Venus fly trap advice

Hi guys I bought this little venus fly trap 2 years ago and put it under my grow light over the winter but now the spring is here and longer hours of sunlight I will put it back on the window sill,

it got bigger and sort of went into what looks like 2 plants now so I must be doing something right,
might be cuz I let the seed flower grow once that its gone into 2 plants

Questions:

do you think its needs to go into a bigger pot yet? I think the roots of these plants dont go that deep but it does look a little crowded.

whats the best soil for these plants I did buy fly trap soil last time I moved it into a bigger pot but it was not cheap.

 

They naturally split like that. The best thing to grow them in is a mixture of peat and horticultural sharp sand, because they grow on the margins of swamps and have evolved to grow in low nutrient, damp acidic conditions. You could split it into two if you wanted.

 

Next winter, rather keep it in a cool spot and let it go dormant. They need this to keep going long term.

Otherwise, as Nigel says......

 

oh right so leave it for this year then and do it oct/nov time

 

Mine live out in a cold greenhouse overwinter and then get stood out about this time of year. I split mine about now and in fact will be looking at my insectivorous plants over the next week or so.

 

Sounds strange, but I used to feed mine small pieces of cheese.

You need to touch the trigger hairs more than once to get the traps to accept it though, along with a few seconds of vibration to make it think its an insect.

 

@lowrider69 , your plant looks so healthy, well done you!

Would that be Wensleydale perhaps...?

I just got my third attempt from Ikea today and am committed to keep it happy. Thanks for the thread!

I have an accidental potful of lush moss, do you think that would be a good companion for the Flytrap? I'm envisioning a low-ish large pot with the Flytrap and moss growing, in a peaty gravelly compost on a bright windowsill in (unheated) kitchen. Does that sound about right?

Tonight the new Venus is feasting on the inevitable fruit flies amongst the recently potted on seedlings. The fruit flies are very curious about the plant, much better viewing than telly.

 

Main things with these is to only give them rain water never feed them unless its insets, worms and stuff dont seem to go down well, flying ones seem best all summer I catch bluebottles, they dont need them that often I tend to catch 1 or 2 a month, dont let them grow the stalk flower it weakens them though I did once just to see what they looked like, you can buy VFT soil on ebay which is what I done last time and mine seems fine, letting them go dormant seems key as well though i did put mine under 8 hours of light in winter its now on 12 hours but will put mine in the sunny window sill now as people have said you can put them outside but I like to look at mine.

 

@Selleri

not sure which one mine is but it seems happy in a nice sunny window sill, not sure about the moss I got mine with gravel on top to keep the traps dry, I tend to trim them once one of the traps goes brown which seems to happen alot, I also cut the really small traps off to let the plants energy go into the better bigger traps, after a while you can tell which ones are going to be bigger traps, key is little at a time clip one off here and there.

I do love my VFT its the 1st one I had myself thats not died but I did read up on them quite abit

 

@Selleri Sounds about right, you might want to watch the moss as I find it can overwhelm the low growing Venus Fly Trap particularly early in the year before the Venus Fly Trap gets going. I take the moss away from the fly trap.
The traps can only catch a few insects before they don't reopen and go brown. You might want to remove the flowers this year. They come up from the centre like miniature light clusters. In winter mine have trapped and digested small snails.

 

Thanks for advise everybody, please do post some photos when you have a moment.

If I can get the conditions right for the VFT (which is actually looking quite happy and growing strongly...for now...) I'm sorely tempted to try other carnivorous plants as well.

 

An update- the poor plant is still alive and doing surprisingly well. It got infested in brave greenflies over the summer so started to grow all wonky and wrinkled, but now that the traps are fading away I can see that the actual rosettes look quite ok.



It's planted in this big jar with a layer of stones in the bottom, the rootball with whatever soil there was sits on top. Some gravel along the walls just for decorative purposes.