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The botanical garden in Savannah has a plant that eats gnats like crazy
I stopped by the coastal garden outside Savannah last Thursday on a job break and wandered into their greenhouse section. There's this one pitcher plant display that's absolutely swarming with gnats, but the plants look healthy and full. The volunteer said they actually breed fungus gnats on purpose to keep the pitchers fed. I've seen these in pots at home but never thriving like that. Is there a trick to getting pitcher plants to really take off indoors, or do they just need that kind of humid setup? Anyone else tried growing them in a regular living room?
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thea_bell20d ago
The fungus gnat thing makes total sense, that's basically what happens in the wild too since pitchers get most of their food from bugs that just fall in. The big thing indoors is humidity, like 60-70% at least, because low humidity makes the pitchers dry up before they even open. A lot of people put them under a cheap grow light with a clear plastic tub over them or run a small humidifier nearby. Tap water will kill them over time too, you need rain water or distilled. A regular living room can work if you fix those two things, the humidity and the water, otherwise the plant just sits there and never makes new pitchers.
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