Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 01:12:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Hans Johnson <sileshar@yahoo.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg2561$foo@default> Subject: Confessions of a CP Grower
Dear one and all,
The year was 1965 and they were selling Venus Flytraps at the local
grocery store in central New Jersey. Well, what ten-year-old boy could
resist? It came with a ready-made terrarium much like the pint-sized
squarish containers they sell blueberries and cherry tomatoes in today.
Inside was dry peat moss with growing instructions and a pitiful-
looking rhizome. It looked to me like a miniature mesa such as El Capitan
at Yosemite National Park (of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" fame).
It grew well for some months, but we went on a two-week camping trip
to New England, and I came home to find it bone-dry on the sunny window-
sill I'd left it on. Not even knowing the word "perennial" I assumed it
was
dead as a doornail.
Hardly a year would go by without my picking up another VF. They
began appearing in those 3" pots with plastic covers, along with Drosera
rotundifolia, Darlingtonia, and Sarracenia purpurea. I successfully killed
these through the '70's.
Eventually I grew cp in cut-up two-liter soda bottles. Back then they
came with their own shallow "pots" on the bottom that only had to be
heated to loosen the wax holding it together. These mini-terrariums worked
well for windowsills. (I thought I was the only one doing this till I saw
it demonstrated on several gardening TV shows.)
Soon Drosera became my favorite genus. Once a capensis filled a 7"
bowl, and when I left it out one foggy night, the size of the dewdrops on
each gland was a sight to behold!
When Adrian Slack's "Insect-Eating Plants and How To Grow Them" first
appeared at the library - well, it was like winning a lottery! I must have
checked it out a hundred times.
Then in '94 I finally began to roam the internet. How lucky you new
cp growers are to have such great advice on this listserve alone! From
Barry Meyers-Rice, to Fernando Rividavia Lopes, to every shorter name in
between, I've learned to grow more live plants than dead ones!
I have more than 300 cp outside and on windowsills, and hope to one
day have a representative from all Drosera species (Oh, yes I will!). I'm
looking forward to learning more about about these plants we love.
Grow well!
Hans Johnson
Doylestown, Bucks
County
SE Pennsylvania
Yahoo! Mail -- Free email you can access from anywhere!
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