Carnivorous Plants

Hi all. Need help on this subject. For years I have wanted to build a small potted carnivorous garden.
My latest effort contained sarracenia and nepenthes pitcher plants, drosera sp. sun dew and venus fly trap.
I can get all of these going for about 8 weeks then they all start to fade. I am guessing that they all need different conditions and may never be able to live together. The sun dew flowered and died. I put the seeds back in the pot and now have young ones. The nepenthes is going great but is the wrong type of plant for the dish and should be in a hanging pot. The sarracenia all died and the venus fly trap did same.
I know the sun dew is hardy as I've seen it growing wild in harsh conditions.

Can anyone help with this type of project?
Cheers
Steve

I have a Nepenthes in a hanging basket in my shade house, doing well, and soem sundews that came in a pot of trumpet pitcher plants (can't think of botanical names just now) I planted them in a square pot with a mixture of peat and potting mix, then stood it in about 4" of water in my fish pond. So far so good! I also got seed from my trumpet pitcher plant and dropped it back in the pot, but as that was a bout a week ago, no sign of germination yet. Have you seen the flower on the trumpet pitcher plant? I'll find the disc tomorrow and get the picture for you.
Sue

I went into a greenhouse in a nursery that grows these things and the fellow there said to plant them into spagnum moss and keep the containers sitting in water ...he had all the plants sitting in water.He told me to take them out of the water in cooler months and put them back when new shoots start to appear, I hope that helps (my grandson was into these plants and that worked very well for him)

Chrissy - I think this may be an answer. I set them up in winter and kept the water up to them thinking 'boggy conditions'. The dish I have used has no drainage so maybe I just flooded them? Used a mix I found on internet with sphagnum, peat, perlite and sand. Am happy with this mix but probably need to watch the water in winter. The sundew I have seen growing wild on the south coast is at the edge of cliff top heath with the most varying conditions you can imagine. So i'm not too worried about getting this to grow. I think at this stage I will remove the sarracenia and pot it in a hanging basket as Sue has suggested and try the nepenthes and venus flytrap again.
Footnote: the plants were bought from a large nursery nearby. Once I started seeing problems and I did some research I found that they should not have even been flowering at that time. The ones I bought were flowering. I wrote a letter of complaint and got a refund. I suggested that they should not be selling plant out of season. They suggested I didn't have to buy them! Work that out!
Cheers
Steve

A lot of plants we buy from the nursery are forced ...into flowering at wrong times ...people want flowers on their plants so they try to meet that demand. I mostly buy plants that have been grown hardened.I forgot to say that they were morning sun on a warm verandah. Worked very well for the venus flytrap and the pitcher plants.

Hi Chrissy,
Yep. Had 'em in the wrong spot too (reflected light) So far have all the tools I need to do the next one correctly.
Don't agree with the supply and demand thing with plants. Most people don't look up the natural flowering time of a plant before buying, It's all impulse. I think the obligation should be on the nurseries to be professional enough to sell in season. But then again - that's the ideal world!
Cheers
Steve