Carnivorous Plant Maintenance (so They Do Not Break)

Who doesn't love a venus flytrap! But how to take care of one... Keep reading to learn how

- Carnivorous plants (I am using a pitcher plant, a sundew, and a venus flytrap)

- Distilled Water (you can also use reverse osmosis and rainwater)

- MaxSea Fertilizer

- Some more distilled water

- Gardening scissors/kitchen scissors that are cleaned

- Syringe

- A smile on your face!

- Water saucer (my terrarium has a plastic one)

This is the first step because all living things love water!

Personally, I water my plants every Wednesday and Saturday, but it can vary.

All you simply have to do is take your distilled water, put it in a container (so that it is easier to pour), and pour it into the water saucer of the container. I use a plastic saucer because terra cotta or ceramics will leach minerals into the water over time. For Venus flytraps and sundews you should always have about an inch of water in your saucer. But for North American Pitcher Plants, you should have a couple of inches of water to recreate their water-logged conditions. Remember these are bog plants so you cannot use tap water because it has minerals and nutrients.

Oh sure, it might be fun to feed your plants live insects... But I don't believe in live feeding- Although my plants catch plenty of gnats, flies, and even the occasional ant by itself.

It is good to supplement their diet with fertilizer.

Make sure that you are using MaxSea fertilizer!
Take 1/4 of a teaspoon of Fertilizer and dilute it into one gallon of distilled water. This should last you approximately forever.

Now take your syringe and suck up some of this dark-looking liquid.

To feed a pitcher plant pour around half a milliliter into each pitcher.

For the sundew pour a drop onto a couple of the leaves.

For the flytrap... Put a drop or two into every three traps.

Important: Make sure to get no fertilizer into the soil!

Feed the plants once a month, except for the flytrap: feed it once every two weeks :)

Make sure not to trigger the trap hairs as you put drops into the traps.

Every two weeks I prune my plants. This is easy because there isn't much to prune! For the venus flytrap, simply cut off black traps with your scissors. For the sundew, cut off any brown leaves. For the pitcher plant, cut off any black pitchers.

You can cut the flowers off the carnivorous plants if you wish (cut the stalk off from the base just as the bud starts forming) because flowers put a lot of stress on these plants (even though flowers are beautiful!)

In the image of a flytrap- you see a dead flytrap that I will later cut off (it hasn't fully turned black)

I also show cutting off a dead pitcher (from dormancy)

If you have followed these directions carefully, your carnivorous plants should be happy! This is how I take care of my plants.

Place any questions in the chat!

This is where the smile on your face (listed in supplies) comes in handy :)

Note: If you do get carnivorous plants (which I totally recommend doing), make sure they are from a reliable seller, things like blue venus flytraps do not exist!