Hi, rina. I know wood chips are different than bark, but I saw a nursery that was using these mixed with some alder saw dust. In about a year it turned to this incredible black, rich "soil". The guy as the nursery said it breaks down better and more nutritious for the soil and depletes less nitrogen in the process. The wood chips I was seeking are about the size of medium bark in nurseries. In retrospect, I am glad I didn't try that. Works great outdoors, not sure about containers! The black bark is essentially composted evergreen tree bark. I say evergreen because it could be a mix of a number of different types here in the Pacific NW --- hemlock, fir, ceder, spruce, etc. I didn't screen it, it seemed plenty loose initially; small to medium size in comparison to bagged nursery store bark. It would have been o.k. had I added the peat and perlite per the formulas given here. Screening would have left just the larger pieces, but that would be quite a chore for the volume I was using! I repotted some of the plants using the 5:1:1 formula with my black bark and those are doing much, much, better. A gardening friend said "Think of it...bark is like big saw dust. If you pack it down it gets as hard as a board". That is essentially what happened when I used the black bark alone without the the perlite and moss. ;(

I kind of disagree with you not researching it first on text material like books. Since a book can provide a wealth of information, inquiring a person will give you limited information. Its simply too much for one person to type. The reason there are books out there, and one of the best is the Peter DÂAmatoÂs book: The Savage Garden. Amazon.com will sell books at a discount price, but you can find that book in a pubic library if you donÂt want to pay say $20 or $30 for it. It usually best to research what you want to buy before buying it 1st then asking questions later. To many a newbie have killed their plants right off the bat by adding fertilizer, planting them in regular potting soil and watering them with tap water. Or simply sending them into an irrecoverable shock by exposing them suddenly to drier air, under the sun, without hardening the plants 1st. As a result more then one newbie have wasted $2 or $5 when some purchase their plants in a general store or nursery. But others have wasted $25, $50, and even $100 worth of plants they bought from a specialized nursery. The idea people go to forum to inquire to a particular problem like a pest problem and want to find someone how they handled that problem or learn what done wrong if a plant fails to grow. So if you donÂt want to research it yourself, people will think you will be to lazy to do you own work yourself and will eventually kill their newly purchased plants anyways. Now I donÂt now which pitcher plant you fed bugs and how small these insects are? Since the plants themselves sold by Lowes are quite small and lacking the digestive fluids inside their pitchers. Most likely whatÂs going to happen is the bugs are going to rot and kill the leaves. Sundews and butterwort (P. primuliflora) donÂt have catching appendage, since it is the leaves itself that does the catching. The leaves of sundews are covered with hairs and has a "dew" drop on each hair. Butterworts on the other hand their leaf surface is covered with sticky mucilage. DonÂt feed the plants, they can do that themselves. DonÂt try feeding the Venus flytrap, even if it grows new traps, it will be too weak to digest the insect. Digesting an insect takes a lot of reserve energy before it can utilize it. It may take up to a month or 2 for a VFT to recover. Now your "Should they be fed into the soil like a regular plant?", are you referring to adding fertilizer to the soil. If so DONÂT. That is a common mistake made by newbies trying to grow their 1st CPs, adding fertilizer to the growing media. Fertilizer will kill your plants, CP have a weak root system, and is mainly used to anchor the plant to the media and draw out moisture, and thatÂs it. Fertilizer will destroy that root system and eventually kill your plants. That also means not to use regular potting soil, even if part of the ingredients contains sphagnum peat moss and perlite. It also has other things like fertilizer and wetting agents. What you need is pure sphagnum peat moss and perlite to aerate the media, nothing else. Make sure it doesnÂt have any additives at all. You mix it up in a 50:50 mix. This is the true and tried growing media for most CPs. Sit the VFT, sundews, Sarracenia pitcher plants (the purple pitcher plant) in a dish with 1 inch of water. The butterwort P. primuliflora in my experience does well growing in straight long fiber sphagnum moss and likes its media quite wet. Nepenthes only require having their media most and not as wet as other CPs. Nepenthes will require a mix of long fiber sphagnum moss used for orchids, again make sure no additives and you can mix it with one part perlite and one part fine orchid bark. They like their media most but with enough drainage for their roots. Use distilled water to water them, donÂt use for any reason tap water, purified water, or drinking water. These still contain minerals that will eventually kill your plants. Second choice is rainwater collected in a bucket, followed with R/O water but distilled is still the best choice. For now have them growing in a wind sill from indirect sunlight in their own Âterrariums (aka the cubes-of-death by the CP community), lift one corner slightly to allow ventilation, checking for drooping or wilting leaves. Be careful not to let the media dry out. In a weak lift one corner a bit more, again checking for wilting and do this slowly. This way you can harden your plants to a drier environment and give the plants time to build the natural wax coating over their leaves that protects them from drier air. As they develop new leaves, gently expose the Sarracenias and VFT to stronger sunlight, keeping an eye on wilting or sings of burning leaves. Control the amount of sunlight to allow them time to harden. Although the sundew will recover the quickest, followed by VFT & Sarracenias. Neps may take 4 months to develop new leaves and even then it will not develop new pitchers. They are known to take about half a year to recover. Nepenthes, butterwort, and the sundew will do best growing under indirect sunlight or under very bright fluorescent lamps. Nepenthes especially require at least 12 hours of bright light to grow their pitchers properly, Neps are tropical plants that do receive long hours of light. That basically covers the basics but it is better to you research things 1st and read books for information to avoid mistakes in the 1st place. Good luck.

