it, but these guys were kept inside the store with the houseplants. That may not seem so bad, but our store's houseplant section has no windows and almost no natural light. That's not a great place for plants like these, that naturally grow outdoors in full sun in bogs. Not only were these plants kept in cavernous darkness, those awesome looking boxes the plants are packaged in were taped shut. That's one way to keep store employees from over watering your merchandise!
Despite all these warning signs, I couldn't help but think of my purchase as a rescue operation and bought them anyway. Once they were freed from their death boxes, the plants looked a bit better off:
Potting the Plants - Special Considerations
I had my plants, I had my container, I had my soil substitute; time to have fun!
My first step was to make the galvanized pail suitable for plant growth by adding some drainage holes. The bucket I bought was rather thin, and using a spade bit to drill a hole was probably not the best way to go. I applied too much pressure and ended up with the mangled and bent opening you see in photo #2:
The screens I had on hand from my grandma's collection of bonsai pots. Any sort of small screen will do, really. The length of copper wire makes sure the screen stays with the pot until you decide to move it.
When it comes to carnivorous plants, regular old potting mix is not suitable; it's far too fertile and too rich. These plants are used to growing in very nutrient-poor bogs and swamps that don't ever really dry out. The media I'll be using is a mix of 40% sand and 60% sphagnum peat. There's no need to be all precise about it, an old pot is good enough to measure out approximate quantities of each.
One of the simple pleasures of working with plants is running your bare hands through a pile of potting mix. It recalls the memory you have of digging in a mud hole when you were three years old - but without one of your parents yelling at you for it. Getting yourself covered in dirt is fun and necessary here!
Business as Usual
Once you've got the soil mixed up, the process of potting carnivorous plants is essentially the same as potting up any other common plant. As always, take care to note the correct potting depth.Here's the finished product:
No it doesn't look like much, but keep in mind these plants are some sub-prime offerings. These are plants, however, and the proof isn't in how well they look the day you get them, but how well they grow after you've had them for a bit.
One Week Later...
Okay, so they don't look all that great. That's kind of what I'd expected to see, even if I was hoping for better. I wasn't entirely surprised, especially since plants encounter stress when making a transition from being kept indoors to moving outside.
But you didn't think I could really leave it at that, did you?
I Bought More Plants...
When searching for carnivorous pitcher plants, there are typical places you think to look, and then there are atypical places to look. I would consider Amazon.com an atypical place to find carnivorous plants, but lo and behold: they were there. Joel's Carnivorous Plants is a storefront on Amazon.com that has at least a half-dozen plants available at any given time. All of the items I saw had very positive reviews, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose. There's not much I can say without sounding like an advertisement, but rest assured that I do endorse buying plants from Joel.Lets let the pictures do the talking:
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| Plants were shipped bare-root, but packed well. Complete instructions were included, as well as pots and moss for planting. |
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| This flytrap cost me about twice as much as the one I got from the box-store-that-won't-be-named, but it was at least five times as big, and it had a big root system on it. |
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| Dionea muscipula, the humble but awesome Venus Flytrap |
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| Sundew, Drossera nidiformis. A bit smaller than the flytrap, but still quite healthy. |
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| This one traps insects by curling the end of the leaf like a mitten to trap prey. |
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| And this is the Sweet Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia rubra. |
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| If you look at the stem of the pitcher plant, you can see a dark section that indicates the mass of captured bugs. |
The finished product, which I'm quite happy with! As the summer progresses, I'll take some more photos to see how well they grow and fill out the planter.
Carnivorous plants are not more difficult to grow than anything else, they just need attention paid to their different needs.
A Note About Watering
This is a lesson I learned the hard way: Don't water sand and peat mix from above! Watering from above causes water to pool up near the surface. The peat, being quite a bit less dense than sand, will float when water is applied from above. Over time, all the sand sinks to the bottom and the peat will rise to the top, making an anaerobic layer near the crowns of the plants that will encourage rot.The proper way to water is from the bottom. Place the planter in a larger saucer / bowl, add water up about a third of the way up the pot and just let the soil soak it up. Most carnivorous plants are bog-dwellers, so never let the saucer completely dry out.
Other Resources
So what are you waiting for? Try them for yourself!
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