FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Greetings from Leander, TX.

Any teachers here who have experience growing Venus Flytraps in the classroom? What should I know before we make a decision to buy it for our class? I'm an elementary school TA.

I’m not a teacher, but it would seem to me the requirements are no different than if you were growing it in a home. I would assume you would like to get proper supplemental lighting, and use only water with low total dissolved solids, such as distilled water. I think being there M-F would be ok, meaning the plants not being attended to for 2 days would be okay, as long as your grow light was on a timer.
If your school closed for summer break (assuming you are opened during COVID), you probably would want to bring the setup home.
if you are in Texas, maybe they could grow outdoors year round, but I will leave that to the experts.

@Supercazzola has it right. Just need to provide good growing conditions, which are detailed on FlytrapCare.com (clean water, appropriate soil, good lighting, etc.). And if you want to grow it in the classroom, you'll need to get some good artificial lighting. LED lighting is now fairly inexpensive and effective.

One challenge I have always seen is that the growing season for the flytrap is the opposite of the school season. For example, in Georgia schools run from August through May. That means that for at least 3 or 4 months, the traps will be dormant. Also, remembering how I was in school, those traps are going to constantly be triggered by little fingers. That is going to cause the actual traps to stop functioning. Not a problem, but something to be aware of. In buying the flytrap, I would not bother with cultivars and purchase a typical or seed grown trap.

To expand on Panman a bit: Once the traps are exhausted, at least some of the delight of a VFT has to dissipate, at least for the little ones. Maybe grow some easy Sundews alongside the VFTs? They're not quite as cool but little fingers aren't going to exhaust them. And sticky goo that eats bugs is pretty cool in it's own right.

Kids have short attention spans. Maybe just bring the VFT in for a couple weeks in the active growing season, and leave it at home the rest of the year? I've gifted some VFTs to a neighbor who teaches 5th grade, but the kids kill them off pretty quick. I think they try to feed the flytraps their school lunches or something.