It's summer, which means

It's summer, which means carnivorous bog plants like Venus flytraps, trumpet pitchers, and temperate sarracenia are all up and growing. In this video, we're gonna talk about the basics of caring for the Venus flytrap, the classic carnivore that we all know and love. To care for a Venus flytrap during its growing season, you'll need to focus on a few key things: water, light, and food. To water a Venus flytrap, it's important that you only use reverse osmosis, distilled or rainwater so that you prevent salts and minerals from seeping into the soil and harming your plant. Fly traps should be bottom watered via the tray method. So all you need to do is take a container like plastic Tupperware or a glass ramekin, for example, and fill it with a couple inches of water. Then just place your potted plant into the water. This creates a bog like environment similar to how it grows in the wild. You can let the water get low, but make sure to refill it because you don't want the soil to dry out. When it comes to lighting, Venus flytraps want what most bog plants want: long hours of bright, direct sunlight. Indoors they can do well in a south facing window or beneath grow lights, but they can also be grown outdoors. They will love the sunlight and food supply. Just make sure that if you live somewhere with extreme heat, like here in Texas, that you protect your Venus Flytrap from scorching afternoon rays. And keep them well watered. As for food, fly traps only need one or two traps fed once per month. So how do you accommodate that? So when it comes to feeding your Venus fly trap, live insects are gonna be your best bet, because the motion, like, the movement of the insects in the trap is going to be what triggers it to actually close around the insect and start to digest it. If you for some reason, don't have access to live insects, or if it's just not catching things on its own, because it will catch insects on its own, But if for some reason it doesn't have access to live insects, you can use dead ones. Here's what you need to know about feeding a Venus flytrap dead insects. It CAN be done. Even though it is not ideal, it can be done. If it's not catching anything, and you're not able to get live insects, and you're going month after month without food, basically. The key thing to remember is that it needs motion to close and to consume whatever is in the trap. These hairs that are, like, around it and on the inside, those are going to be what detects the motion. Take your dead mealworm or insect... Tickle and stimulate The hairs to let them Know there is food to Close around. And we got the trap to close now on the food. Okay. And those are the basics to taking care of a Venus flytrap during its growing season. As we get deeper into autumn. We will guide you through putting your flytrap into dormancy. And then next spring, help you take your flytrap out of dormancy. But until then, enjoy your plant. And let us know in the comments if you have any questions, any feedback, or anything you wanna talk about!