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Down Memory Lane

Let's take a trip down memory lane. How did all of you get started in this strange hobby?

I was in sixth grade when my science teacher told us we had a science project. We were supposed to grow some plants and see what kinds of enviromental factors affected their growth. I went home and typed flytrap into google. After several hours I came upon a nursery that delivered by mail. A week later I have four ventricosa. And a flytrap. The ventricosa were for my experiment. I threw them on my windowsill and stared. They grew well and pitchered on every leaf. The flytrap even got nice red traps. At the end of the school year I had an A on the project. I had given away the flytrap and had on ventricosa making uppers. I gave away the three of my ventricosa to my friend who gave me a capensis and minor. He was growing carnivorous plants for the science project too. Two years later and I'm growing plans I've never dreamed of and have become a plant freak.

So, what's your story?
 
Well, my first experience was a long time ago when i lived in Florida still, maybe when I was ten or eleven years old. We went to the zoo and they had many carnivorous plants for sale in a special exhibit. I was intrigued and my mom generously bought me one of each kind: a VFT, a sundew (filiformis), and a nepenthes (probably a ventricosa hybrid). Anyway, due to neglect and lack of information, I killed them all quite handily and forgot about them for years.

Then in August of 2007, my mom got me 3 pots of Target VFTs for my birthday. My interest rekindled immediately, and by scouring the internet and getting help from many people here on Terra Forums I was able to get completely sucked in to this awesome hobby. Since then, I don't think I've gone more than 2 months without making a plant purchase.
 
It was my birthday, and i was texting my friend. In the car, I remember asking my mom, can I get a flytrap? Then my parents both said yes. My friend texted me again, and she said that she had one before and she got it at Stater Bros. Since we were near a staters bro. i went down and was utterly disappointed as they didn't have any.

Then when I got home, I immediately looked online for a venus flytrap. Then I went to Amazon and typed it in. Immediately I saw some for sale by ... My dad and I had trouble choosing, the akai ryu, or the typical. My dad went all asian on me, and got the cheaper one xP. (The Typical was on sale. lol) So, I found Barry-Rice's FAQ, and read the whole thing under 'Flytraps'. I was educated and my dad said, *-No, No Poing soi' verri goo' u'e it.-* From his thick accent, translates into *-No No Potting Soil Very good, use it-* Then I refused. I kept moving it, rinsed the soil because it wasnt planted deeply inside. Then I used a tray, and everything was good. Later, I went to the swapmeet, and bought a Sarracenia x'Judith Hindle' and everything went crazy for me. :) I kept buying from Lowe's, in the Death Cubes and now, I have an order from andy. :)
I don't regret.
 
lets see here...

I think it was my grandma who got me started way back when. I for a flytrap every year for my birthday, and every year i killed it up until my big 1-0. Fast forward waaay too many hours, days, and years even spent scouring the interent, spending $1000s on plants, and being OCD about my precious babies, buying a greenhouse, becoming the family "plant guy" and thats pretty much where i am now!
 
I have an old hippy uncle (most of my family is old hippies) but this one guy is plant nut, and he always had terrariums with various plants and experiments going on in jars. One day when I was kid he showed me a Nepenthes he'd just received from a nursery and it was the coolest thing I ever saw.

Years went by and I forgot about his cool plants and I got interested in growing aquatic plants in Japanese style aquariums (filtration done by lots of plants aesthetically placed with very few fish) I had about 10 planted tanks of assorted sizes. I started thinking about having a reef tank set up specifically for inverts so I bought all kinds of lights (dual 400 watt remote MH) and filtration equipment, all ready to start cycling the emptied 75 gallon planted tank then my job suddenly laid off everyone on second shift (1/2 the entire workforce) to pay for the new 6 color press they'd just bought.... There went my reef keeping hobby.

I sold all my reef filtration equipment (the MH lights came in handy later) and at the same time somehow came upon a copy of Savage Garden. I started collecting CPs like sundews and Sarrs and VFTs from local nurseries putting them in the empty reef tank. I saw that plant nut uncle at some point early on around 2000 / 2001 at a holiday dinner of some sort and he gave me a cutting of that old Nep he`d showed me years earlier. He could never get it to pitcher in a window but it did great in my terrarium. It turned out to be an N. Ventrata and that free, generic, pitcherless cutting made Neps my whole focus. After a while I had a huge terrarium in every room of my condo. A converted showerstall in the dining room for lowlanders, another showerstall sized terarrium in one bedroom hooked up to window with a fan & humdifier hooked to humidistat to supply cold/wet air for highlanders and the intermediate 75 gallon terraium for cuttings and miscellaneous plants in the other bedroom. It was total Nep madness here for a number of years. IIRC I had about 60-70 species of varying ages. Then my dad got sick at the end of 2006 and I spent 99% of my time out of work at the hospital so I sold / gave away all my Neps and orchids so they wouldn't die of neglect.

