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.

If you visit the U.P. go to Lac la Belle (near Copper Harbor). I was there last summer. There is a great fen on the northeast corner of the lake where you'll find Sarracenia purpurea. Then drive around the lake to Bette Gris. On one side of the road are nearly pristene bogs with D. intermedia and on the lake side are D. rotundifolia, practically hanging in the lake. Finally visit deer lake (down a one lane dirt road) and you'll find at least 2 species of Utricularia!

My fledgling pingicula 'pingy' as my girlfriend has affectionately named him, has eaten a truly heroic number of fungus gnats. back when he was half the size he is now, roughly an inch and a half across, he was in a tank with a baby nepenthe that had some gnats on it. by the time i'd realized this, i figured they were both doomed, their tender roots as good as eaten. then i noticed the gnats didn't seem to swarm his pot like they did the nepenthe, and they also seemed to get stuck on his dewy leaves. by the dozens at first and then, after a few weeks, it looked as if someone had ground a pepper mill over him for at least half a minute! i decided to push the pots together, so the gnats could migrate to the newer soils and they did! within a few days i noticed their numbers down and pingy growing steadily and flush with vibrant green dewy leaves. there's hardly a dozen gnats on the nepenthe now if any, and now that the winter set in, i'm sure they've all buggered off. i realized it was a risky proposition, but i figured they were already infested and it couldn't have hurt. very pleased with pingy, the pingicula. gnats aren't though. heh.

Unfortunately, rain isn't a friend of homeowners who live in close proximity to beautiful streams, etc. When there aren't storms, it is a beautiful setting, but when we get heavy rain, it's been a huge problem. Over-building in a formerly farmland-type area has left little in the way of "buffers" that has protected us from this kind of flooding (have been here 25 yrs.), and it has only been in the last couple of years that we've encountered this level of flooding when a nor'easter blows through. I get that everyone wants to live in a rural area, but once the developers buy loads of acreage on which to build custom McMansions with substantial sized lots, along with many nice sized housing "developments", the former attraction is really lost. Watching the weather closely, I know we are in for alot of rain here in the Mid-Atlantic. While we thought Irene was awful, this storm is alot different, and will inflict much more flooding. joshuasamah, ugh, that picture makes me ill. I have a very good friend who lives on SI. She a child with serious healthcare needs which require being able to access medical equipment in her home. Going to a shelter would be a nightmare for her family. Don't get me wrong, the fact that there are shelters for the displaced are a lifesaver, but when you have to deal with having a child with a need for medical equipment, it is really tough. We've moved everything possible to our 2nd floor. Irene flooded us badly, but it didn't flood our first floor. Realistically, we are unlikely to escape that luxury with Sandy. Oh, and to make things a bit more complicated, my closest neighbor has decided it's been fun to watch 3 beavers build a dam and lodge on her property. What she and her DH don't realize, is that her entertainment has the propensity to put us in a bigger quandry than we are already. Another story for a different thread, lol. Everyone please stay safe!