How to Care for a Venus Flytrap: The Complete Beginner’s Guide

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So, I spend a lot of time teaching people how to grow carnivorous plants. It’s my passion. It’s what I love to do. But, I want to take a moment and step all the way back and make a video for beginners who are just starting to get into carnivorous plants and make a series of videos for them and how they can grow these amazing plants. Today, I’m going to start with probably the most popular, especially for beginners, that being the Venus fly trap. Now, what you see in front of you are um all rescues.

And the reason why that I wanted to start with these is these are the ones that are going to be the weakest. And so um they’re going to be the ones that need the most attention and care. Um some of the cultivars that you buy from larger growers are going to be stronger breed and so a stronger stock and so they’re not going to need as much care. However, also when I say rescues, I mean plants that have been uh purchased like at a Lowe’s or a Walmart, a big box store, and those plants are going to be not as healthy for a lot of reasons. Um they’re not kept appropriately when they’re shipped.

Um a lot of them are tissue culture, which makes them a little weaker. And um there are several other reasons, but these are going to be the ones that the new uh growers to carnivorous plants, specifically Venus fly traps, are going to be the ones that most people pick up. And so without further ado and all the preamble, let’s go ahead and get into it. The first thing that you’re going to want to do is give them a tall pot. Venus fly traps like sitting in water, but they especially like being in taller pots because they grow very long roots. They like to be able to pull their roots down to the water line.

And so what happens is a lot of people make the mistake of leaving them in shorter, smaller pots for a couple reasons this is not great. One is they will become rootbound or ryome bound if you will in a very short period of time as they try to grow. And secondly, it’ll keep the water line too high for them. They do want to sit in water, but they want to have that natural um reaction of driving down. These roots will get very long, over a foot long. And so, make sure you have them in tall pots. Now, what should you have in the pots? The media should be, in my opinion, 50/50 Pete and perlite. Pete, because you want an inert soil.

A lot of people make the mistake of putting them in a soil that has minerals in it like a miracle grow which has even worse it has fertilizer in it and this will kill the plant very quickly. The reason why it’s developed these traps is a adaptation to not getting enough fertilizer or enough nitrogen. And so they’re going to want to get their nitrogen through this process. If you put them in um a mineral soil um they are going to get their roots are going to burn because their roots are mainly there to just anchor the plant in the ground. They’re really not doing anything that a normal plant would do which is garnering uh garnering nutrients from the soil. Now, the uh perlite part is because these plants have very thin roots, and so it’s going to be very easy for them to get root rot. And so, that perlite will give them the aration they need to keep your soil from becoming stagnant and growing bacteria and not allowing enough air flow. Now, on that note, they are far more forgiving than people give them credit for.

How to care for a Venus Flytrap continued

I’ve had Venus fly traps um for at least a year in some cases in 100% Pete and they have done just fine. It’s not great for longterm, but it is something to understand that it’s not going to absolutely kill your plant right out the gate. Now, let’s talk about water. These plants are going to want pure water. And when I went when I say pure water, I mean rain water, reverse osmosis water and or distilled water. Mineral water will not work as it contains minerals. And even if um you um a lot of people think if you leave the water sitting out, oh, it’ll be fine. And that is not the case. The water will still hold on to those minerals. And if anything, as the water evaporates, the parts per million will actually increase with the water that you have.

So, you’re going to want to use a pure water. Venus fly traps in particular are very sensitive to copper and other minerals, and so try to give them pure water. Now, having said that, if you are in a pinch and you have to use tap water uh for a short period of time, they’re going to be okay. You don’t want to do it too much, but they can handle parts per million up to 150 for a short period of time.

Now, I want to be I want to um say that for a short period of time, but what happens with Venus fly is a lot of people give them um water with a high pH or parts um or ppm, parts per million, and they’re like, “It’s fine. Nothing’s happening.” So, they keep doing that. The way Venus fly traps work is you won’t see any stress on them for a while. And then all of a sudden they’ll really go from good to dead very fast. And that is because of mineral buildup. And so what happens is every time that you give them a water that has minerals in them, it may not hurt them for a little bit, but those minerals will remain in the soil. And over time it’ll keep building up and building up until the levels become critical. So if you’re in a pinchion, you have to use a great.

