FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I only just bought my first VFT about a week ago. It looks good and is growing new mouths. Its about 3 inches in diameter and the pot its in is about 4 wide and 4 inches deep. When should i repot it and how big a pot should i use? Also when i repot it should i leave it in the peat thats around it and just put everything into the new pot or tease apart the roots and put it in completely fresh peat with no old peat still around it???

That pot should be deep enough. From what I've read if you have a deeper pot the plant can get bigger, but you shouldn't have any issues with a 4" deep pot. VFTs don't really need a lot of horizontal growing room, they're usually pretty happy to fill whatever you put them in.

As far as when you should repot it, I believe most people repot once every one to two years depending on the state of the potting medium. Peat tends to start to break down after about a year or so. When you repot you'll want to put the plant into something that is deep and well insulated. 16oz foam cups work well, they're not pretty, but they're cheap and they work. When repotting you should try to get the old potting medium away from the roots. This can be easily accomplished by dipping the roots in distilled water a few times to cause the old potting medium to come off the roots. Good luck!

Venus Flytraps' roots grow down instead of fanning out more horizontally like many plants. They benefit from pots that are deeper than they are wide, and 5.5 - 8 inches (14-21 centimeters) or more in depth will benefit the plants.

You can plant several Venus Flytraps in a deeper and larger planter and they will also benefit from the temperature buffering property of a greater planting medium mass (a larger amount of "soil").

Steve