AHHH! nonononononononononono!!!!

Never ever use fertilizer. EVER. Fertilizer KILLS venus flytraps.
They need to be potted in a 1:1 mix of sphagnum peat moss and perlite. I live near LAX and they grow wonderfully outside. They are not jungle plants as some people believe.

The best advice I can give you is to NOT buy any plants until after winter. If you want to make carnivorous plants a hobby of yours, buy Peter D'Amato's "The Savage Garden" and spend the winter reading it. Carnivorous plants are not hard to grow, they're just counterintuitive.

why does fertilizer kill flytrap? isnt it better? and i found 2 kind of flytrap, i dont know if its any different, one of it is short, have big trap, and round leaves. and the other one is longer,small trap, and no leaves.

Not sure about the types you described, but if you're finding them in a hardware store, they're probably either typicals or big mouths. No matter the type though, they all have the same cultivation requirements. Full sun, very moist soil(not when dormant though), and acidic + well draining media.

Either way. Take my word. Fertilizer is the fastest way to kill a flytrap, short of throwing it into a fire. These plants are native to the peat bogs of the East coast. The soil there is very acidic and has no nutrients, which is why they evolved to catch insects.

It's not a good idea to buy temperate carnivorous plants in winter at hardware stores. They are usually highly neglected. They can be nursed back to health at most other times of year, but it's a big gamble during winter.

so when should i buy it?

I'd buy em in the middle of spring. Until then, just read up on caring for them.

One thing, what kinda soil did you use to repot your VFT? Because you said it lost its original soil, are you using regular potting soil? Regular potting soil, again has nutrients and will definitely kill your plant. When you said you fed up to 3 months, you were using fertilizer for 3 month on your plants? If that the case, then your plants may be on their last rope.

Next time, follow drwurm advice, and the book "The Savage Garden" is definitely a good book and makes good reading.

All I have to add to the above advice is to start with tropical plants from respected growers and move gradually to temperate plants that require greater care. In winter you can get easy to grow tropical sundews like Drosera adelae and Drosera capensis and just keep them at room temperature in a good window or under florescent light all year. (Drosera adelae should be given only indirect sun or strong florescent light as it cannot take direct sun).

In any event, as was indicated above, fertilizer in the soil of any carnivorous plant is generally a very bad idea. Regular potting soil and moss in small bags will often contain fertilizers and adding more fertilizer just makes the problem worse. The plant's roots will rot and burn since they are not adapted to absorb much in the way of nutrients with their roots anymore. They adapted to absorb nutrients with their leaves and only in small amounts. Their roots are basically relegated to just holding the plant in place and absorbing water. Speaking of water, never water carnivorous plants with tap water as it usually is hard water and contains minerals, like calcium, and nutrients, like nitrogen, that will only add fertilizer to the soil and sour the moss so that infections can set in and kill the plant's roots. Only use distilled, reverse osmosis, or fresh rain water.

You can go to cobraplant.com and read up on care sheets and plant varieties to get a better idea of how to care for them. They are not hard to care for in general, just counterintuitive compared to other plants as indicated by Drwurm. They still need light and water just like other plants, but fertilizer is a big no-no in general.

You do not need a terrarium for most carnivorous plants... I grow even my tropicals open pot under a florescent light on a shelf. Most are able to adapt to low humidity if it is done slowly and gradually.

okay i have a couple of question again.
what about that big white fuzzy ball on the bottom underneath the what i think is the root? what is that? its bigger than the plant itself... and you said most are able to adapt to low humidity. how about when they havnt adapt yet..? what should i put it in. and i'm just wondering. i have this office lamp. can i use that for lighting? how high above should i put it? or how big is the florescent light have to be? i dont wanna buy a huge one when i only have one plant

Hello Upperg,

I would suspect the white fuzzy ball to be fungus if it looks organic. If not, I have no idea what it could be. If you can post a picture of it we might be able to tell you what it is.

Adapting a plant to low humidity can be done by leaving it in a dome, terrarium, or plastic bag for a couple of weeks. During the time it is covered, either punch some holes or open the cover a fraction of an inch every 3 days until the cover is completely open or contains so many holes that it no longer holds in humidity by the end of week two. After that, just take the cover off and the plant should be adapted. Venus Flytraps can grow in humidity as low as 15 percent.

The office lamp would work if you outfit it with a 100 watt energy saver florescent light bulb. If you are going to use it for the Venus Flytrap, place it as close to the plant as feasible (I place mine 1 inch from 12000 lumens of shop lights and that is barely adequate) and use it to supplement sunlight from a window. You will only need to do that if your plant cannot be placed outside where you live. Venus Flytraps are really outside plants as they need full sun or very intense light to grow normally. To give you an idea of the kind of light they need, the 12000 lumens of shop lights I have, 4- four foot, 40 watt tubes, provides barely a quarter of the intensity of real sunlight. In any event, Venus Flytraps should be dormant this time of year and should be kept in natural sun or on 8 hours of florescent light or less to keep them dormant (once dormant they really do not need light at all, but some light simply keeps fungus off them while they sleep). Keeping the temperature cool, down to 40 degrees or so, will insure the plants go into a deep dormancy and slow down fungal growth. When temperatures warm up and the days lengthen in spring the plant will wake up and resume normal growth.

Venus Flytraps that do not go dormant typically die off within a few months as they simply use up all their starch reserves over winter, particularly if they have little light (anything less than about 10000 lumens 16 hours a day is asking for trouble during the growing season) to allow the plant to recoup its losses.

Venus Flytraps are simply not low light plants like Ivy.

I think I can guess what that ball of fuzzy stuff it is, I bet its long fiber sphagnum moss. IÂve seen some nurseries like Gublers place a wad of sphagnum moss on the bottom of their pots.

it looks like a chewed up piece of white chicken

But it has to be a wad of long fiber sphagnum moss. So how's your plant doing?

looks dead, but still green on the bottom