A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Venus Flytrap

I bought a Venus Flytrap this summer, and it's doing good. I use an upside down goldfish bowl as it's terrerium, and it's very warm and moist inside. I'm feeding it with little flies I capture and release inside the terrium (when I check in on it, it's usually been caught). The traps were usually nice and well formed, if only about the length of my little finger to the first knuckle. When the traps eventually died, new ones grew back, but they're extremely small. They could probably only hold a gnat. I'm not sure what I should do. The plant has 8 of these little stems with traps. Would it help the others if I pinched some of the others off? Now that's it's winter it's not feeding on bugs, but I'm giving it very watered-down plant food once in a while. How can I get this thing to grow a little larger?

Try increasing the light a bit. It does not want direct sunlight, but lots of bright indirect is important to its growth. If you arelying on artificial light, make sure it is a fluorescent type, that it is close to the tubes, and that it is on for 14 hours every day.

hi kovarr welcome to the garden helper. i am glad will could help you 'cause i had no clue enjoy your time here, and look around, there is lots of neat info and converstion here.

Kovarr , I wish you good luck with your fly trap.....I had one most of the summer, and no matter what I did to help it, it finally died......I had it in a window with indirect bright light.....we fed it flies too....I don't know what happened to it, it just died....

I hope yours gets bigger and stay healthy!!

I grew venus flytraps in as a kid. I was even lucky enough to get mine to bloom. It could have been plain dumb luck but I used no special lights and they sat on the floor in a terrarium, next to a window. Here are some of the things I remember:

there is no need to feed them any type of plant food becuase they get all their nutrition from the bugs they eat

they are native of the carolinas, so it is possible they are going through their usual period of dormancy

Hope this helps!

I put mine in the fridge for the winter. Venus Flytraps MUST have a dormant period. Water with distilled water or rainwater. Cut off the flower stalks before blooming. If the plant flowers it will usually die. Do a search on the web, there is a very informative site with lots of good advice on VFTs. I can't remember the addy but the info is great. the writer is a bit sarcastic but the info is top notch. (Fine, go ahead and kill your plant. Just don't come to me complaining that it died. Kind of like that, but he knows Venus Flytraps!)

Oh yes that is right about the distilled water.

I never had to put mine in the fridge, but maybe our house was chilly enough. We keep the temp down pretty low. I also had a pitcher plant that did very well in the same terrarium.

I would love to grow some carnivorus plants in my outdoor bog garden. Anyone have any luck with that? I know there is one tall pitcher plant that is hardy, grows in Minnesota I think.