Thanks for the info. I live in California i want to know how to make it grow healthy and strong. Is there any special needs when living in the climate here? The box i got the seeds in came with a tiny pot and told me to loosely wrap it and then put it in the fridge. Is that what im really supposed to do?

hello im genaro

I live south of houston near galveston...what zone would i be in????....through dormancy what would my pitcher plan need???.....i would like it to be an inside one????
I'm sorry that im asking soo many questions but i'm a first timer of getting a pitcher plant i got it from lower can u tell me what exacly i need to do...thnx...

Sarracenia seeds need to have what is called a cold stratification. In a nutshell, they need to be kept cold and moist for ~1-2 months before attempting to germinate them. And as usual, there is more than one way to approach that. I did so by putting seeds in a plastic vial of water and having those vials in a bucket of water, in my cold attic for the winter. Others simply place seeds in a moist towel and wrap it, placing in the fridge.

Plantmaster:

Yeah cold stratification is required for Sarracenia seeds as petiolaris indicated. Their seeds coats are too thick to allow for germination until cold wet weather breaks down the coat. After cold stratifying for a month or two they will react to warm weather and being sprouting in a couple of weeks to months. You can sprinkle the seeds on the surface of the damp soil and place a cover on it to keep the water in, then place it in the refrigerator (not the freezer) for about 4-8 weeks. Keep an eye on them and spray with sulfur based or neem oil based fungicide if you see any fungus growing on them.

Genaro:

If you want an inside pitcher plant i would suggest getting a tropical plant like a Nepenthes (Asian Pitcher Plant) that would not require dormancy. If you get a Sarracenia, they will prefer full sun outside and need dormancy during winter when temperatures go below 45 degrees and light levels are short.

Your zone would be 9 as I live a few hours from there.

I also live in Zone 9 (Central Florida) and would be interested in growing some pitcher plants outside in a container. I have plenty of space to set out the container for full sun. I do wonder, though, if using a shallow bowl (no drainage holes) will allow mosquitos to breed along with the pitcher plants (not what I'm going after). I'm primarily intersted in plants in shades of purple. What kinds of pitcher plants would be suited to high humidity and heat?

Hello yakichan,

Any of the Sarracenias would be good for growing outside in pots in florida and the Sarracenia flava and Sarracenia minor both are native to Florida bogs anyway.

So far as watering, Sarracenias need a high amount of water, usually growers pot them in a regular pot with drainage holes and set the pot in a large tray with a couple of inches of water. Some pitcher plants (Purple Pitcher Plant) naturally collect mosquito larvae in the fluid in their pitchers to aid them in breaking down drowned insects. Those mosquitoes are not the blood sucking variety though, but the one's that would be attracted to the water in the tray might be the bad mosquitoes. In any case, you might just empty the tray when you notice mosquito larvae or use products for controlling mosquitoes without harming other life forms. There is a product I have heard of that you drop in water that does not harm plants, but kills mosquitoes. You might do a search for that kind of product.

The Hooded Pitcher Plant and Purple Pitcher plant both have purple in their leaves when grown in full sun as do some of the hybrid Sarracenias like the Judith Hindle, Dana's Delight, and Scarlet Belle.

Thanks mutanthybrid. I'm going to check out those cultivars. Maybe the frog population will help keep down the bloodsuckers too. Do I just pot up in sphag or a mix of sphag and sand?

Yakichan,

You can pot them in sphagum peat moss and drainage of either sand or perlite in a 50/50 mix with the moss. They like a lot of water, but also like well drained soil that draws air down to their roots when water trickles into the soil from rain or top watering.

There are always sundews to help control mosquitoes. You could get some Southern Dewthreads or Florida Giants (Drosera filiformis), a sundew that would do well since the Florida type grows naturally in florida anyways. Plant a few in pots around your Pitcher Plants and they would catch mosquitoes like crazy as they try to get to the water.

im about to get some of the n american pitchers and i use a water treatment in my hose which means salt as i add salt to my softner. is this bad or should i only collect rain water for these plants? they will be outside unless we get threatened with a freeze here in central fl, zone 10 but otherwise will the rain or lack of rain affect my plants?

Mitzil,
Definitely rain water is FAR prefered. You can save some in a rain barrel or something similar for drier times. Or purchase distilled water at a grocery store, though that gets expensive. You can use hose water in a pinch, but it is likely to be neutral to alkaline pH plus contain dissolved salts, which are the exact wrong conditions for carnivorous plants. If you do use tap water even occasionally, repot your plants at least annually to give them fresh uncontaminated growing medium.
-Don

Mitzi1956-2008:

Water softeners with salt added are a death sentence for carnivorous plants. Mineral salts, including regular table salts, can harm carnivorous plants when watering with such softened water. The soft water you need would have to be run through a reverse osmosis unit that uses carbon filters and deionization or distilled water processed by steam. Rain water is also much preferred where you can get it.

