Carnivorous plants....

Yeah, I think that as long as you get periodic rains, this sort of garden can pretty much be left to it's own devices with very little maintenance needed. Any bugs that try to go in there to eat the plants get eaten themselves.

I did have to put fencing around the mini bogs to keep armadillos from rooting around in them, though. We've got some around here. Silly little buggers. The babies will pretty much root right around your feet if you don't make any sudden movements. But still, they play hell in the gardens, and the mini bogs are damp enough to attract their unwanted attention.

Besides that, just sunlight and enough rainwater and the flytraps appear to be happy and able to take care of themselves with the bugs they catch. Climate appears to be OK for them where I am located, since they are natively found in coastal North Carolina, and people who work with them seem to think a small dormancy period in the Winter is good for them.

I guess I'm wondering how they will do long term since I'm not refreshing the medium any. I guess time will tell on that.

Maybe this Winter I'll put in a larger bog by using a kiddie pool liner. Would be nice to find some sort of liner that would keep two separate water levels so I could figure out what the sundews like. I still have some apparently thriving, but they don't seem as happy as the fly traps apparently are.

Spring appears to be sproinging..... Here are the sundews bouncing back...

And the venus flytraps likewise coming to life...



















BTW, you can also see the pollen season is starting to kick into high gear around here....

Yeah, I know, most of you are probably really not interested in these things, but I'm really enjoying growing them and watching the traps develop. There has been some substantial growth just since the last batch of photos.

First off, I have a strange one that developed. I thought one of the smaller VFTs was putting out a pretty big flower stalk really early, but it just looked really strange. Then it started to unfold leaves. And some of those leaves developed traps on them. More and more of them all the time at the top of that stalk. Well, I'm a newbie at this, so maybe it's just normal, but I've never seen any photos of a VFT developing in this way. :shrug01:

On to more photos!

And more.......

Still more.....

And a couple of sundews while I am at it.....

The Venus Fly Traps started blooming a couple of days ago. The sundews have already been going nuts putting out flowers.

Venus fly traps are beginning to flower in earnest now.

Another one of the venus fly traps is doing something weird this year. This one is growing some traps right on the side of it's flower stalk...



Not sure I'm going to get many, if any seeds this year, though. It's been extremely dry here the past month, and I may have let the bogs get a bit too dry. The plants look OK, but maybe more water was needed to develop the seeds. What should be seed pods are just turning brown and looking dried up. Oh well, live and learn....