Actually Venus Flytraps can be easy to grow and even cold hardy if you grow
them outdoors year-round in a properly constructed bog garden. Even though
they are native to the Carolinas, they are completely winter hardy in New
Jersey and even further north. Hardy sundews and pitcher plants make good
companions.

I would disagree about the flowers. The five petalled white flowers are
quite unexpected and showy in their own way.


wrote in message
...
do a google search and learn a lot more about fly traps. they are
difficult plants
to grow, but feeding them insects is not necessary. Ingrid

(Jon B) wrote:

I have heard a lot of conflicting things about care of venus flytraps.

I have a little one I bought from Home Depot. It had a long stalk and
I allowed it to flower, but only two buds bloomed and it started
turning black and fuzzy, so i cut it off at the base. (one website
says not to let it flower; it uses up too much energy and is not very
spectacular anyway)

then i saw a little bug flying around (a gnat or fruit fly sized
buggie), so i herded it into the plant. it walked right through all
of the traps without setting them off, i touched the little trigger
hairs a lot and they didn't budge. i finally forced it into the best
looking one and blew on it so it would wiggle. the trap only closed
after lots of wiggles. it closed up tight and after a day had the
look of a bag with all the air sucked out. then about three days
later the trap was open again and some kind of orange something was
all over the trap, like droplets on each of the tooth-like things, and
some lines of orange across the outside. it didn't smell good. I cut
off that leaf and two others that looked like they were going bad.

anyway, it has some new traps growing and i want it to live without
anymore rotting problems. I assume it was having trouble because it
was inside an airtight clear plastic dome. i DID open it every day
and circulate the air, but the latest thing i read said not to keep it
in an airtight space, even though other sites said i should. right
now it is in the little pot it came in, in a dish and the dish has
distilled water sitting in it, with the pot sitting in the water.
were the rot problems from lack of circulating air, or too much water?
how wet should the peat be? the instructions that came with it say
it should be sitting in water, and so do several sites online. i am
near the northeast coast of the US. i don't know if it is humid
enough here.



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