Bug Biting Plants Terrarium Kit from Lowe's

I recently had a few conversations about these boxed carnivores on Instagram and a few places elsewhere online. It must be that time of year that the rest of the country is getting these in stores for spring. So, I was inspired to share my experience with them here as well. 

These are the dormant rhizomes in the "Bug Biting Plants" terrarium set sold (by Botanical Wonders  or Hanover Botanicals?) at most Lowe's stores. Last year I had picked one up to look and see if there was anything even alive in all the peat. We get them year round here, but the ones in this particular box looked good, fresh shipment good, like they were still trying so hard to survive.

Here's what these looked like when I picked them up last February, 2014, straight from the box. Small, but surprisingly healthy rhizomes for coming out of a sealed plastic bag.

I think I've passed by these boxed kits a million times over the years. Usually all you see is the brown of the packs of sphagnum  through the plastic boxes, but I could see the flower bud on the Sarracenia through the plastic and I was intrigued. I didn't already have the Sarracenia that comes in this kit. That's a good excuse to finally buy one, right? The package label leads one to believe it'll be a Sarracenia purpurea, but according to the internet and people that have grown these out, it's a Sarracenia rubra or rubra hybrid. The kit also comes with a little pack of long fibered sphagnum moss, and a little pot to grow your new rhizomes in.

"Terrarium Set" is a poor idea for growing these, as both the VFT and Sarracenia, (whatever species/hybrid the Sarracenia may be) are both temperate plants and need a dormancy. Not good candidates for a terrarium. You could grow them in a terrarium for a year or two, probably, without issue. That's assuming they are young enough and strong enough to forgo a year of dormancy, but eventually they will need to be given a cold dormancy period to rest. It's best to just put them outside in the first place and let them enjoy the sun, rain, and bugs.

I had decided to plant these traveling buddies up together. Last February I was short on space, and they were already friends, so why not. I mixed the sphagnum peat moss that came with the kit together with my own and mixed that with perlite, at about 1:1 ratio because I planted them in a larger pot than the one in the kit, (and therefore needed more than given.) Plus it's a good idea to use something mixed in to break up the peat, as it tends to compact over time by itself and that's a situation that encourages rot and smothered roots over time for species like S. rubra.

A couple weeks later and we had some solid growth. An encouraging start.

Different pot, but I promise the same plants. I ended up repotting them into an even taller pot.

Now, this February they look like something, despite still being dormant. The Sarracenia is a lovely shade of dark red, but certainly not the S. purpurea that's pictured on the side of the box. Definitely a Sarracenia rubra or rubra hybrid. Either way, I think we're ready for spring, and I need to repot again. Having all those pitchers still in decent condition should give it a great start as S. rubra is one of the few species that will bloom before it puts out any new spring leaves. It had already started two growth points by late last summer, so I can't wait to see how it grows this year after a good dormancy.

Bug Biting Plants terrarium set, almost exactly 1 year out of the box.

Have any of you all picked up this kit on a whim and grown the plants out? I would love to see what yours has grown to look like, so send me an email. Questions? Comments? Leave them below!

Edit/Update, Spring 2015:

It bloomed in March. The bloom is pretty red, so this very well may be S. rubra. Thoughts?

Here's how the plant looks in spring. Not as colorful yet, but this one definitely gets redder pitchers as the season progresses.

Better-Gro Bagged Orchids No Longer Sold At Lowes :(

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Florida? Seriously, it is the best for finding cool things in at regular, seemingly run of the mill garden centers. Many of this year's hauls came from Lowe's or The Home Depot. Unfortunately, I just read on Better-Gro's Facebook page, that Lowe's went with a different supplier for orchids and they won't be carrying Better-Gro bagged orchids anymore.

Although Better-Gro says they are working on "expanding their relationship" with Home Depot instead, I have only seen them show up in one store here that I haven't seen these orchids carried in the past. I'm kind of more upset than I thought I'd be about this. We went from an abundant supply of cool orchids all the time, to 2 Home Depots in the area carrying them. Sucks big time, and that's the nicest way I'll put that.

Cat inspection of a Lowe's haul at the old apartment

The following are Better-Gro orchids purchased this year only, well below average of my typical year's purchases of these orchids as I think the hiatus I took was the entire summer through fall, about 6 months? I'll apologize in advance, as the photos on this post have no theme, and some of them just aren't any good. I didn't take pictures specifically with this post in mind at the time so some are also iPhone photos. I just wanted to show you why I'm disappointed these won't be available at Lowe's anymore.

