The Problem With Warehouse Venus Flytraps

Walmart Venus Flytraps, generally our very first flytrap for most of us, but definitely not the easiest one to look after. Because as you guys may know, big box stores don't really care about their plants. Generally your first Venus Flytrap may come from a big box store like Walmart or Target or Lowe's if you're in America or here in Australia like Bunnings or something. But they just don't look after the plants. They keep them inside in the shade and they don't water them and they end up looking something like this. This one is dormant, it's actually very healthy but they look bad like this. And that is an issue that most first time growers actually come to in that they think their plants are dying or their plants actually are dying and they have no clue how to look after them. So let me explain to you how to look after your very first Venus Flytrap which might come from a big box store. So this is what's happening. You've gone to the big box store to find something else. You went looking for screws because you're building something at home or you went looking for an orchid or I don't know, a toilet brush or something and you walk past the plant section and you see one of these guys, a Venus Flytrap in like what we call a death cube. It's a plastic rectangular thing that holds a plant and you're like, shit, a Venus Flytrap, that's interesting, I want one. So you go ahead and buy one. But you have no clue how to look after it, you don't know anything about it and the plant doesn't look really good at all, well, you've come to the right place. So generally when you go to the big box store and you pick up one of these guys, these are from a big box store, they're from Bunnings here in Australia which is like Lowe's or Target or whatever else, places you can get plants from in the US and yeah, essentially you'll get your plant and it will most probably be very dry and the instructions on it very wrong and they will be light starved. That is generally what you find with these Venus Flytraps that you get from a big box store. I was lucky, I got mine when they were fresh in but some people are not so lucky and then they take the plant home, read the instructions and then very quickly kill your plants because the instructions are wrong. So let me explain to you what you actually should do. The very first thing that you should do once you get your plant is take it out of the death cube. Yes, everyone thinks the Venus Flytrap needs high humidity and everyone says that they need to stay in like a terrarium or a greenhouse or people say they're from jungles, no. They're native to North and South Carolina and it does get humid there but like right now it's like what, 30% humidity? These plants are more than happy. I've never grown my plants with any supplemental humidity and Venus Flytraps are one of the best growers for me so trust me, they don't need humidity, they don't need the death cube. Take your plants out of the death cube. If you're wondering how to get it out of the death cube because you know it's like the plant is sitting inside of this long tall thing, literally just cut it off, open up the bottom, get it out, cut it down the side, doesn't matter, just get it out of the death cube. Now the next thing that you might think is what you're meant to do is to keep them in the shade or something because you got it, it was inside the shade, the instructions say keep it like in half sun or something, no guys, that is very wrong. All Venus Flytraps and most carnivorous plants, even man, they're all grown in as much sun as possible. They need at least 8 hours of direct sunlight. I understand some places it's very hot but literally if it's very hot you give them more water, they still need a lot of sunlight. So that will be the next thing you do. If your plant is looking healthy, you put it straight outside into the sun. Now if your plant isn't looking too healthy and if it's dry, you may need to water them first. Now the type of water you use is rainwater, reverse osmosis water or distilled water. This is the type of water that your plants need. If you get your Venus Flytrap and it looks dry, literally sit the plant in a bowl of this type of water and that is going to become its best friend now. Venus Flytrap, carnivorous plants, always sitting in water and yeah, let it soak in that water, let the soil get dark like this one is and then move it outside into the bright sunlight so that they can start growing again. Besides that, if your plant has been growing in the big box store for a while and it's very dry and very light starved, what you may notice is that the soil will get dark but the plant still looks long and stretchy. Well, in that case, you can't take your plant directly outside. You will have to let it acclimate to more sunlight. So what you'll need to do is take your plant, sit it outside but somewhere that only gets like one or two hours of sunlight and you leave it in that spot for about two weeks until you see new growth coming out of the center of the plant. Then after those two weeks, you move it somewhere that gets about four hours of sunlight and you do that for two weeks and you continuously do that in two-week intervals until you've moved your plant into position with full sunlight. And at that point, your plant will be in the best possible spot. It needs to have as much sunlight as possible, as much water as possible, good clean water and obviously not in a death cube, just like this, outside in full sunlight, sitting in water all the time. That is the very basic care that you need for your very first Venus flower trap that you might get from Walmart or Lowe's or Bunnings or any big