I have never had a pitcher plant but I thought one would be so cool in my pond. If I have to I will bring it in during the winter....Any suggestions? I live in Michigan.
In the next couple of years I am thinking of starting a bog garden.

Greensparty:You can try mulching them;They are very resilient plants and can survive heavy frosts if protected well :-D

Get a purple pitcher plant. Google it!

Or you can do what I do: put plants in portable containers, like buckets, creating a minibog. You can have them outside basically from April through November. Then move them to an attic or garage for the winter, by a window.

...that too... lol!

I'm a little stuck. I want to start growing pitcher plants myself, but I live in Fremont, CA, and I don't know if I have hard water or not. We have a filter, but I know that may not be enough. any idea on how to find out what type of water I have?

...also, is parts per million the same as milligrams per liter?

Sort of. One part per million is equivalent to 1 mg/kg. One liter of pure water weighs 1 kg at 4 �C but that will vary as the temperature of the water changes due to changes in density. So 1 mg of a single substance dissolved in a liter of pure water at 4 �C is equivalent to 1 ppm.

There are test kits available for testing for hard water. You can look at your shower heads or faucets for evidence of hard deposits which would confirm it without the need for testing. The use of a water softener might make those signs less evident however, and softened water is not any better for CPs.

Call your water company and ask. Here we get a water report once a year. Call your water company!

i just bought a purple pitcher from lowes. i heard your not supposed to use tap i have a ice cude dispenser and a water dispenser on my refidgerator. how should i water my purple pitcher and feed it. its monsoon seanson here in arizona and if i leave it out side it will prob. blow away help

Two kinds of pitcher plants. I am fond of nepenthes because of the fact that these larger pitchers are fascinating to everyone who sees them. Many people want to do the deed of feeding a plant bugs, or what ever. This is kind of difficult for sarracenias whose beauty is just to admire it. Of course they are great fly-catchers,and d=add some color. The real carnivorous beauty is with nepenthes whose non-temperate seasonal growths make larger and bigger pitchers with each new growth (this is true especially if they are FERTILIZED through the roots). They grow into continuous growth form where they vine, flower and make different upper pitchers which are more effective insect traps as these green pitchers lure flying insects by way of UV light produced pathways to it's traps.
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Colorations of some of the hybrids are just mind-boggling. Like some exotic tropical fish.
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Many nepenthes can grow well in many well lit household conditions, but do their best when grown outdoors in areas of good light, air circulation, and of course natural capacity to capture prey.
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Hey RainforestGuy, are all of these pixs you've posted from your greenhouse?

I don't have a greenhouse. All of my plants are grown outdoors in natural elements. Greenhouses are for tender stuff like african violets and orchids. Nepenthes are tough leathery weeds that know how to manipulate their environment.
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This used to be my succulent garden where I grew lots of echeverias, but after dealing with one too many slugs, I gave up on them. Nepenthes aren't only a slug deterant plant, they even eat them too!
they are the Kings of Carnivorous plants! That is why they have been around for so many millions of years. They are found on islands, continents where the theories of plate tectonics all originated from the same species when all the islands were connected as as single continent. Amazingly they have retained the ability to capture prey, or evolved to capture feces, fruits and other food materials with their pitchers. This is why they are so widespread over areas from the Seychelles to India and Australia, the Philippines, Borneo, Malaysia, and so on.
They are continually evolving even as we speak and as the climate changes again, just another short chapter in their existence, they will overcome and adapt and expand.

but do you live in a humid environment? or are your plants just troopers? My ventricosa outside isn't pitchering, my guess is that it isn't getting good enough light. since I just fertilized it a week ago.

Rainforestguy, where do you live? I live in california (zone 8) and I always thought it would be cool to grow beutiful nepenthes. I had a couple ventricosa as a young child, but I treated them wrongly and gave up. Do you think nepenthes can do well through my mild winters if I protect them from frost?

Yes, N. khasiana would do fairly great even without protection (though I'd give it protection anyways, to be on the safe side). Here in Utah it gets down to zero farenheit in winter, so I bring my neps inside.

For zone 8 what are the winters like? How long are the winters and how hot are the summers? California is a vast area, SF is cold and you can grow highlanders easily even indoors. While Los Angeles is fluctuative and may need to range your plants to match the environment.