This "Bag Baby" orchid is C. Caribbean x lawrenceana. I couldn't find a single picture of the bloom on the internet, but it sounds like it might be a cool flower. It is an H&R cross, so maybe I'll email them for a picture to see if this is something I'm willing to grow out. I'm hoping the flower has that lawrenceana shape to it, but if nothing else we'll be surprised.

C. Caribbean x lawrenceana bagged Better-Gro orchid

This year I also picked up Myrmecophila tibicinis. Please excuse the Monster can. The photo was taken with something a friend would recognize for scale (LOL.) An entirely different purpose than showing it off here.

Myrmecophila (Schomburgkia) tibicinis

I'm also trying to rescue this Oncidium ampliatum. It looks like it had been sitting around a while, it's dehydrated. New roots are starting and it should recover nicely. I'll have a better picture of it in 2015.

Oncidium ampliatum

Encyclia steinbachii below (mislabeled steinbachiana, because it probably originally came from H&R and that's what they mislabel it as?) was in bad shape too, but it's turning around quick. Look at all them roots!

Encyclia steinbachii

Encyclia guadalupeae, in new-shipment-great-shape. Got this one 2 days ago at The Home Depot that just started carrying Better-Gro bagged orchids. HOORAY for this Home Depot!

Encyclia guadalupeae

I especially couldn't resist these species orchids for so cheap. These are all really great species, purchased for about $12.98 depending on the tax in the area I bought them.

Lately we've been making many, many, trips to Lowe's. There's one fairly close to to our new home, and we're re-painting, re-landscaping, and re-whatever-else needs-work here. People tell me that never stops when you own a home, so I guess Lowe's will be losing out on my money this coming year. I tend to agree to run errands to pick stuff up for the house under the guise of being helpful, but in reality I don't pass up an excuse to go see if they have any new bagged orchids. Oh well.

And yes, I realize with the internet and all of Florida's orchid shows, there is almost any orchid I want ever, shipped to my door, pretty much whenever. It just isn't the same as digging through the bags in the display at a local store. It's like a treasure hunt for adults, sorting through for cool species or hybrids to take home that day, in hand, for super cheap so there isn't even any guilt that I've spent too much of our money on plants again.

Edit: Update 2016. Occasionally I see these at Lowe's. With far less stock and far less frequency, so maybe it turned out to be a cut back, who knows. Still disappointed it's mostly unlabeled generic Phals, and the occasional unlabeled Vanda 90% of the time anymore :(

Spring Sarracenia 2014

The Sarracenia and Flytraps are all budded up, it's officially spring!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'. This is it's first flower for me, so I'm super excited to see it in all it's mutant glory!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' bud

Next up, but much further behind, is Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora Red Tube.

Sarracenia flava. var rubricorpora

This year we also have some new additions to the family. You know those "Bug Biting Plants terrarium set," sold in Lowes this time of year? More on this in another post. Well, I decided to buy one because I didn't have the Sarracenia in the kit already in my collection. The kit comes with a dormant rhizome of a flytrap (and despite what the package leads you to believe picture wise,) a Sarracenia rubra rhizome. According to the internet identifiers, it's S. rubra ssp. rubra, however AG3 just lists this as S. rubra, so I'll wait for a flower + mature plant to ID. There's also reports of a green flower, which means it may be a rubra hybrid or even a mutation.

I made this first pot with the original box I bought. The flytrap isn't much to see at the moment but the Sarracenia rubra has the tiniest little flower bud I have ever seen on a Sarracenia!

S. rubra

Isn't it cute, next to such a tiny pitcher?

Then, one of the Lowe's here had started putting the kits on sale already so I picked up a few more. Mostly because I'm a total nut, I decided to go back and buy all the kits on sale. I gave the flytraps away and made a big community pot of all the Sarracenia. They are all a bit light deprived and squiggly from trying to grow in a small sealed package.

S. rubra compot

There's a few buds in there.

My Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa may not flower this year. It had started to dehydrate for no apparent good reason, so I unpotted it to find some mold and some evidence of insects munching on it. I treated it for both and it's now growing again, but I don't expect flowers unfortunately. I decided to forgo flowers for the flytraps and cut them all off. A healthy flytrap can flower and make decent sized traps throughout the year, but I decided to try and do some stem propagation with the flower stems instead. I have never had much luck trying this in the past, so I'm trying it differently every year until something works and I can claim some skill in this area.

Happy Spring! Wishing you all a productive growing year!

Another Death Cube Carnivore!

I've been to Lowe's and Home Depot's a lot lately picking up things like timers and extension cords for the grow tent. A day before Valentine's Day, in with the pink Phalaenopsis and pink Bromeliads for the holiday was a big new shipment of Death Cube carnivorous plants. I'm not sure how that made sense, to have flytraps and pitcherplants in a Valentine's Day display, (unless we're talking metaphors here, but I doubt it in this context.) I am glad I took a minute to look through the boxes while I was there though.

