The reason why coastal north and south carolina have venus flytraps is the plants are sheltered somewhat from very cold air. The sphagnum moss forms seepage areas and bogs which are dense and VERY acidic (3 on the Ph scale) which also resists freezing in most cases. The sphagnum moss is so acidic that even when temps get down to the 15F mark, it is actually much warmer as the air that low to the ground is not as cold, the acidity helps resist freezing, and the plants have built in insulation being surrounded by sphagnum moss. If I were you, for winter dormancy I would wrap the plant itself in a slightly damp sphagnum moss ball, place it in a cup with just lightly moist peat around the ball of moss and put it in a fridge that is no colder than 33F. The plants I have read can supposedly stand temperatures down to 20F but some orchids are supposed to handle down to 25F and have been killed by nights in the mid 30's in the panhandle. I would take anything you read with a grain of salt and not expose small or newly received plants to anything near freezing. Better safe than sorry I say, and the plant will still go dormant with any temp less than 40F at night. Remember everyone for plants, dormancy is simply a period of rest, not deep sleep or hibernation so you don't want to throw your plant in a meat locker and freeze it to death and expect it to just sprout back the next spring- they are not animals that burrow or use caves, they are plants that use mother nature as an insulator so be careful what you expose a plant to. Like I said, the plant with still go inactive at night and use light photosynthesis during the daylight if you give the plant sun during the day and put it in a fridge at night. I find the fridge to be the easiest way to get any kind of plant- orchid or carnivorous plants alike through winter dormancy and ready to flower without killing the plant. As long as temps are cooled off and the plant has only lightly moist medium and is put in a ziploc bag to prevent desiccation in the fridge, it should be fine when you take it out in the spring to grow.

You can obtain peatmoss and sand at local hardware stores such as Home Depot, Lowes or Walmart. If you're thinking of obtaining sand, make sure it's "play sand" and wash it well. just ask any store clerk. I use a mixture of peatmoss with perlite. my mixture i use for my VFTs is: 50% peatmoss +50% perlite. and they grow fine. be careful when transplanting your plant into new media. always make sure to keep its soil moisten at all times during this time of year. Grow your vft outside in a sunny location or in a sunny windowsill. your plant may get 4-6 hours of direct sunlight during the growing season(February through Late October) flytraps grow much better outdoors than in a terrarium. so... 1)transplant your plant(if you choose to transplant it) 2)water your plant to keep its soil moisten at all times, never allow it to dry out. Use a water saucer or tray and keep the water level high atleast 1 Inch or so. this way, the soil will always remain moisten. 3)keep your flytrap in a sunny location that gives nice amount of bright sunlight. **within a few weeks, your plant will make new traps. just be patient*** Also, don't bug poking and making its traps close all the times.. you will stress it and may kill it while trying to recover from shock. ### Hope all goes well ### :)

Hi Ok Ill tell you this so its easy to understand why. Carnivorous Plants evolved in very low nutrient soil, thus they developed so that they could catch prey and disolve them. Now lets take the VFT for example, it snaps shut trapping its prey, it then dissolves the insect into a "soup". Now think about this, how is this "soup" absorbed? Through the leaves afcause. If you put your plant in normal potting soil it will die, because the potting soil has lots of nutrients, same as giving it hard tap water that contains lots of minerals, the plant cannot accept this due to its evolution. No now that we know the ROOTS cannot tolerate nutirents but the LEAVES can we can move on. Some fertilizers where developed to be used for "foliar feeding" of "leaf feeding", because these plants can absord nutrients via the leaves we can use some of these that have been tested and found to be ok. Of these, foliar feeds such as "MIRACID" and "EPIPHYTES DELIGHT" work fine, BUT!, remember to HALVE the dose for the plants. Since you are a newbie, remeber not to give your plant TAP WATER, only rain water, distilled water or reverse osmosis water (water that is pure without minerals) Soils used should be Sphagnum Peat mixed with something like Perlite (sphagnum peat is not nutrient heavy and is acidic, perlite is for drainage) Next, dont ever feed your plant meats, ONLY INSECTS, WORMS and so forth, they CANNOT dissolve the proteins and fats in meats, this will kill them. Next, your VFT's traps can only close shut a maximum of 2-3 times before it will go black and die. The black trap should be cut off at the base of the leaf, new ones will grow, thus DONT overfeed them. If you do, you will end up with a trapless plant which looks really bad. The recommended feeding is to feed one open trap(prey should be nomore than 1/3rd the size of the trap, big prey can kill the trap because of the energy needed to digest it) once the trap has digested the prey and opened back up, then you ca feed another one. If you dont want to loose traps from feeding them insects, you can only foliar feed, or you can do both, just dont go overboard, you can overfeed your plants. Next, VFT's and alot of CP's from the USA go into hibernation like animals, this rest period is reffered to as dormency, it generally occurs from Halloween and ends at the latest by Valentines Day. Your plants will need this rest period, the dormency occurs from the shortened sun periods in winter and from temperatures from 40-50 F. At this time the plants MUST NOT be fed, they should get less water (just enough to keep moist), around about February it should be safe to come out of dormency. At this time you can repot your plant as a new peat mix envigorates the plants growth, you can now put your plant but in the light and continue water as per normal. Cut off any dead leaves, the plant will now start its new growth. Hope this helps Sheldon

I recently bought one of the Bug Biting Plants Terrarium. There is a Venus Fly Trap and a Sarracenia x. year old dormant seedlings in a 5x5x10 inch terrarium. I followed the directions on the terrarium but I am confused as what to do next. All the instructions said was to plant them, add 1/4 cup water and to re-cover the terrarium and that the plants should grow in 4-8 weeks. I was wondering if I need to water them and open the terrarium up so that they get sunlight and fresh air at all after the initial planting. Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.