How to Grow a Venus Flytrap (Basic Care Guide)

so I thought that today I would make a short hair guide about venus flytraps because a lot of people have difficulty growing these plants but they're actually pretty easy wants to know what the proper conditions are so before we get started I figured I would show some of the cultivars there are fly traps now this one's called a dente and it's got short triangular teeth there's also red cultivars now where the plant will be pretty much completely red and full Sun there's some ones with fused traps so they're sort of like a bowl or a cup there's ones that have lots of scaling on their petioles and there's even ones with fused teeth like this so there's ones you can get at Home Depot or a grocery store but if you look online there's actually much more interesting types of fly traps you can buy now so the first thing we should probably mention is the soil they are carnivorous plants of course venus flytrap they've adapted to catching insects for their source of nutrients so they don't get any nutrients from the soil if I were to pull this out of the soil right now you would just see kind of a rise of with just tap roots going straight down and pretty much those roots just anchor the plant in the soil they don't really absorb any nutrients if you were to add fertilizer to it it would die completely because the roots of these plants aren't adapted to absorbing nutrients so we're gonna have to get a soil that does not have any added fertilizers usually something like Miracle Grow won't work because they add fertilizers and other enrichment items into the soil we're gonna have to find some kind of peat moss perlite or long fibers sphagnum Moss to plant them in that is free of nutrients is pure peat moss or pierced Fagin the moss so I have all mine growing in this long fibers sphagnum Moss mixed with perlite and that's my favorite mix because I found they grow really well in it one thing that the long fibers sphagnum Moss does that the people doesn't is it's very Airy so it prevents rotting because these plants actually like it pretty dry that's one misconception that people have that these are growing in Schwab's they're gonna be right by the edge of the water or submerged in water but they actually will Rob so you can just keep like a regular house plant sitting in a normal pot and this long fabric sphagnum moss and perlite mix it's very loose and airy so it's gonna be good for the roots to grow in and it will prevent it from getting too compacted and just rotting the rice another important aspect of these plants is that they need a lot of sunlight so just sticking them indoors on your windowsill may be nice and I know a lot of people like their plants and they want to keep up in their bedroom or something but these plants are native to South Carolina so they like a lot of sunlight and you can buy special grow lights for them but the best option is to stick them outside you can put them outside in full Sun you have to acclimate them of course if they've been sitting in a store somewhere and you put them out in full Sun they might burn so just slowly introducing them for a couple hours a day will build up the resistance and then in the summertime you can just leave them outdoors in full Sun will develop a nice bright coloration and another thing about these is that they are not tropical plants since they're native to the US they need dormancy so basically if they don't like to get really really extremely cold but they want to have a colder period maybe around 45 degrees in the wintertime and for most of the United States even Europe you can just leave them outside until November because it won't be cold enough to freeze the pond to a solid brick of ice which would kill them but it's going to be cold enough where they can go dormant and what I do for December early March I bring them indoors under aggro like who I do is I run them over a short photo period so it's not changing the strength of the light all it is is just instead of running the light from 8:00 in the morning till 6:00 o'clock at night I haven't a timer where it goes from maybe nine o'clock in the morning until three o'clock and that short boat up here is gonna make it go dormant not completely where it just dies back to the roots but all these tall leaves will fall off basically turn black and die you'll get a short compact ground-hugging rosette that's why really flap and that will tell you that the planets going dormant that's not an active growing that's going to be enough for it to get dormancy and the reason you want to give these guys dormancy if I'm growing like a tropical plan just because that will exhaust them they are meant to go dormant and their natural habitat and that builds the rhizome and gives them a little break from growing all the time because we just leave a grow light on of all year-round they're going to get exhausted and eventually your plants are just going to burn out or all right so how about the water how do you water feels well a lot of instructions for some reason we'll tell you okay just stick the pot halfway in a bowl of water and is just gonna absorb all the water he's that's gonna be pretty bad because that's gonna rot your roots and most people do that inside their house even outdoors in full Sun that's too much law so basically you want to water this so that the soil stays moist but it's never standing in water and again we're talking about we need soil that's free of nutrients you should never fertilize these plants because they catch inside it's for their nutrients and they can absorb it through the roots also a lot of water from the sink or even bottled water will have added minerals to it which will kill these plants basically we can only water these with water that is free of nutrients you can take you can get a TDS meter to test the dissolved solids in the water you want something that's under fifty parts-per-million so you can collect rainwater that'll work reverse osmosis water you happen to have a reverse osmosis unit you can use that or you can also just go to the storing in a jug of distilled water they sell pretty much in every grocery store so just watering them with distilled water will be enough to not burn the roots and again you want a water it's up the soil stays moist but you don't want to soggy so just kind of water it till the soil is moist and they can just leave it for a couple of days and once the soil on top starts to dry a little bit then you can water them so another thing people might do is put their flytrap in a terrarium and really you should just stick with a standard plastic popped because a terrarium isn't good in the long run what'll actually do is it's gonna not have any drainage holes on the bottom so accidental minerals that are introduced by some kind of bad watering or something that can build up also the soil will just get really stagnant because they're just gonna be sitting in water and bacteria are gonna develop it's not gonna be able to dry out really good and that's just not gonna be good in the long run also since these plants do like to grow outdoors if you stick a terrarium outside every time it rains its gonna flood and that's not going to be ideal either another thing is feeding you don't really need a feed your plant if you just stick them outside and full Sun like they shouldn't be growing they'll catch their own insights of course in the fall and winter time when they're going dormant they don't need to eat at all so there's really no need to actually feed them if you feed them something like beef or chicken that's gonna kill the trap because they're not meant to digest that kind of protein they really only can digest insect proteins so if you want to you can throw a bug in there once a month or something but there's really no needs to and especially if people are just feeding every time the trample is up that's gonna just feed it way too much and it's gonna kill off the traps it's pretty simple that keep these alive all you really need is bright light so either outside full Sun or a grow light indoors and water them with water that's distilled rainwater that's free of any dissolved solids or keep men a nutrient three blog fibers sphagnum moss perlite or peat moss make sure there's no added nutrients and fertilizers to that you don't really ever have to feed them so just make sure that they're not over watered and just water it every time it's sort of getting dry on the top and that's pretty much it they're pretty easy to take care if you're just giving a lot of sunlight and keep the water regulated so that its moist but never soaking wet

Channel: HelixPlants

Views: 836,629

Rating: 4.8831429 out of 5

Keywords: Venus Flytrap Dionaea Muscipula how to grow guide care watering soil light cultivars

Id: 4BJ1OfbDyJI

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 01 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Fattybitchtits]

Even moisture is fine, constantly wet is just as good and easier to maintain

[u/bonch]

There are some experienced growers who believe plants are healthier when they're not sitting in a water tray all the time, but I've never had any issues.

[u/akosiiam]

He says that VFTs don't really need to be placed on saucers with water, and that evenly moist medium will do. Are the tips he gave really helpful?