box store. And yeah, if you guys have any more questions about your very first plant, you can email me or Instagram me or Facebook me or comment down below. I'm very happy to help. So I hope that very, very brief description of how to look after your very first plant was helpful. If you want to figure out more, well, subscribe to the channel and watch all the videos. There are a lot of videos on their care. But now I'm going to talk a little bit why they actually let their plants look like this. Well, you need to understand the people that work at Walmart or Lowe's or whatever, they don't care. They get minimum wage, they don't get paid enough to care about their job and they do not know anything about these plants either. Do they? I mean, the fact that you are watching this video to figure out some more shows that you are one of the very few people that actually do care about looking after the plant. Now not everyone will watch the video. Most people will read the Death Cube's instructions, which are wrong because, you know, some people think that the Death Cube people want the plants to die so they buy more, I don't know. But they'll read those instructions and very quickly kill the plants, which is what happens in most cases. And almost 90% of the people who message me are asking me about their Walmart or Lowe's or whatever Venus Flytrap that they got from the big box store and it's literally dying. And I don't understand why it's doing so bad and I basically give them the instructions that I just gave to you guys. As you guys can tell, yes, looking after a Venus Flytrap is very easy, very, very, very easy. You just need sunlight, the correct water and let them sit in the water all the time. That is it. They're so easy. No humidity things. You don't have to feed them, they catch their own food and even if they don't catch food, you still don't have to feed them. Unless you really want to, you can feed them once every two to four weeks. They don't need it though. But it's literally that simple. Now as I said, the people that work at these big box stores, I mean, we can't blame them, they don't know. But we can kind of blame the instructions on the box because they're wrong. Now as I said, the instructions on these death cubes are most of the time very wrong. For example, they'll say keep your plants in the shade, water them once a week and feed them every day. They'll say stuff like that. Generally that is the exact opposite of what you need to do and that will kill your plants very quickly. Like within two weeks your plants will be more than dead. And obviously that's what I find with many people who do contact me. So why is it that they have this incorrect information on the box? Well, as I've said, some people say that it's because they want the plants to die so people can buy more. But that doesn't make much sense to me. I mean I get it, but at the same time I don't get it. If someone buys a plant and they follow instructions and the plant ends up dying, will that person really want to buy another Venus flytrap? Because in their mind they're just killing them. And will that person go tell their friends, hey I have this Venus flytrap, it's doing so well, you should get one too. They probably won't tell them that. So from that perspective, they've killed a plant, which sucks, and they think they can't grow it and they won't tell anyone about it. They'll just say they're impossible to look after and essentially everyone gets to the point where no one actually wants to grow them because they think it's way too difficult. And I find that to be true. I find that this hobby is so small and so niche that the amount of people that actually grow these plants is maybe 100,000 in the whole world. Maybe a quarter of a million, maybe. I mean people who actually go and actively grow these plants. There might be people out there that just watch the videos because they're interested in them but don't want to grow them. But that's my guess for the amount of people who actually grow the plants. And what that means is that people have to resort to pretty sleazy tactics of trying to get people to buy more plants, like wrong information, so the plant dies and hopefully the person gets hooked and buys another one and kills it and buys another one. We never really know, do we? But in turn, like I just explained, it creates a very small community. And I find that to be true, especially on YouTube. How many carnivorous plant channels do you guys know? Obviously there's this one, I know of Brad's Greenhouse, I know of California Carnivores, which I don't think they post very often, Red Leaf Exotics, but they don't post very often either. Generally I don't know of any carnivorous plant channel that posts once a week like I do. And that just shows how small the community is and how few people in the world actually even know about carnivorous plants. Because I can tell you, there's a lot of people that I've met in this country that I've told them what my hobby is and they've never even known of a plant that can eat a bug. And that's down to people trying to grow the plants and not trying to grow them more, not telling people and saying they're just impossible, or just a lack of people being educated on them, which is what I'm trying to do with this channel, teach you guys and show them off and everything. But yeah, that's a little bit of food for thought that some people want them to die, but at the same time, is that really productive? It might be capitalistic, but in the end, are you actually gaining anything from killing off your own supply, and in turn, killing off all your possible customers? You guys tell me. Anyway, I'll see you guys in the next episode.