How to Grow Venus Flytraps in Florida

Like many people my first experience with carnivorous plants was bringing home a Venus flytrap in a dome, placing it on the TV and watching it slowly turn black as it died. I felt so guilty I never brought another one home. I figured a bug eating plant must be so exotic and strange that it lived in deep, dark jungles and was very difficult to keep.

Many years later, I went to a flea market and found a wonderful, strange plant with long leaves with cups hanging on the end. I had no idea what it was, but I desperately wanted it. Imagine my horror when I found out I brought home another carnivorous plant. It was called an Asian pitcher plant or more precisely a Nepenthes Ventrata. I knew it would die, but I thought I owed it a chance, so I bought a book called The Savage Garden by Peter D'Amato. Between the help I received by reading The Savage Garden and at Sarracenia Northwest, I developed a healthy obsession with carnivorous plants. Now I grow about 230. Venus flytraps are probably the best known out of the more than 600 species of carnivorous plants. My original N. Ventrata is growing vigorously with eight-foot long vines.

Armed with my research, I decided to give Venus flytraps another try. I have been growing them for fours year now. The most important thing to remember is that they are temperate plants. That means that they experience freezes in their native habitat of the super exotic North and South Carolina. Even in the wilds of North Carolina, you will never find a Venus flytrap with a dome. Remove the dome of death as soon as you return from the store. It will kill your flytrap. Nowhere in Florida do you need to increase the humidity. The dome protects the flytrap from prying fingers in the store.

In Florida the hardest part of growing Venus flytraps is keeping them cold enough in winter, so that they experience their winter dormancy. The flytrap must sleep in winter. Bringing them inside ensures their death in the following year or two. Many people think that their Venus flytrap is dying as winter approaches and throw them away. The plants are only going to sleep. In Florida keep them outside in full sun, and they will wake refreshed in the spring, like a bear coming out of hibernation.

In you live outside of Florida in zone 7 or lower, move your flytrap to an unheated garage when there are freezing winds.

I usually buy three or four flytraps and put them all together in an eight-inch plastic pot. This makes it easier to keep them watered, and if we get a deep freeze, I know they are better protected from adverse conditions when there are several in a pot. I also like to repot my flytraps to make sure they get the correct soil recipe.

I usually lose my flytraps during the summer, because I miss a day of watering them during hot, dry days. The best way to make sure the Venus flytraps stay wet enough is to put the pots in trays of water, and keep one to two inches of water in the tray. In Tampa, I fill the tray every two days during the summer if we don't have heavy rains. During the winter I keep about ½" of water in the tray.

The secret is out on how to keep Venus Flytraps happy and healthy. Put the flytrap outside in full sun year round. Put the pot in a tray of water. The water must contain no nutrients, so it needs to be rainwater, reverse osmosis (RO) water or distilled water. Plant the Venus flytrap in a soil mix of ½ peat to ½ perlite or sand. There must be no fertilizer in the soil. Check the ingredients on the bag of soil. Since the Venus flytraps comes from boggy conditions, the water washes away the nutrients. The plant adapted to get extra nutrients from the insects. Like all plants, Venus flytraps get most of their nutrients through photosynthesis converting sunlight to sugar. The bugs provide the extra vitamins and minerals. You never need to feed your flytraps. They will catch their own bugs during the summer. Never feed a flytrap hamburger or other human foods. Don't overfeed your flytrap. It will get indigestion. Don't tease the flytrap by snapping the traps. It will punish you by dying from exhaustion.

To get cheaper flytraps wait until they go on sale after Halloween. The plants go dormant. Many stores believe they are dying. I usually buy my flytraps from the big box stores for $2-3.

That's all there is to it. Give a deserving flytrap a home in your garden. Sun, lots of water, nutrient free soil and your healthy, happy Venus flytrap will reward you.