Hello bob123how, Your doing fine with hardening them off. That was a good idea to punch holes a few at a time in the "cube of death." In any event, just water them, leave them in good light, and leave them alone for days at a time. You will be surprised at how well plants do when people aren't hovering over them all the time. You don't really need to suck the air out of the cube. Just punch the holes and make them bigger over time and more numerous until you can safely remove the dome like you did. Hubert sounds like he will be O.K. He just needs a couple of weeks to recover. His new leaves should dew normally. In any case, it is good light, not humidity, that allows a sundew to produce glue on its tentacles. Do not worry about insects to feed your plants yet. They can and will live for a long time without prey. Just let them recover for a few weeks first. D. adleae can and will catch a lot of gnats, mosquitoes, and fruit flies on their own. If they do not catch anything for a month, you can place them a few feet from a patio light when it gets dark and they will catch plenty of insects that blunder into their leaves. Just don't leave them out there for too long or they might overeat. One or two small insects a month is sufficient for carnivorous plants. Light, mineral free water, acid soil, good drainage, and normal room temperatures around 75 degrees fahrenheit are the first considerations to growing carnivorous plants. They are just like normal plants, just specialized to catch their fertilizer while it is still alive. Never fertilize the soil of your plants, their roots will burn and rot. One other thing, now that you have two D. adelae, I hope you bought a lot of pots and have a lot of space. They reproduce themselves by root runs, so every few months you will see several plantlets growing around the parent. The parent plants only live a couple of years, but their offspring grow fast and continue the cycle over and over again like rabbits multiplying. My D. adelae produced 10 new plants that are mostly half grown in only a few months time. The adult plants will flower, but produce no seed as they are all clones that need cross pollination with genetically different plants. After flowering, an old adult plant will die slowly as it produces new clones of itself from it's roots. These plants are actually considered a weed due to their prolific growth patterns. You can chop an entire plant back and you will get six more just like it in a month or two sprouting from the old roots. Just one Lance Leaf Sundew became 10 new plants in under 4 months.

stillinwisconsin, If your bulb grows well that orchid pot is going to be overwhelmed with roots in short order. Yay for you! Please don't hesitate to up-pot. I've had happy amaryllies that were planted in pots with an extra 1.5" of radius (and I never use less than 1", preferring to err on the side of extra space, even up to 2"; the plants always fill the pots and it gives space for the bulb to expand and the offsets - baby bulbs - to have room), and by the end of the summer there were so many roots that they were actually crawling out of the pot. They could've used a LOT more pot space. Just read your plant. Don't even get some of our members started on what's necessary to force bloom, hah, or if you even should. Forcing isn't strictly necessary, and some bulbs don't like forced dormancy at all (genetics, sigh; my Picotee just wants to be left to grow whenever she feels like it, which isn't always on what I think of as a seasonal schedule, whereas the rest are pretty tolerant). There are other options than the forcing regime. But that's for another thread.