If you grow your Venus flytrap plants outside, the answer to your question is never. They will catch all the food they need on their own. I was skeptical of this myself when I started growing Venus flytraps but, in fact, it is rare to see an open trap! They are very good at luring and capturing their own food.
If you grow your Venus flytrap inside, or if you just can’t stand the temptation, feeding them a couple of insects a month would be sufficient…after all, it is so much fun to watch those traps slam closed! Be sure to feed them live insects or, if you feed them dead insects, you’ll have to spend a little extra time massaging the sides of the trap to ensure digestion begins.
Under no circumstances should you feed your Venus flytrap any kind of people food. This will be very harmful to the plant and kill the trap that you feed the food to. Hamburger, pork, chicken, pasta, potato chips, avocado are all not on the menu for Venus flytraps. Venus flytraps are insectivorous plants, which means they only eat insects. So, feel free to feed them ants, spiders, earwigs, flies, or any other creepy-crawly that you can catch!
When flytraps are dormant, there is no need to feed them. In fact, there is never really a dire need to feed Venus flytraps, as they are more than capable of photosynthesizing for their own energy just like other plants. And during the winter months, flytraps drop most of their larger leaves that are big enough to catch prey, and the traps they retain normally become unresponsive or very slow to respond. In nature, there aren’t many insects out and about during the winter, so flytraps have evolved to not waste energy trying to catch something that isn’t there!
For more information on feeding Venus flytraps, be sure to read the article: Feeding Venus flytraps.
