How do you take care of a venus flytrap plant?

Question

I just recently got a venus flytrap as a gift and I am looking up info on how to take care of one. Do you have any suggestions/websites I could visit. Please make sure you have owned one, as I do not want it to die.

Answer 1

Congratulations on your new plant.  You do not need to feed your fly trap anything other than sunlight. If you do feel like feeding it, don't feed it anything other than insects. There are three major points to keeping a Venus fly trap healthy.

1) Sunlight

2) Water

3) Soil

Venus fly traps like lots of light. Try to give it at least 4 hours of direct sunlight a day. The more you can give it the better. It is best to grow your fly trap outside where it can get plenty of sun and catch its own food.

Venus fly traps need clean water. Usually tap water will not do. It is best to use distilled water, rain water, or reverse osmosis water. Venus fly traps need water with a TDS (total dissolved soilds) measurement of 50 ppm (parts per million) or less. In order to get this, you probably need to use distilled water or reverse osmosis water or rain water. Their soil should be kept wet at all times. It is best to use a tray and set the plant in about 1/2 inch of water. Humidity isn't that important. Fly traps can live fine in low humidity conditions. I have about a hundred plants and I live in Colorado where the humidity in the summer is very low. They do great so long as they get plenty of sunlight and clean water.

I would guess that your plant came potted already, so the media that it is potted in is probably fine. But if you need to repot it, which wouldn't be a bad idea, you should use a combination of peat moss and perlite.

Good luck with your fly trap and enjoy growing it!

You can read more about how to care for venus fly traps here:

http://www.flytrapcare.com