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Caring for carnivorous
plants is a little bit different from caring for a fern or a potted
rose. This is because in order for the plant to live it needs to feel like
it is still in its natural habitat. You cannot use regular potting soil
when planting or repotting carnivorous plants or you will kill them. You
need to use a mixture of clean sand (the kind for swimming pool filters
works great), sphagnum peat moss, perlite, and ling fiber sphagnum moss.
You cannot use any fertilizers in your mixture and be sure that there are
no fertilizer additives in the components of your mixture when you buy
them. This mixture works best because it is low in nitrogen and other
nutrients that are found in regular potting soil, and because they retain
water better.
You should keep your carnivorous plants
well watered, but be very careful not to over-water them. Make sure that
your pot is well drained. It is best to keep a plate under the drained pot
and keep about a half an inch to an inch of water in the plate so that the
plant can soak up the water when it is needed.
The water you use cannot be tap water. Tap
water is full of chemicals that will kill a carnivorous plant with time.
Distilled water or captured rain water works very well for carnivorous
plants. You can get some of the chemicals out of tap water, like the
chlorine that harms carnivorous plants, by setting it out in the sun for
about a week before using it, but the rain water or distilled water are
still the best.
The pots you plant your carnivorous plants
in should be glazed or plastic pots. Don’t use clay pots because they
will eventually release chemicals and salt into the soil mixture that your
plants won’t like.
In the wild, carnivorous plants are perfectly capable of catching their own food. Since your carnivorous plant lives indoors and doesn’t have access to its usual food source, insects, then you will need to provide the food for them. Carnivorous plants only get a portion of their nutrients from insects and other invertebrates so you only need to feed your indoor carnivorous plant one or two small insects each week, or even every two weeks.
Using these simple care instructions to take care of your carnivorous plants will surely keep them alive and well for a much longer time, years perhaps, than if you treat them like any other house plant.
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