Guide: Keeping Your Plant Alive

Description

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Someone gave you a Venus flytrap. You watered it, put it somewhere nice, maybe fed it a scrap of meat to see what would happen. In three months it will be dead, and you won’t know why.

Carnivorous plants have the wrong reputation. They aren’t difficult — they’re counter-intuitive. No fertilizer. No potting soil. No tap water. No dim corner of the living room. Every one of those instincts, perfectly sensible for any other houseplant, kills one of these within months.

This guide covers your first year, from the day you buy the plant to its first winter.

Inside

Water — the number one cause of death, and the most invisible. What you can use, what you must never use, and the twenty-dollar device that settles the question for good

Light — recognizing etiolation, and what to do from November to February in Canada

The medium — the absolute rule, a mix that works for almost everything, and the trap of bagged “carnivorous plant soil”

Day-to-day watering — the tray method, and the species it doesn’t apply to

Choosing your first plant — the three best to begin with, and five to avoid entirely in year one

Where to buy — and why sealed plastic domes in big-box stores are the worst possible start
The first days, repotting, flowering, feeding, and the arrival of winter

A quick diagnosis table and a first-year calendar

The page people photograph: the eight myths. No, they don’t need to live under glass. No, you shouldn’t feed them. No, a blackening trap isn’t sick. And no, they don’t only live a few months — a well-treated pitcher plant lives for decades.

Illustrated with photographs: what a light-starved plant looks like, mineral burn, a repotting, a plant in full health.

Where to go next, if you catch the bug: two subjects deserve a guide of their own and are covered separately — peat-free growing media, and overwintering in a cold climate