Score! Happy Valentine's Day to me!

Both the Internet and Instagram seem to agree at this point that I've got a baby Nepenthes sanguinea.

I initially grabbed the box thinking it was something I already had and I'd be able to trade it or re-home it easily, but now I'm keeping it. The box's label on the back has "Nepenthes ventricosa," just like the one I got 2 summers ago, but when I opened it up and looked at it, it's clearly not. Botanical Wonders only sells so many species clones, so I guess there's no point on their end to label each one correctly for the mass market.

Be warned, if you decide to buy one of these, they have a minimal root system out of the box. This is my 3rd Death Cube Nepenthes and every one has looked like this picture below. I cleaned it up a bit before I took this picture, but it looks like they leave the taproot intact and cut off all the feeder roots to fit it in the pot.

Now it's repotted nicely, and ready to grow. Hopefully I'll have some nice orange, spotty pitchers in a few months when this little guy adjusts and gets some more roots out.

Updates on everything, including the growtent to come. My laptop, a red acer netbook died recently and I've been legitimately upset over it. They've stopped making them as the trend has been going to notebooks, iPads, and Chromebooks instead. I just wanted to replace it with another of the same, or fix it, and until I was positive neither was an option I didn't buy a new anything. RIP "Little Red," I feel like I should bury you out of respect for the years of excellent service and companionship, but I can't. I finally bought a new laptop, so once I get all my pictures organized again, I'll be posting more often.

Dendrobium spectabile: Awesome or Ugly?

If there's one thing I truly have enjoyed, growing plants over the years, it's time consuming botanical projects with little chance of success. Apparently Dendobium spectabile is it. Also, the flowers really couldn't look wackier. It's as if nature one day decided it really liked the look of an octopus and figured this orchid was a good place to replicate this look, making a monstrosity of a flower. I kind of need something like this, no?



I had gone to Lowe's for some pots when I decided to browse the indoor plant selection they carry here in Florida. I love see what kind of plant stock Lowe's and Home Depot carries now. It's pretty different from the selection NY gets, although just as terrible quality if left there more than a week. Just the fact that all these home improvement stores carry orchid specific supplies is pretty great, makes my life easier anyway.

Then there's the fact that I could come home with a banana plant, bird of paradise, or a citrus tree easily. I won't, though. I have less space here than I did in NY, (Isn't that a kick in the teeth?!?!) The weather is 10x better for growing most of the things I like to grow, but I found myself paring down the collection to give some away last week. It was severely disappointing that I couldn't take home the $12.98 Manihot esculenta 'Variegata' (variegated Tapioca) at Lowes yesterday. I just don't have the space to overwinter it indoors, it's supposed do fine outdoors in zone 10 and above, is zone 9a close enough? Probably not if I can't keep it in the ground.

There was a silver lining to the Tapioca Disappointment. A brand new shipment of those bag baby orchids from Better-Gro®/Sunbulb Co. Awwwww yeaaaaaa, out of all the common Cattleya and Oncidium hybrids.....Dendrobium spectabile! So I still didn't get out of there without spending $12.98 at the end of the day. I find that if you catch those shipments within the week they get there, those orchids are in decent-to-good shape. You always have to check the roots on these, so I ditched the old media, and repotted, (even though this is a bad time to repot this particular orchid, no new pseudobulbs throwing out fresh roots.) It had a surprisingly decent amount of good healthy roots, I should've taken a picture to capture the moment, (again, they must've just gotten a shipment in.)

Dendrobium spectabile from Lowe's (Better-Gro®/Sunbulb)

This species is reported to severely dislike repotting so I went with inorganic media (Hydroton) so I can wait until it outgrows the pot before I have to touch it again.

I previously had two recently deflasked Dendrobium spectabile 'Halcyon' x 'CAS' and babied them. This was a mistake. I lost one and figured the other wasn't far behind, so I put it in a terrarium and had a tendency to forget about it. It liked that. Since I've all but ignored my little seedling it's done better than it ever did. It's still tiny though, and has been growing slooooowly, so I'll be significantly older if I ever see it bloom.

Recently deflasked D. spectabile 'Halcyon' x 'CAS' seedling

As far as getting D. spectabile to bloom, the consensus seems to be stop fertilizing it in fall, and cut watering especially if it gets cold. So I'm adding this new one to my list of orchids I can practically ignore from Novermber through February. Dendrobium spectabile also has to get large, like a foot or three tall, before it blooms. Another complicated species orchid that people tend to have trouble with, a perfect addition!