But for the most part, you’re going to want parts per million under 50. Now, how do you know what the parts per million are? You can go online and get you what’s called a TDS meter. It’s only a couple bucks, and you just stick it in the water and it’ll tell you what your parts per million is. Now, let’s talk about light. A lot of people think that these plants can be windowsill plants and you can grow them indoors with a very strong LED light, but for the most part, these plants want extremely bright light for very long periods of time. They can handle extreme temperatures, even into the triple digits for a little while, as long as there’s moisture in the air.

But they handle very, very, very warm temperatures. They are not tropical plants, although they do look exotic. Uh they grow on the um edge of North and South Carolina in a swamp or more of a pine ba uh baron. And so they want very bright light for a very long time for a minimum of 12 hours. And so if you are growing your Venus fly trap, think about that when you’re growing them. Study how they grow in nature and try to emulate that for them.

So, let’s talk about feeding. A lot of people want to know, what can you feed them? How often should you feed them? Uh, how much can you feed them? People tend to over complicate these plants. If you put them outdoors, you don’t need to feed them. They’ll catch everything they need to. But if you do want to feed them, try to feed them live prey. as these traps right here will initially close, but it requires the uh insect to continue to wiggle around to get a complete seal to produce the digestive enzymes. Now, if you do feel feed them dried um blood worms or something like that, you’ll just need to massage the outside of the trap to emulate that moving around. You can put food in every one of the traps, but it’s not necessary.

You’re more than likely not going to give them nitrogen burn, which is too much minerals all at once through feeding the traps, but um make sure that uh you do feed them if they’re indoors. You can use a maxi fertilizer, but these plants want to live outside. As long as they’re outside, they’re going to catch their own prey. Um, now as far as the traps go, I know it’s fun to watch them close, but try not to close them too much with your fingers or something for fun as it uses a lot of energy to do so. And if they’re not catching any prey for that energy, it will kill the plant in a very short period of time. A lot of kids like to close the traps over and over again, which is fine a couple times just to watch it. But if you keep doing that without giving a reward of food, um, it will burn so much energy that it tires itself out and will die.

How to care for a Venus Flytrap continued

And then lastly, these plants have a very high leaf turnover rate. And so what that means is that these life cycle for these leaves are very short and that tends to freak people out because most plants keep their leaves for a while. But what these plants will do is they come from a center rosette. They’ll produce their leaves and then quickly turn them black and dye them off. And so be okay with the fact that they are going to be producing new leaves and dying off in a very rapid pace. What you want to look for is if all the leaves turn black all at once, that’s usually a good indication that something’s wrong.

One thing that I have noticed as I’ve grown these plants for a while now is they’re prone to mutations. And so don’t be alarmed if one of your traps comes out fused or deformed. That is sort of just their nature. They do that a lot. It can be a telltale sign of an issue. But if you’ve followed everything in this video and it has a mutation, just sit back and enjoy it and just understand that’s what happens. See, this one right here has that fused tooth mutation. As a matter of fact, a lot of the cultivars, there’s only one Venus fly trap that grows, one type that grows in the wild. All the cultivars that you see for sale are all some sort of form of mutation or hybridization that they’ve created a new cultivar. But overall, these plants are very easy to grow.

And if it seems like this video is too short or lacks information, that’s because it’s that easy to grow. and they get a lot of bad publicity for being very difficult, something that you need to years to study. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. They are, in my opinion, one of the easiest plants to grow as long as you understand what they need. And that is they need to have their soil moist at all times. They need bright light for at least 12 hours a day. They need pure inert soil with good aation and they need, this is going to be a weird one, they need to be left alone.

A lot of people want to fuss over them. These are tough plants. They can handle very cold temperatures all the way down into the teens and so and all the way up into the triple digits. And so don’t fuss with them too much. Let them be. They do when you move them around, they do get a little angry and they pout for a little bit. So, just let them be and they will produce amazingly for you. I hope this video is helpful for you beginners. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always here as a resource.