Venus Flytrap Growing

Most people feed their Venus flytraps with flies. Those disgusting little bugs that buzz everywhere and are generally a nuisance are both a good size and nutrient level for your plant. However there are issues with feeding flies to your plant including:

• they’re hard to get into the trap without killing them first
• if you place them in with a pair of tweezers you need to forcefully wrench the tweezers out which risks damaging your plant
• They leave a hideous carcass behind
• Catching them is difficult

Maggots on the other hand have none of the above problems. They’re easy to get into the trap, just pick them up and drop them, they leave no carcass behind as their squishy bodies are almost entirely digested by the trap and they’re slow moving so are easy to catch.

Of course maggots don’t generally live around the home unless you happen to live in a cesspool, in which case I suggest turning your computer off and cleaning your house from top to bottom right now! If you don’t live in a cesspool and are planning to feed your Venus flytrap with maggots you are either going to have grow your own, track down a rotting piece of meat covered in them or buy some. Maggots can often be purchased at pet shops or fishing supplies stores.

Growing your own maggots is pretty easy though. Just get a small jar, place a piece of meat in there (chicken works good) and leave it outside for a while. Eventually a few flies will land on it, leave them there for a few hours to make sure they’ve done their thing (laying eggs) at which time you should get the flies out of there (shaking the jar usually works). Pour a little water inside, or add some wet cotton wool and put a lid on it with a few holes punched in the top. After about a week you should have some nice healthy looking maggots growing in some gooey sludge. Scoop the maggots out, wash them with a little water to get the smelly rotten meat off and take them to your plant. Gently place the maggots in the center of one of the traps and they’ll usually trigger the trap immediately. The trap will close around the maggot and voila, it’s feeding time  About a week later your trap will open and magically there will be no dead carcass! At most there will be a shiny looking gleam on your trap.

Some people claim to have found that their maggots crawl out of the trap so they have held them inside the trap with a toothpick, however I have never personally had any troubles with just dropping them in. In fact even when they move, they usually move towards the middle of the trap which lets the leaves clamp totally shut, encasing the maggot inside the trap ready to be digested.

Maggots are my preferred food for my flytraps due to the ease of feeding and the lack of yucky bug skeletons. However growing/finding maggots is a rather disgusting activity and not something I recommend doing if bad smells bother you a lot. I grow and process my maggots in a smell proof fume hood in my lab, so the grossness factor isn’t so bad for me. But growing maggots at home is likely to be a rather unpleasant affair and you may be better of purchasing them.