Is my venus fly trap healthy?

Question

i just bought a venus fly trap from wal-mart earlyer today and all i wanted to do was grab a small ant and put it right in the trap, the problem no mater wat i do(move the ant around in the trap) the trap will not close,not to anything and the trap is pure light green i heard it is supposed to be redish in the trap, but it is not.......please help

Answer 1

It's possible that the trap that you are trying to feed the ant to has been tripped too many times.  The traps can only close and open about 3 or 4 times, then they won't work anymore.  Soon the trap will probably start to turn yellow then brown.  This is normal.

It does not mean that your plant is unhealthy if the traps do not have color. In fact, there are some cultivated varieties that never get any color in the traps no matter how healthy they are and how much sunlight they receive. See the article on Justina Davis here:

http://www.flytrapcare.com/venus-fly-tra...

Since you just bought your plant, you might not know how to properly care for it.  There are three major points to keeping a Venus fly trap healthy.

1) Sunlight - at least 4 hours of direct sunlight a day

2) Water - rain, distilled or reverse osmosis water only

3) Soil - Nutrient poor soil such as peat moss

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

And if you have more questions, feel free to join the forum and as them there:

http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/