HOW TO: Carnivorous Plant Bowl — Venus Fly Trap & Pitcher Plants

hi I'm Alison this is tank tested today I'll be setting up a carnivorous plant bog in this glass bowl now a glass bowl isn't a great option for a setup like this but I have some of supplies with me that should help mitigate the risk and make this a suitable home for these plants for the medium term so let's talk about these plants since they will be the centerpiece of this cell first I had a pitcher plant and then I also have two small pots of venus flytraps both of these are carnivorous plants from North America and what a carnivorous plant is is kind of exactly what it sounds like these are plants that eat insects they eat animals they trap animals in two separate ways and I'll get into exactly how they do that later on in this video but the natural history behind these plants is super fascinating and will inform how I've set up this small bowl so with that intro out of the way let's go through what I have on this table all of these materials are necessary for setting up a bowl like this and each one serves an important function for the support of these plants so first I have peat moss this peat moss will act as the soil in my bowl and the reason why I've selected peat moss is because it's very very good at holding water and has a very very poor nutrient load that's important because these plants are used to both being saturated with water and also having very very low nutrients that's actually why they evolved the ability to catch insects they needed another option for how to collect nutrients from their environment the soil just doesn't have enough nutrients for these plants to grow naturally so instead they rely on the nutrients in flies and other insects to feed them if you use a substrate other than peat moss something with a higher nutrient load you'll end up creating burns on the roots of the plants and the plants will die so this is a critical critical step in this process now I could fill this entire bowl with peat moss and if I were to use a bowl with a drainage hold the bottom that might be a suitable option but because I'm using a glass bowl which is it dubious choice frankly I need to find another solution because if I don't allow water to drain the water the peat moss will get supersaturated and again the roots may rot so you don't want to do that you don't want to drown your plants so instead I'm creating an artificial aquifer with this so this is lava rock it's very porous and has a lot of area between each individual stone that means that even though this looks like a dense pile of rock there's actually a lot of area for water to fill in all those crevices that means I'm basically gonna be creating an artificial aquifer or storage capacity within this bowl the bottom inch to an inch and a half of this bowl beat louder rock which means that all the water will drain from the peat moss and stop these plants from drowning that's the aspiration at least obviously an easier solution would be to use a bowl with a drainage port but I don't have one on hand so this is my solution to create an artificial division between my lava rock and my peat moss I'll be using these two pieces of gutter screen overlap them and create a nice barrier semi permeable barrier so that the peat moss doesn't fill in all the holes that I want to be available for water now if I have my druthers I would use a thinner or a narrower hold screen so that less than the peat moss falls through but I don't have that on hand and this bowl is only a temporary housing solution for these plants realistically I can probably hold them for about a year in this bowl and by that time enough of the peat moss will have clogged up my aquifer that I'll need to transition them into another pot anyway so I'm not too worried about this particular choice I'm making finally I've got moss that I collected from my backyard this is terrestrial moss then I've also got some rocks and some sticks this will just allow me to escape my bowl once I plant my plants and create a more aesthetically pleasing setup because after all this is going to go in my home I want it to look beautiful the last ingredient I have on this table is water now this isn't just normal tap water this is distilled water you can also use rain water to water your carnivorous plants and the reason why you don't want to use tap water is because tap water has a high dissolved mineral count and that will actually burn the roots of these plants that's a common theme with these plants they're used to having almost no nutrients coming through their root systems so if you add nutrients you will kill these plants that's the balancing act that we have to make when we create a carnivorous bog so all right so let's get started I'm actually pretty much measured out this lava rock so I'm just gonna pour it straight into my bowl I'll level it out and then lay over my two pieces of screen this is basically creating an offer as I said this is a critical step and hopefully it's relatively visually appealing now I am using exposed transparent glass so you will be able to see what's going on within the bowl so I'm a little bit concerned that this transition layer will look a bit ugly but it is what it is now I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my plants for each of these plants they're already in a peat moss pot so I'll be taking them out of the peat moss or out of a pot but I won't be removing the soil from around their roots they're relatively established they seem quite happy and healthy in their own soil so I'll just be infilling around their soil with my peat moss before I do that let's talk a little bit about the natural history of these plants so we'll start with the Venus flytrap the Venus flytrap is native to North and South Carolina and maybe a little bit of Virginia all on the east coast of the United States they are a threatened species in the wild and it's illegal to collect them from the wild so let's talk about how the Venus flytrap actually works so each of these traps is actually an Augmented leaf it's