My microclimate is fairly unpredictable, I am 35 miles south of san fransisco. Though I don't have a humidometer outside, I am pretty sure humidity is usually betw 10-20% during summer and about 60% in the winter. Winter kind of comes and goes as in january we had a drought for 2 weeks where it got to 80 degrees, but the lowest it ever gets to is 28 degrees farenheight, and the next day it would be like 50-60 degrees in the sun. The summers get to 100 a couple days most years but this year it has been about 80 most of the summer, only getting to 90 a few days, but we had a really cold spring and the rainiest june Ive ever seen, which was more rain than january. I think that it would be more suited for many highlanders with the cold nights in the summer (down into the 60s) and I can bring them inside just I don't have anywhere with good enough light for them to grow. I can also spray them with water every day if that would let me grow some nicer species. Sorry for the long message I type really fast and just let my mind unravel sometimes.

PS. the climate is pretty different than san francisco because SF has the fog which makes it cold as well as more humid. Here we only get several foggy days a year. I don't know exactly what causes it but usually only in summer. We have only had about 2 foggy days this year, hopefully alot more later.

sounds like Utah, except for the snow we get in the winter.

Yea I kind of thought of utah as like california but colder in the winter and no occasional fog. Also higher elevation makes it a different kind of environment.

we get fog here, but only around once a year. My neps outside are doing great, just make sure to mist them often, I've foung that hosing them down every evening helps.

does the fog come in from the sky? or rise out of the ground? I have never seen the kind that comes out of the ground. Here it comes out from the ocean as the air inland cools overnight, lowering pressure, pulling the air in from the ocean, and it has to travel over a few miles of 2000 foot mountains before reaching my house.

Ours comes straight out of the ground, usually after a frost when the sun comes out and starts to melt it all, though awhile back we had it for three straight days; it was so foggy one could only see for 50 feet.

Wow! how tall is the fog? I thought I was told it was only a few feet tall when it comes out of the ground. Here it is thousands of feet thick. Sometimes it is so dense you drive on a road and you don't even see car lights until like 30 feet away. And the road where it usually happens is really curvy and dangerous.

it is usually around 100-200 feet, though it can be taller occasionaly. it happens much more often in the mountains.

Wow. That's cool.

Hi I have a pitcher plant and all of the pitchers have turned brown so I took them off. It now has only 4 left and they are about a 1/4 brown at the top. The plant is growing and seems to be doing very well, it's just the pitchers. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Is it a Nepenthes or a Sarracenia? A photo would also help.

I think it is a nepenthes and I have attached a couple photos. I actually have 6 pitchers left. Please help. Thank you

Yup, it's a Nepenthes! It looks in very good shape to me. Keep it in bright, indirect Sun. Use rainwater or distilled water and keep it moist at all times. Never let it dry out.

Thank you for your help, I am just wondering why all the pitchers are browning at the tops and if they all go brown how will it get all the things it needs if it doesn't feed on bugs?

Pitchers do not last forever. They are just modified leaves and leaves die eventually and new ones form. When pitchers get too ugly to look at for you just cut them off at the leaf tip. Also, Carnivorous plants get most of their energy and food from light. Bugs are fertilizer. This time of year don't worry about it. In the spring you can lightly mist the leaves with a 1/4 strength solution of orchid fertilizer.

Thank you - you are a doll, hope you don't mind me saying that. One more thing if you have a moment, it has grown quite a bit in the last few months so I was thinking of replanting it, do you think that's a good thing to do?

Well, I'll take the doll comment any time! I don't get that too often so Thanks! I would wait to re-pot. It's probably o.k. for now. When you do re-pot use a 50/50 mix of peat moss and perlite and a handful or 2 of orchid bark. Do NOT use anything by Miracle Grow as they put fertilizer in everything they make except their organic mix.

Thank you so, so much for all your help. I have been trying to fill my house with cool looking plants. I live in B.C. Canada in a small little town in the mountains and the grocery store closest to me continually gets some unusual plants. I want to keep them alive, I truly appreciate your help. We have a lot of snow so maybe I will just let the snow melt and use that to water. I have been just using tap water but the water here is very pure. What do you think doll?

STOP using tap water and go buy some distilled until you can build up a rainwater supply. Tap water could kill the plant.

I have the exact same pitcher plant as concetta. A ventrata right. I live in layton utah a suburb of salt lake city. I am a zone 7b. Does my climate allow me to grow my nepenthes outside in summer. It's dry and hot in the summers. I was also wondering if I could grow Sarracenia x Judith Hindle outside year round. Thank you I hope you respond. :)

ALL Sarracenia (and Flytraps) Belong outside during the growing season. If it gets too cold where you are in the winter they HAVE to be put somewhere

where the temps will get no lower than around 35 F.

Your Ventrata can go outside for the summer in a bright shaded area. DO NOT let it dry out. ALWAYS keep it moist.

I'd recommend anyone living in zone 9 or higher, if you grow your plants outside, at least spray the growing pitchers with distilled water from time to time or at least everyday. Whichever works most.