Venus Fly Trap - Growing a New Plant

I was in the store and I was trying to fill my actual shopping list, when I spotted this green plant that looked unusual. As I walked closer, I was excited to see that it was a Venus Fly Trap.

The Venus Fly Trap is a plant made famous by the movie, Little Shop of Horrors, where there was a Venus Fly trap that was altered and was big enough to eat human sized fare, and the shop owner had to trick people to come to the shop so that the plant would stop begging him for food.

Oh, yeah. His plant could talk. I recall the words, "Feed me" and perhaps it could sing as well.

My plant does not talk, nor does it beg for food. It seems to be content in its new pot and potting soil. I did put it in a much larger pot, since the pot from the store was extremely small.

I picked the blackened pieces off the plant, and felt a little guilty that when transplanted it to new dirt, I spilled a little potting soil on one of its traps. It snapped shut on it. Hopefully, there was some insect nutrition in it. It's been closed around it since Friday. Three days. Poor thing.

My daughter was intrigued by it, and touched one of the traps with a piece of napkin. Of course, it snapped shut. Since that moment, it seems to be less friendly. Perhaps it is mad at her and I. Perhaps, when her soon to be born child is older, it will make amends for us. [Yes, I'm going to be a grandma again, and that is what sparked me getting the plant at all. Easier to justify an odd purchase with a seemingly solid reason.]

Hopefully the little plant will start to get some food soon. I hate to think that I actually want my house to be buggy so my plant will be happy.

Smile.

Like I mentioned before, I re-potted it into a much larger pot. I put several pieces of lime rock in the bottom, since plants seem to like somewhere for the water to drain off, so their roots are not sitting in water on the bottom.

So, it went from a one cup pot to a 6 cup pot. It's not always good to increase pot size by more than an inch at a time, but, this was a desperate situation. According to the instructions, it prefers distilled water.

Where does it come from that it expects distilled water. Can anyone explain that to me?

The plant has some rules. Potting soil must be kept moist. I was going to water it since it only felt damp and my son said it was already moist. I did remove the black leaves and it seemed to add a few new traps since I did that.

The plant is sitting on a window sill.

I am so proud of my plant. It caught a bug!

I had to go through and clip off a few blackened traps. This is normal and needs to be done. As the traps complete their life cycle, they turn black and must be removed. This stimulates the plant to grow additional traps.

Here's a few photos of the maintenance.