FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Clearly, I won't be doing this, but I'd like to know if I could theoretically do it.

I know there are a few species of flytrap and sundew that can be kept outside in warmer climates, and a thick garden of those looks like it would be very hard for a bug to get through alive.
If I were to dig a three-foot-wide trench around my entire house, fill it with bog substrate, lay a drip line in it to keep it moist, and pack it with flytraps and sundews, would it be a near-impenetrable moat for crawly bugs like spiders? It certainly seems like a thing that could be done, though there are probably better ways to keep spiders out of your house.

Flytraps and nearly all temperate sundews can be kept in in-ground artificial bogs in climates where it can even drop into the mid 20s during the winter.

Anyways, in regards to your hypothetical question, spiders are going to find their way into your house either way. However, if you live in the U.S. (exempting a few states), none of the spiders that you would encounter in your home would be harmful.

(Also there's only one species of flytrap)

It won't work on spiders. They can fly. They shoot out silk into the wind and let go and they drift with the wind wherever it goes.

I live in Texas. We have black widows and brown recluses, but I'm more concerned about rattlesnakes than about spiders who like to live in holes. The 6"+ centipedes with agonizingly painful bites are also higher on my concern list.
This isn't a serious "I do not want spiders in this house", I live in a 120+ year old house that we can't even keep rats out of (we have cats now), let alone bugs. Plus, baby spiders put out long strands of silk and float on the wind, they'd get over the moat. This clearly wouldn't be a practical method for keeping anything out of a house, but it would be a hilarious method.

I like the idea of a moat. I've been wanting to make a communal bog garden myself. Maybe sometime in the future

Where in Texas are you? I'm in southeast Texas.

KategoricalKarnivore wrote:Where in Texas are you? I'm in southeast Texas.

Was fixing to ask the same thing...

Fishkeeper, cats are the way to go for snakes. I keep two or three cats outdoors. They drag dead snakes up to the house all of the time, along with killing insects such as the big black and yellow centipedes like we have here in Texas, so i know they're doing their job very well. Benurmanii is correct in that no carnivorous plant will stop every living insect from getting to your house. I have quite the cp garden outside, and i see centipedes, spiders, toads, and all kinds of creatures nestling beneath the leaves of vfts and sundews etc, and my other cp's that i keep outdoors. The best bug killers i have seen are drosera, then sarracenia in a close 2nd. For snakes, they make those granules (i forget the name) and they are meant to be a deterrent for snakes. You can buy it at Home Depot, or Lowes. I put that on the ground around the perimeter of the property at the beginning of spring every year, and i dont see many of them, except for the ones that the cats drag home dead already. The thought of a moat would be cool though lol. What part of the state are you in? A little west of DFW here..

I don't actually worry about rattlesnakes getting into the house, they're just higher on my list of "things to not touch" than spiders. I live in a semi-urban area, so the only snakes we have are little ground snakes that our cats like to murder. And, fortunately, we don't get the giant centipedes, only the tiny ones that live under rocks. The worst that gets into the house is wolf spiders.
(side note: if you see a wolf spider in your house and its back is fuzzy, do not poke it with a fork to see if it's dead unless you want 200 baby spiders in your couch)

I'm in Central Texas near Austin, and I actually plan to set up some kind of a bog garden at some point. Probably mostly stocked with rescues once Home Depot gets carnivorous plants in the spring, they mostly just have poinsettias now.

I wonder how much of a bug preventer a 6-foot-wide band of Drosera would be? I won't actually be trying that, but the main non-pesticide solution I see to bugs getting into people's houses is for them to put sticky traps everywhere. Drosera are just self-cleaning sticky traps with bait.