Question
Where I live, the backyard is full of trees. Thus, we have no sunlight. I want to grow the Judith hindle, once I had a Venus fly trap. That thing didn't even live two whole weeks, and I'm pretty sure it's because there is not one spot where there is sun allday,infact there might not even be a place where there is sun for two hours. The judith hindle gets to tall to fit in a normall tank, and those tall tanks ones cost a ton, so I cant even use bulbs that contain UVA & UVB. The backyard does have some light, but there is no deck and I'm afraid that one time when my brother plays basketball my plant is gonna get smushed. If thees any way I can fix all of these tthings please tell me. Thank you very much, Anton

Answer
Hi Anton,

I apologize in advance because you're going to hate my answer.  What you're trying to do is grow a plant that is like growing vegetables in terms of the sun requirements.  I often tell folks what I call "The Tomato Rule".  Wherever you are thinking of putting a Sarracenia or flytrap, you should be able to grow a tomato plant there.  If you couldn't, it's not bright enough.  As a result, people with shady yards don't usually have vegetable gardens.  You are in the same situation I'm afraid.

There are ways to cheat, however, with artificial light.  To get the intensity you need for Judith Hindle, however, is going to require very strong lights such as Metal Halide or high intensity fluorescent or LED.  All of those are going to be expensive.  Here's about the best, least expensive option I can offer.  I purchased one of these lights from Burpee to experiment with.  They work pretty well, and are fairly bright:  http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-lights/ultimate-grow-light-prod002765.h  This might be bright enough for a smaller Sarracenia.  I know that S. purpurea venosa would do fine under one of these, and a flytrap might too.  The advantage is that you can get the light quite close to the plants.  It's made for starting veggie seeds, so it's pretty bright.

The only other option I can think of is to see if you have any relatives that might be willing to host your plant that has a sunny yard.  When I was working camps and traveling I did that with an aunt.  She really liked the plants.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com