Yossu

After some great help from this forum, we ordered three different drosera varieties from Hampshire Plants, which arrived today. I would like a little bit of advice please. The d. binata looks completely dead. Is this normal? I know the pictures on the site are what you can aspire to having, but this is the complete opposite. Also, it's quite dry, and I thought they were supposed to be kept wet. Should I be concerned about the dead-looking state, or is this just the end of the winter rest period? The d. capensis narrow looks mostly dead, but there are a few new leaves starting to grow, so I guess this is just a matter of care and time. This one was fairly moist. Finally, the d. alicae looked quite good. It has plenty of healthy leaves, and no dead material at all. The whole plant is about 4cm across, and is a little bit moist. So, how do I care for them? As far as I can see from their web site, they need to stand in a few centimetres of rain/deionised/RO water.Is that right? I'll worry about winter care nearer the time! Do I need to water them from the top at all, or just put water in the tray underneath? Also, how long would I expect to wait before seeing the capensis and binata grow to the stage where they can catch insects? We have three locations where we would like to put the three plants, and want to know which are suitable... 1) My home office has a south-facing window and is on the first floor. I guess this is ideal, as it gets as much sunshine as we ever get in Manchester! It's not a huge window (about 1m wide), but then it's not a huge plant, and would be right on the windowsill. The room has a couple of computers in it, so doesn't get too cool, but doesn't get too warm as I keep the radiator off. 2) We have ground floor room which has a west-facing window. As the window is about 3m wide, and faces our garden, it gets quite a lot of light, so is pretty good for most plants. It is above a radiator, but due to the idiot plumber who put it in, it doesn't get that hot! 3) We would like to put one in or near the kitchen, partly so we can see it (we spend most of our family time in the kitchen or eat-in next door), and partly to catch any flies that venture near the kitchen. The kitchen doesn't have any windows in the walls, but has a decent-sized skylight. The only place in the kitchen itself would be to put a small shelf inside the skylight, which would give it plenty of light, but would keep it out of sight. The eat-in next to the kitchen has a south-facing window, but there is a sort of outhouse on the other side of the window, which has a plastic roof. This lets a reasonable amount of light in, but not a huge amount. Would I be right in thinking that this wouldn't be a good place for a drosera? We do have a tank with two turtles on that windowsill, and that has a UVB tube and a basking lamp, so there would be a certain amount of extra light, but I don't know if it would be enough. The UVB tube is right over the turtle tank, with a reflector, so doesn't let huge amounts of light out. What do you think of these three locations? Thanks again for all the help. Any comments would be welcome. Just out of interest, the large window I mentioned above was the home of a small coleus that I bought my wife some years ago. It was about 6" tall when I got it, and after being on that windowsill for about three or four months, it looked like this... Not bad eh? Sadly, it got bashed by one of the children careering into it on a bike, so it's not quite what it used to be! I'm hoping some TLC will restore it.

Thanks for the link and the info. After some debate, we decided not to go for the pinguicula at all, as my wife thought that the leaves looked a bit ugh with dead flies on them! Also, she preferred the unusual shape of the leaves on the drosera, so we went for three varieties of those. Should arrive in Tuesday, so I'll probably be back with questions when I see what I've got! Thanks again to everyone for the help and advice.

Thanks for the reply. I looked at the Pinguiculas on Hampshire Plants' web site, and was particularly taken with the cyclosecta. I emailed the people there, but he told me that Pinguiculas are not easy to grow. If I read your post right, you seem to disagree. Any comments? I would like one of those as they look really nice (assuming I could get one to blossom like their pictures of course). Also going to look at the droseras. Seem to be a good selection for me. Thanks again. This is a great forum! Thanks, didn't know that was an option. We still have some deionised water from last time, and I'll try colecting some rainwater, so I'll see how I get on before spending more money on RO water. Thanks again.

I'm sure they are fungus gnats, they fit the description perfectly, and the pictures I found on line looked like them too. Thanks for the suggestions of which plants to try. I'll have a look and see what takes my fancy.

Wow, what a great load of replies! Thanks to everyone. Drosera capensis looks like what we had last time. As I said, it got infested with small white flies. Is that normal? I would have thought the whole point of a carnivorous plant was that it would eat them, not get infested with them! Anyway, maybe we'll have another go. I also like the look of the Mexican Pinguicula, which seems easy to grow. Are any of the droseras easier or harder than others? Some look a lot nicer than others, so if they are all as easy as each other, we might as well go for one of the nicer ones. If there's a difference, we'll start off with the easiest! Last time we tried a CP, we were told to use deionised water. Is that OK? I can collect rainwater, but I don't think I've got anything big enough to collect enough. As for the flies themselves, we had a big problem with them about a year or two back, and it turned out that I was watering my house plants too much. I cut down on the watering, and the problem went away. They are now quite dry, and only get watered when they beg me. This new fly problem doesn't seem related, as the plants themselves don't seem to have any more of them than anything else in the house. Also, I get them in my home office, and the only plant I have in here is a small cactus, which is as dry as, well, as a cactus! We have no idea where they are coming from, which is why we were looking at CPs, as they are more attractive than fly paper :) Thanks again to everyone.

Hello, I'm a total ignoramus when it comes to carnivorous plants, having only had one before, which (ironically) got infested with flies and had to be thrown out. I'm interested in keeping a carnivorous plant, but obviously am going to need something easy to start with. I live in Manchester, NW England, so don't get huge amounts of sunlight. Don't know if that's going to be a problem. We do get a lot of small black flies around the house, and we've never managed to find out where they come from. Apart from the interest in keeping carnivorous plants, I'm hoping to solve the fly problem as well! Don't know what other information is relevant, so please let me know and I'll try to answer. Any help welcome. Thanks.