Sun

Flytraps need a lot of sun to digest their meals. The general rule for these plants is; if there’s enough light for a tomato plant to do well, there’s enough light for a flytrap. If you are growing under grow lights, we currently have ours under grow lights for 14 hours a day, approximately 8” away from the light with a rating of 6500K (basic white light is fine, some people like to get more of the red spectrum in there, we haven’t had any issues with our current set up).

Water

Flytraps are typically found in bog like conditions. To mimic this, we have the potted flytrap sitting in a dish of water and never let them go dry. Bottom watering seems to work the best as top watering can sometimes cause the traps to trigger and close without any actual food in the trap for the plant to digest. For the water, it needs to be extremely low mineral content. Ideally less than 50 PPM. We’ve been using primarily rainwater for ours, though we do use reverse osmosis water when rainwater isn’t available. Another option would be to use distilled water.

Soil

Flytraps do not like to have mineral content in the soil either. Our recommended soil mix is 1 part peat moss to 1 part perlite. Coarse silica sand is an alternative to perlite, though it tends to make the soil mix quite a bit heavier, so we’ve been switching over to perlite for our own plants. If you do want to up-pot the plants at some point, make sure to get peat moss and perlite without any additives. Miracle Gro brand seems to like adding nutrients, so avoid that for these plants. Currently we are using a “golf green” brand peat moss and “holland basics” perlite.

Feeding
Despite the reputation these plants have, they don’t need to eat that many bugs. One fly a month is plenty for them. If you are feeding the plant a dead bug, you will have to massage the trap after it closes around the insect for approximately 10-15 seconds. The massaging of the trap would simulate the bug moving around after closing. They have evolved to reopen the traps if there is no movement after closing, so if it’s raining, the rain might cause the trap to close, but it will reopen on its own shortly after. Make sure the insect you are feeding your plant is smaller than the overall size of the trap. Once the plant shuts around an insect, it creates a seal and releases digestive enzymes to eat the bug, if the insect is too large, those enzymes will leak out of the trap and it won’t get a proper meal out of it.

Dormancy

Venus flytraps typically have a winter dormancy, it can survive a couple years without dormancy, but will eventually die off if not given time to rest. If you do want to simulate a winter period for these plants, simply place them in the fridge at the start of next Winter, the lack of light and cool temperatures will trigger the dormancy period for them. Ensure they don’t completely dry out during this period, though they don’t need as much water as normal. When waking them up, that would be the best time to split the plants if you want to multiply them.

Flower care

Generally, we’ve always let our flytraps flower, however, a lot of growers prefer cutting the flower stalk off to conserve energy for the plant. If the flower stem is cut off early, it can be used to propagate more flytraps!