one single leaf folded down its central vein now it actually has two stable States one open and one closed the plant doesn't have to exert any energy to either be open or closed but it does have to exert energy to transition between those two so inside of each leaf they have a set of trigger hairs and if more than one of those four your hairs are triggered within a short period of time the plant will snap shut and it does so by expanding and contracting cells along its hinge it will actually through osmosis expand and contract a few cells which cause one stable state of the leaf the open stable state to transition to the closed stable state once the leaf is closed and an insect is inside it will start digesting insect and actually transitioning that insect into the nutrients it needs to continue growing more leaves now each of these leaves does have a limited number of open enclosures that it can perform before it becomes exhausted so if you keep venus flytraps that's important to not give in to the temptation of constantly poking their leaves and watching what happens eventually they will stay closed and they won't be able to get any more food now these plants are pretty good at capturing insects on their own but if you need to feed them yourself you want to feed one to two adult flies per week or so to an adult plant that's about all they need if you over feed them they will try to process all that nutrients and they'll actually end up dying so you don't want to just jam filled with insects they don't need nearly as many as you might think one the two a week is totally fine the pitcher plant has a different approach to capturing insects so this is again one leaf that's folded and around itself to create a tube chamber at the top of the tube you have this little hood that both blocks rainwater from filling the tube but also acts as a guide guiding insects into this tube at the opening of the tube the plant produces nectar or AA you know an intriguing substance for insects a food source this is not a flower this is actually a leaf that there's no sex organs within this but people the insects will fly in the land here and then there is a very smooth surface at the opening of the plant the insects will stumble essentially and fall deeper into the tube in the center of the tube there are a bunch of tiny hairs that are all pointed downward so as the insect falls down it becomes trapped because all those little hairs stop it from going back up the tube it can only go deeper once it's in this deep section of the tube the plant will then begin to emit enzymes to start digesting it but there's actually the insect in this one right here I can see it through the light that there's a a dark section here and that's how they capture and digest their food source so both interesting approaches to finding a new solution to nutrients this one uses a tube structure and this one uses a actual mechanical mechanism but both are augmentations of a single leaf so now that we know a little bit more about these plants let's add them to our setup so I'm going to start with the pitcher plant now you can see that it's in a dense Moss structure so this is there's almost no nutrients coming from neces basically just a means of holding the root system together so I'm going to start by putting my pitcher plant in the back of my heart I may actually end up raising it up just a little bit so that it it's a little bit higher in my pot I maybe wanna up here and have a nice slope down so I'll put this back in the pot for just a second and then maybe I'll add a little bit of soil on top so that everything has something to sit on you can see how truly light this material is it will start to compact when you add water and I will add a little bit of water to connect it just a little bit because I don't want it to be too fluffy but I also don't want it to be too gets the root systems don't want to have to work too hard to get through our substrate so that picture plant back here yeah that feels okay and then I venus flytraps again squeeze them out of the crop so each of these plants actually produce root systems that go pretty far down they may extend six to eight to ten inches down in an adult plant obviously this container is not that deep so this these plants will need to be rehomed relatively quickly probably within a year that are going to need to be recalled but that's fine because another feature of these plants is that they need to go into dormancy which makes them not a ideal house plant they're actually a great plant to have outside they need to go into dormancy for three or four months out of the year these plants are used to having being exposed to a small amount of frost but not severe so you're talking if you're living in an environment or part of the country where you're getting a few days where it's a little bit below freezing they'll be fine outside but if you live and a part of the world where you're getting extended periods of a month long where you're 10 or 15 degrees below its freezing that's going to be a real problem these plants won't make it so that's the thing to consider when you're getting into carnivorous plants are these diverse plants at least do you have a way to put them into their own dormancy so what I recommend doing is either putting them outside in an environment like I live in where it doesn't get too too cold or if you have an area of your house that is not heated putting them out in that area or in your garage for the winter months so I will continue adding my my substrate oh gosh or that all over you I'm sorry I've also read that you can use coconut husks as a as a stratum as a material to rig your plants although because coconuts are often exposed to salt water you need to very very thoroughly wash them and make sure that you get rid of all the salt buildup in the coconut husks so that's another sustainable way of creating a a low nutrients way I'm just gonna continue filling in all the corners around my my plants all of these Venus live traps are going to be pretty unhappy with the amount of soil