I have decided to start growing some carnivourous plants, venus fly traps, purple pitchers, cobra lilies and the such. I was wondering if anyone here grew them and could give me some advice about them. I'm trying to decide if a terrarium or a sun house would be better to grow them in?

Venus flytraps are great... unfortunately mine died off, due to the rubbish nature of the scottish climate for growing such plants.
Pitcher plants are somewhat hardier and grow better in the average house.

Sounds like it's worth a try. I would like to know how to grow one? Well I perfer to learn how to grow a Venus Flytrap.

For several years, I raised pitcher plants, sundews, and flytraps. I'd recommend the California Carnivores website:

http://www.californiacarnivores.com/

I'd also recommend D'Amato's book, The Savage Garden:Cultivating Carnivorous Plants. The book did wonders for me in the startup of my terrarium. Over the course of about a year, the tropical pitchers grew very large!

My terrarium was a garage-sale 55 gallon aquarium, bought inexpensively since it wasn't watertight. I placed two like-sized pieces of clear glass over the top to support two fluorescent work-light assemblies. Each work-light housed two fluorescent bulbs, for a total of four. I found actual grow lamps, not simply standard bulbs. These were controlled by a timer to give the necessary many hours of good light to the terrarium.

For the necessary humidity, I placed an aquarium heater into a Paul Masson (brand) wine carafe, pictured here:



You'll need distilled water in fair quantities for your plants, and I used the clean distilled h2o in the carafe so to avoid the gunk from our notoriously hard middle-western tap water. The reason for the two glass panels over the top of the terrarium was to allow varying the gap between them (over the middle of the terrarium) to control the humidity. Also necessary was a thermometer to monitor the temperature within the terrarium, and a humidity meter/gauge.

The rest will be covered in the excellent book already mentioned. One note: Flytraps require a seasonal dormancy period, where they receive much reduced light levels.

If I can be of any further assistance, you're welcome to PM me anytime. Enjoy!



In the humid local summers, I was able to place flytraps outdoors to actively lure local insects. I was surprised to come from work one day and discover this trap had nabbed a daddy-longlegs! The creature's body was within the trap, and its legs wriggled for a couple days until the trap worked its magic. Nature can be cruel, but the plant was effective. I've entitled the photo "Hungry Little Plant."

I've thought of a little more for you. As I mentioned, it's necessary to only water your plants with distilled water. I'd purchase five gallons at a time, in a large container, from a local water store. I also bought a hand-operated pump to dispense the water from the large container.

I placed colored aquarium gravel in the bottom of the terrarium and it was quite decorative. The terrarium proved easy enough to maintain, far simpler than an actual aquarium. As the plants grew, visitors found the display to be remarkable. The tropical pitcher plants, especially, grew to become large, fascinating, and beautiful.

Within the terrarium, I placed a plastic windowsill planter, like this:



upside down, to provide a surface to place the various potted plants upon. This brought the plants closer to the overhead grow-lights, and in the pitcher's case, allowed for the plants to naturally droop down, eventually spreading across the gravel layer.

I tried to feed the plants on a weekly basis insects I'd caught. Ladybugs proved plentiful and slow enough for me to capture.

wow thats great info, thanks so much for that! its truly appreciated, youre a gem

I did a school project on carnivorous plants once. For venus-flytraps I think you can't feed them beef cuz' they die for some reason, but I dunno'.

Well the're not actually carnivores but rather insectivores. Thats prob why