How to care for your Venus fly trap
Top tips on how to keep your Venus fly trap alive from Matt Soper of Hampshire Carnivorous Plants
Matt Soper was just seven years old when he got his first Venus fly trap. He now grows thousands of carnivorous plants and owns the largest carnivorous plant nursery in the UK.
He shares his top tips on how to keep them alive, which definitely doesn鈥檛 include feeding them mince pies, turkey, cheese or chocolate.
鈥淚 saw a Venus fly trap on a David Bellamy programme when I was seven years old and I was desperate to own one, and asked my mum to buy one. Fifty years ago, they were difficult to find but my neighbour was a florist and she managed to find one. When I got it, I was so disappointed that it was so small.
鈥淭hey were dug up from the wild then. I fed it chocolate and killed it. Then I got a second one, fed it cheese, and killed that one too. By the time I had a third, I鈥檇 learnt my lessons and it flourished.
Matt has been trialling peat-free mixes to find the most successful sustainable alternatives to the traditional method of growing carnivorous plants in peat, and now grows all his Sarracenia peat-free.
Although Venus was his first love, Matt says Sarracenia are now his favourite carnivorous plant and he has an immense collection. 鈥淰enus fly traps are a great gateway plant for children to get into horticulture though and was the plant that started it all for me.鈥