The Spider Venus Flytrap

Migrated

It's starting to get warmer out here in Buenos Aires and the plants are starting to look healthy again. Well, this one is anyway.

I am migrating my carnivorous plants into the larger pots which are linked in an array.

Today I am concentrating on my spider venus fly trap which the title suggests. I have transplanted some of the carnivorous plants into the new moss after cleaning out the pots so that there would be only distilled water available to them.

The plants roots are very sensitive because as they grow The roots bond with the sphagnum moss. If I break that bond by pulling the plant out of the dirt and rinsing The roots then it takes many months for the roots to bond with the moss once again.

In order to avoid many months of recovery from that wilt, I take the plant in the pot and cut the bottom completely off, then I split the side of the pot nearly all the way to the top, and finally I put it in its place and allow the roots to grow down below where the pot used to end.

I cut this pot entially splitting it into two halves and no bottom, about 3 weeks ago. And soon, I will need only snip the rim of the pot in two places and remove the two halves of what used to be the sides of the pot.

As you can see above, there has been no wilting and the plant is thriving I'm going into summer mode. Below, is the same plant 3 weeks ago when I cut the pot up and put it in the planter. See how fast these things grow in just a couple of weeks?

Above is a photo of one of the two converted planters that contain these newly transplanted carnivorous plants. Because there's only distilled water, I must for carnivorous plant gardening, and I am unable to add fertilizer to this planter or they will die, I started a celery stalk just to test if normal plans would be able to thrive in an environment devoid of any nutrients. That's the subject of another post!

The key to growing beautiful carnivorous plants is making sure that they only have Moss below and that you only water them with distilled water. Any kind of fertilizer or normal soil will kill them instantly. They get their nutrients from the insects that they eat. One of God's most wonderful inventions for equalizing our ecosystem.