A "Death Cube" seedling Nepenthes ventricosa

"Death Cubes" are an old term, (not really so relevant anymore) for the carnivorous plants the company Botanical Wonders used to supply to big box stores like Lowe's. Why the nickname? They we're literally sold in a sealed, plastic, square or rectangular box. Recently Botanical Wonders uses a thinner plastic box that's breathable, not nearly as bad for the plant, and probably much cheaper to produce so I wonder why they didn't do this sooner.

I wish I had pictures to show you guys but I had thrown out all my cubes long ago. I threw out the new style box I got this Nepenthes ventricosa in too, but it would be pretty worthless to show you without a comparison to the old style anyway. I had even asked a few people that had pictures of their Death Cubes online for permission to use the photos, but no one wanted to share. So you can always "Google it," and see some of the same photos anyway....

Here's what the N. ventricosa looked like after I got home and repotted it back in May. It had almost no root system so it's taken it a few months to get going. Then we had the mite outbreak and it got sprayed with systemic insecticide like everything else. No damage, but it sulked for a month before deciding to grow again.

Below is what it looks like today. Still quite small, leaves about the width of the plant tag, but much healthier. I repotted it again before I took it inside for the winter, and to check on the progress of it's root system. I'm happy to report a significant amount of root growth at least. The leaves are also much thicker, (a good thing.)

Temporary home with the orchids until I get my winter set-ups all organized

Awww, look, my 1st ventricosa pitcher. Despite it's lack of color, the size of it, (compared to the leaf size,) is a good sign that my ventricosa will do fine here. I always worry about Nepenthes that are so small, they're much hardier and tolerant of adverse conditions as adults. The pitchers all look similar on seedling Nepenthes no matter the species (for the most part.) As the plant matures each pitcher starts to look more and more like the species it is. This is my favorite part about starting off with such small specimens.

The pitcher is thin enough to see where the water level is, all self produced.

I'll probably still refer to these plants as being from Death Cubes, because they do still come in a plastic box, just not quite as sealed in and doomed to death without imminent purchase and re-pot as before. My Nepenthes 'Judith Finn' is a Death Cube plant from back in 2007(ish?) as well. I cannot remember for the life of me if my Sarracenia purpurea was from a Death Cube or not, but I highly suspect it was. (I'm not the best record keeper, but trying to get better.)

So many people pick up their first carnivorous plant at a Lowe's or a Home Depot from this company, the name may stick long past when people forget about how bad the original box was. I really hope so because "Death Cube" is one of my favorite nicknames for anything ever.

NOID Mini Phalaenopsis

While I'm waiting on some buds to bloom, I was going through pictures from this year and found some of this mini Phal that bloomed over the winter. For those of you that liked my husband's "dramatic," pictures of my plants, I came across these and figured I might as well put them up.

I like the very round shape and light purple-pink color of the flowers is interesting too, I thought the phal breeding trend was bolder brighter colors so I was expecting something different when it bloomed the 1st time 2 winters ago for me. I rescued this one from a Lowe's, out of bloom for $2. Mostly because the leaves are spotted and green/purple on top and red/purple on the undersides in high light. These pics while it was blooming we're taken during the winter when there's much less light here, so unfortunately you can't see it in the bloom pictures.

Close-up

Here's a picture below I took today where you can see the spotting. If you aren't familiar with the terminology, "NOID" is short for "no identification." However, I'd put money on Phalaenopsis schilleriana being one of the parent plants of this hybrid.

Spotty leaves with increased light levels

Parodia fusca?

I picked up this cactus at a Lowe's. Here, they are supplied by Altman Plants, (you may know them as the company who glues the dyed strawflowers onto their cacti to catch peoples eye and help cacti sell better.) This was one of those cacti. One nice thing about Altman is they label their cacti. Unfortunately, they aren't always correctly labeled. This one is sold under the name Rebutia krainziana. It's not even a Rebutia. After polling multiple sources and my own research, the conclusion is this is most likely Parodia fusca.

Bald spots and the beginning of more flower buds

I tried to remove the fake flower carefully, but ended up pulling out a few spines in the process. The flower was hot glued to the top of the plant, you can see everything above the ring of missing spines is new growth since I've had it.Eventually the injury will grow out and the cactus will look fine again.

Below was it's first flowering earlier in the spring. I like it anyway, I don't have many yellow flowering cacti so I'll keep it.

Flower = clearly not R. krainziana

If anyone has any other guesses or wants to help confirm or deny the current ID for the cactus Altman's sells as "Rebutia kainziana" please let me know. They all look like this too, I'm sure mine isn't a fluke or labeling switch as everyone's looks and flowers the same.