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The dumbest thing I have ever done..... To a CP

Thought this would make an interesting topic to start. We are all mortal here and have made our fair share of mistakes when it comes to our dearly beloved carnivorous plants. This idea came to mind a few nights ago in the chat box.

Without further ado, my dumbest thing I have ever done to a CP.

When I was 16, I bought the typical death cube VFT at the local Lowes Home Improvement store in the month of July. Upon getting home, I learned that VFT's really need bright direct light. So I put my brand new VFT outside on my roof top to get the bright sunlight it needed. Mistake? Yup. Never stopped to think that the death cube was to be turned into a solar death ray, steaming my beloved VFT in less than an hour. The VFT was completely limp and dead when I checked on it. The good thing about this, it spurred me to really research CP's and get me to where I am now.

Let's hear your sad tale of lessons learned.
 
Uhhh, once I flew a mini RC helicopter into a flytrap, julienned it...
 
I once dropped a large sarr off of my balcony... the pot shattered and the sarr is no longer with me.
 
I put about 6 of my plants into a mini greenhouse a few years ago, thinking it would keep humidity up and give the plants better light. One problem: I live in Colorado, the temperatures outside were 80 degrees as it was, and the greenhouse was on my deck in full sun. Every single plant got steamed through the pot and not a one made it. Now the replacements live outside, but in a pool and without covering.
 
lol good thread XD

I don't have any real good ones as I watched friends kill CPs before i decided to have at it but i did snap quite a few pitchers off over the years. never feels any less crappy
 
Just today I crushed a pitcher on my paisan truncata...
 
Great idea for a thread, I've done a few things...

Many times, I have crushed my H. heterodoxa pitcher that have been forming or just formed. I did this either by bringing the pot too close to the top of the terra when taking it out, hitting them with my camera, my hand, and knocking the pot over onto another pot. :p

And in 2012, I made a reaaaallly bad terrarium with a thin piece of plexiglass on top, and my cat stepped on it, which made it cave in, destroying my heli's inside.

I have knocked over several plants.

And recently, I re-potted all of my Drosera into a mix I realize they don't like as much, and it took my several hours to get the soil prepared and re-pot the plants. Waste of timeeeee!

Last thing: When I first tried growing a ceph, I had it sitting in 3 inches of water. :p
 
One day I bought and N. ventricosa from Home Depot and never stopped . . .
 
  • #10
um i ordered n inermis and n dubia seeds as my first carnivorous plants ver. suprisingly they sprouted, silly me though, i red into their conditions a little bit and was taking them in and out of a mini cooler i had set for them, and moving them all around the ouse to try and keep them in ideal light for enough tim. its not like on big stupid act but i ended up killing all 13 ish seedlings :/
 
  • #11
One day I got a couple temperate pings given to me and I put them into the bog. Pings were not really that much of an interest at the time, so I never gave it a second thought how they propogate, etc., was not even sure they would survive. They did survive and flourish. The next year in spring I was doing my normal bog weeding, pulling up any little green "weed" I saw before they got out of hand. Shortly after that I was taking some pictures, put them on the computer, and discovered that some of those "weeds" I had missed days earlier were in fact little baby pings. Obviously I had pulled up and killed many baby pings. You could hear my scream a block away.

Another dumb thing I did taught me to READ the label before you start spraying what you think is bug killer but really weed killer in a similar-color container.
 
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  • #12
I accidentally dropped a giant S. flava off my roof.. 4 stories high.
 
  • #13
The first Nepenthes I ever had in my care, and which belonged to someone else, ended up dying after I stripped all the bark off the stem in a sort of OCD stupor. For some reason I couldn't figure out why it was dying (had it sitting in water halfway up the pot for several months), so I thought maybe the bark was some kind of fungal infection.
 
  • #14
True that, carn.. I saw a Nepenthes - the rest is history :lol:

I've klutz'd my way around Helis and crushed many a nectar spoon. I kept a pygmy dew pot in water up to the rim of the pot in grad school. I repotted vfts into regular dirt from the back yard and kept them like tropical plants when my mom would buy them for me at 15. The vogelli would get it every time it started a tendril - barely made pitchers because of bad conditions and my bear-like paws. I kept said Helis on a balcony outside in the burning sun in San Diego. I filled said Heli pitchers with crickets (omg the stench!). I'm sure the list goes on..
 
  • #15
One thing I do on occasion every few months is bump into a Nepenthes leaf causing it to snap off... oh well, gotta wait for the leaf after that!

Like most, at the beginning of the hobby I watered my CP's with hard water.
 
  • #16
Just interesting to see we have all made some of the same mistakes. Should be a good thread for newbies to read so they don't make the same mistakes we did. Lol.
 
  • #17
Seems the list mostly has to do with:
1. Putting the plant in the wrong soil/conditions (done both)
2. Dropping the plant off somewhere (did that in Jeremiah's greenhouse yesterday, thankfully to a plant I was buying)
3. Snapping off leaves/pitchers on various pitcher plants (done it)
4. Spraying the wrong thing on plants/removing the wrong plant (haven't done this yet)
5. Did something wrong thinking it would make the plant better (done it numerous times :D)
6. Soaked a plant that loves drier soil (done it)
Let's see how long this list grows :D
 
  • #19
about three months ago I was pruning up my N.Ampullaria.(which I loved) and I thought I had a leaf in between the scissors but I misjudge the length and I cut of the stem instead. one of the prettiest amps I have ever seen:-( I still fell the pain of osing her
 
  • #20
Sprayed very old, long past expiration date insecticide on Utricularia in my collection. The plant, moss, and everything else literally melted away...
 
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