I only have one small 4" N. rafflesiana in my anole terrarium nowadays! lol!
 
Back in March of last year i was looking at VFT's an thinking what the hell i will buy one . so the next day i drove around for 6 hours looking for nursery's that would have them or sell them . didn't find one an on my way back home i saw a sign Family Tree Nursery , so i went in got two VFT"s an left i had to stop by Lowe's on the way home because i was looking for a Palm tree AND THERE IT WAS RAYS OF SUN SHINE GLITZING OF THE SMALL PITCHERS ::) sorry caught in a moment lol .
any how i ended up buying it along with a sundew D. Adelae .i got home an started looking up Tropical Pitcher plants an to my amazement i was shocked at what i seen . so two days later i went back to the Family Tree Nursery an asked if they could get some Nepenthes in. another shock they said Sure we can but it wouldn't be till May (set back ) . so in the the meantime they had a mini bog of some sarraceinas Score $30.00 for like 8 plants .so finally They call me on the last week of May an they had a N. Ventrata . and this is how i got started .


Daren
 
Lets see..almost.2 monthes ago me and Dustin were doing a trade on Garden Web and i told him that he should join Daves Garden and he told me that he belonged to some forums i didnt know about, one which was Terraforums...And from there on it was simple...SirKristoff sold me my first cps.....and now as Carnivoure12 puts it OBSESSION....So this means that my Obsession for carnivores is all Dustins fault...-_-......
 
I was in elementary school ~1970 and got one of those little plastic greenhouse/terrariums with plants from the notorious CP nursery that will go unnamed. Knowing nothing and certainly not getting any help from the nursery, I put it in the hottest, sunniest window. Now I wonder whether the plants roasted in there before the rot set in or if said nursery had sent me rotten plants to begin with. I killed a couple more CPs over the years and then, close to 30 years after my first try, I traded some orchids for a Ceph & S. leucophylla. With internet access now and lots of helpful people offering advice, I've learned how to grow CPs without killing too many more plants.
 
I was 14 or 15 visiting a dear (now passed on due to Lou Gehrig's disease) family friend in Spring Hill, Fl. I'd wanted a VFT for a long time (because they were so cool! LOL), but couldn't find one.

She took me down to a Franks craft and nursery store in New Port Richey and got me my first VFT. That was before the cubes of death back when they used upturned transparent dixie cups for domes. LOL
 
  • #10
last year, well... not last year anymore. well by the end of 2007, i bought a VFT at a local hardware store. i noticed it was dying, so i searched the internet, and found barry rice's page, emailed him, he replied back and i got alot of info, the plant eventually died because of an "accident".i joined terraforum, then i ordered a couple more from flytrapshop, it was winter, so they were dormant, it still looked alot better than the one i got from the local hardware store though. then i started buying stuff from a bunch of online vendors, flytrapshop being one of them. and after a year, spending like 80$(shipping not included). i got my small collection. i wanted more plants, but i couldnt trade any of mine because they are mostly too small to divide or do cuttings, so i'll either save up more money, or wait (for my plant to make divisions or for generous people).
 
  • #11
I have an old hippy uncle (most of my family is old hippies)

:rookwoot: :)


I know I had (translate: killed) a flytrap or two when I was kid. I kept them in my dinosaur barn. (That comment is for Dandy and Ozzy). And of course I fed it hamburger as the instructions said.

I can't even remember how I got into growing them as an adult. I've always been a planty person so I think I just wanted to get another one and try again. I started out on the infamous Garden Web which became the catalyst for the original PFT discussion boards to form. Once "over here", the number and variety of CPs multiplied. :)
 
  • #12
CP's are the "think outside the box" type of hobby. They baffled most people who were given the little kits, back before the Internet. We have all killed them, due to using tap water, keeping them covered, feeding them hamburger, or not providing enough light. I killed a lot of VFT's and pitcher plants through the years... but back in 2003 I saw an array of VFT's at my local Home Depot and just couldn't pass up another try. But this time I vowed to keep it alive for more than a few months. So I found books at Borders and Barnes & Noble and then I learned that I was doing just about everything wrong. I bought more plants at Lowes, but wanted to know what I was buying, genus and species name. The books were helpful but the pictures weren't terribly conclusive. Too many pitcher plants and butterworts and sundews looked way too much alike. So I began doing an Internet search to hone down on what I had.That led me to stumble upon a few discussion forums for CP's. I had no idea that discussion forums even existed, much less for carnivorous plants. There were people from all over the world bringing their collective knowledge and I really got a good education from them.
 
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