that I've gotten into there their traps but I will try to wash them clean before I finish this process so that they are they can go back to their their daily job of catching nutrients for the plant a little bit more soil to below these plants and then once I've finished laying down my the last of my substrate I will also add a nice layer of moss around them which i think is mainly just for me if I'm being honest I don't think the plants need or appreciate the competition but I think it will make me we'll set up look a little bit more appealing and a little bit more finished so I think that we are done with our peat moss for now so I'm gonna actually go fill up a water bottle with some distilled water I will spray down these plants to get all of the peat coat of the plants and get them looking nice and professional alright so now I'm going to start laying down my moss this was moss that was again collected from just outside I live in Virginia so I actually live in an area not that far away from where these plants are native so that's exciting this really does feel like a a setup that does have plants that are all that would be native today same environment although perhaps they would not necessarily all grow in the same exact area so I'll just be adding little patches of moss all around and this moss will eventually fill and grow in all all of the the holes and create a beautiful beautiful little setup so I'm not too worried about having open areas and will eventually fill in now in terms of placement I felt like this really needs direct sunlight so if you have a strong southern facing window this would be a great place for that alternatively if you are an area where you can stand to have outside that would be a great option as well these plants really do require more Sun than you might think so that's something that we consider as well if you put them too far away from your window really any distance away from the window at all they won't get the new chart the Sun that they need and they will start to get stringy the leaves will get elongated in an attempt to find a patch of sunlight and that's a great sign you need to move your plants to a place that they would enjoy it a little bit more so I'm just gonna add a couple of rocks in the mix so that we create a nice little aesthetic look here just something a little point of interest so that it's not just green well this up here yeah let me cook what I've created it's a little bit too even so I'm gonna move a couple of things around just a little bit so bear with me I will show you what I've created just a moment okay I feel okay about this so I'm gonna add a few sticks these sticks that I'm using are sold in the aquarium hobby as spider wood these are just a few little fragments I'll add them in to create a little bit of a look you know something a little bit more whimsical so I'm gonna add these in this way so that I can actually see what's happening so bear with me I'm trying to create a little bit of directionality and to my setup so the the all the sticks look like they're kind of motivated by the same same influence maybe it's a strong wind maybe it's the light is going in one direction but no matter what I'm trying to create something that has a little bit of character a little bit of look break this stick into alright so that's my final setup I will find a great location for this but first I'll shoot a couple of beauty shots and you can appreciate what we've done here as I show you those shots let's talk through a couple of concerns that you need to keep an eye out for first you need to make sure that your substrate is low in nutrients peat soil is a great option for that second you need to make sure that your substrate is consistently moist bordering on wet if you're keeping these plants in pots you actually want to have about quarter inch to a half inch of water standing in whatever canister those pots are sitting in so that the peat balls can passively absorb moisture and keep those root systems wet at all times if you're struggling with your plants it feels like they are not happy in what some way the general of causes are threefold one you're using water that has too many dissolved minerals in it you need to be using distilled water or rainwater second you're not getting enough light for your plants you need to either have them in a southern facing window or you need to find a outdoor location for these plants and third you want to make sure that your plants are actually getting nutrients so if you're keeping them indoors and they don't have access to flies you need to start feeding them insects yourself not too much just enough to keep them going and healthy outside their natural predators they will be able to catch everything themselves you don't need to worry about anything and these pitchers will actually start filling up with flies you'll end up seeing lots of little black spots when the sun is shining through these pitchers and you'll say oh gosh look at how successful these plants really are these plants are a wonder of evolution carnivorous plants are incredible very unique part of our ecosystems and it's an awesome experience to get to see them didn't take care of them yourselves with that I hope you enjoyed this setup I hope you learned something and I hope that I've earned your subscription so if you haven't already hit that subscribe button thanks so much for watching and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Tank Tested

Views: 31,519

Rating: 4.843318 out of 5

Keywords: tank tested, House Plants, Venus Flytrap, Venus Fly trap, venus fly trap care, venus fly trap eating, pitcher plant, pitcher plant care, pitcher plant terrarium, pitcher plant terrarium setup, venus fly trap setup, serpadesign, serpadesign venus flytrap, bog plants, carnivorous plants, carnivorous plants for kids, carnivorous plant terrarium, terrarium, terrarium diy, plant bowl, aquascaping, aquarium, plant care, carnivorous house plants, plants, rachel o'leary, antscanada, diy

Id: xBVz8j-vNsI

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020