Gift Republic GR200010: Grow It. Grow Your Own Carnivorous Plants, Green

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When it comes to caring for temperate carnivorous plants, including sundews and pitcher plants, there are three important things to keep in mind. Drosera capensis, the Cape sundew: one of the prettiest and most entertaining sundews, this species is also one of the most adaptable. For UK growers, all of these plants - and many more - are available from South West Carnivorous Plants.

However they aren’t difficult to keep so be patient and you will get the satisfaction of growing your own carnivorous plants. Carnivorous plants can be found on every continent except Antarctica and there are many species native to the UK including sundews, butterworts and bladderworts. Hardy carnivorous plants are best grown in a damp bog garden, lined with a perforated butyl liner and filled with low-nutrient specialist compost formulated for carnivorous plants. These tentacles can move, helping the Sundew to quickly suffocate and digest insects which have become stuck. Those that come from tropical forests, like Nepenthes, need warm, humid, partly shady conditions and should be grown indoors all year round.

Use rainwater to water carnivorous plants whenever possible – see our guide to collecting and storing rainwater. The ratio of the mix is not critical, 1 part peat with 1 part sand works well for most carnivorous plants.

The slender, green traps have red veining that becomes more conspicuous on the underside of the coppery-brown hoods that gave rise to its common name: the copper top pitcher plant. Hardy types such as sarracenias have a few care requirements, including: always watering with rainwater from a water butt or bucket left outside and continuing to keep the compost moist; ensuring they have lots of direct sunlight; and giving them a period of winter cold by keeping them in an unheated shed, conservatory or greenhouse. Alternatively, if your plant is a tropical pitcher plant ( Nepenthes, also known as a “Monkey Jar”), you might be better off leaving the plant in its dome for the time being. Some carnivorous plants are hardy, so can be grown outside all year round, while others need to be kept frost free, either indoors as houseplants or in a greenhouse.Only a few months later after that my VFT is thriving and the pitcher plant has sprouted 2 new plants with growing pitchers.

Carnivorous plants have a range of different mechanisms for catching prey, from tall trumpet-like pitchers, to rounded cups and traps that snap shut, to glistening sticky leaves.Many carnivorous plants grow in the wild in boggy or swampy ground that is acidic and low in nutrients, so growers traditionally used peat-based compost. Some varieties of adhesive traps will actively curl their sticky tentacles around struggling victims. If you're growing lots of plants, you could try releasing the predatory mite, Phytoseiulus persimilis on to your plants. Carnivorous plants don’t just catch tiny insects – some species of the tropical vine Nepethes are known to trap frogs, birds, mice, rats and other small mammals in their large fluid-filled pitchers.