Hey yall, just bought a new plant from Walmart, a venus flytrap, and im honestly just looking for some advice. My family knows me as a plant killer 🙁 but I'm determined to not kill any more plants.
first off, is the leaves turning kinda black and yellow normal (u can see it in some of the pics) or is it bad
two, one of the traps closed a few days ago, and it hasnt opened since. how long is it supposed to take?
third, do i need to feed it or is it capable of getting its own food
- should i repot it?
thats it, thanks
any advice is appreciated, even if i didnt specifically ask
by smeru
5 Comments
*Dioanea muscipula* might be bit tricky for a beginner to care for. But not impossible!
First they need lots of light. And i mean a lot! Full sun in growing season, preferably outdoors but i guess super sunny window might work as well.
They are bog plants in nature, and live in more or less nutrient deficient soils. This means that a) They want to stay moist all the time, and b) You really should not fertilize it.
Feeding them bugs works, but you need to be careful. Single trap works only few times before dying. Don’t overfeed it! If it’s outdoors it catches its prey by itself.
When it comes to wintering, it wants dormancy period in cool temps. Home temps are too high for it to rest. Although i have seen that some hardcore carnivorous plant hobbyists have kept them happy year round without dormancy, it only works if you have REALLY powerful grow lights. Again, it loves sun as much as cacti do.
In addition to what the other person said, you must only use distilled water to water it, and if you do repot it, you must get special carnivorous plant soil. This is because minerals in normal water and soil will kill it.
Traps will wither and die as new ones grow, that’s normal.
It should only take a day or two for a trap to reopen, unless that trap is ready to die.
Feeding isn’t necessary, but doing so every once in a while is fine!
You can repot if you want, it will get bigger if you do.
They only need about one bug a month and they’ll secrete chemicals that attract bugs when they need to eat. Triggering the traps or feeding it dead bugs will exhaust the traps and they die
Vft should be in a water retaining substrate with zero nutrients, like moss or vermiculite. Use distilled water as even tap water has too high mineral content for them. Don’t let the substrate dry out
Full sun all day
Whatever you do, do not give it tap water. That will kill it. Only give it distilled water. They like high humidity, so you may want to transfer it to a glass cloche or terrarium. Make sure you use bog mixed soil or you can kill it. Give it a foundation of pearlite with the bog soil on top of that. That way you can control and see the water table. I usually knock out (not kill) a few flys, and feed them to the traps manually. The traps close when a couple tiny hairs are triggered. After getting the nutrients it can from the insect, it will open back up. You can gently remove the old insect husk. A trap only has so much energy to open and close. Eventually they will stop closing, which is fine as new traps will be sprouting constantly.
If you enjoy it and get good, you can move on to pitcher and cobra plants! 😀
You unfortunately picked a bit of tough option for indoors to break your plant killer reputation, though Venus Flytraps are far easier as outdoor plants.
Flytraps require absolutely massive amounts of light. Indoors, a growlight will be a necessity, outdoors, they grow in full sun happily. If you see the red coloration inside the traps fade, thats the first sign that they are not getting enough light indoors.
Flytraps have some very particular needs when it comes to their potting mix and water quality. They are highly sensitive to minerals, salts, and nutrients. This usually means they are potted in a mix of peat moss and sand, and can only be watered with distilled water, rainwater, or wastewater from dehumidifiers. Tap water and normal soil will usually kill them. They rarely need repotting and repotting stresses them out a lot, so no, hold off on that for a while.
In regards to watering, probably the easiest thing about them. Keep the soil at least moist at all times, never under any circumstances let it dry. The roots can even be waterlogged as long as the crown of the plant is not submerged.
The traps need live prey to properly function, so outdoors they typically catch everything they need on their own. Indoors, less likely, but they can go long time periods with no catches. Do not ever fertilize the roots.
Climate wise, they are very hardy. They can thrive in a wide range of humidity levels, and have remarkable heat and cold tolerance. They are even fire-resistant.
Finally, these plants arguably need a cold winter dormancy period where they die back to their rhizomes until spring. Outdoors, they enter dormancy naturally autumn as temperatures drop. Indoors, you won’t be able to simulate this so best you can do is keep the light levels strong through winter and monitor it for signs of declining health in the following year. Dormant plants don’t need as much water but should not dry out. They are hardy to US Growing Zone 7 in pots, but if you live in a colder region than that, after they enter dormancy, you can put the dormant pot in the fridge over the harshest months of winter.
Lower leaves dying is not all that uncommon, it happens over time, but it can be accelerated by stress from minerals in the water or soil, poor light, shock, or being too dry. Overall the plant currently looks very healthy, which is a remarkable rarity for a walmart flytrap.