FlyTrapCare Forums

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and have just bought 3 venus fly traps.

I am doing a nitrogen experiment for my advanced biology class with my plants and I need them to start from relatively the same state. I wish to prune most of the heads off my plants (except one). I am looking for how many new heads grow and i know once i prune a head that head won't grow back but a new one will. Should i take all the heads off and leave the leaves OR should i take off the whole leaves (except for a few for photosynthesis?) Any tips or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Well maybe you could take off some leaves, but leave an equal amount on each plant and make sure they're about the same size too...another thing you should be aware of is checking to see if the rhizomes are about the same size as well in order to have a more controlled experiment However using three different plants might pose a problem (Example: One plant can be more vigorous, or naturally grow bigger traps than the other 2...etc.) maybe the best way to see how the amount of nitrogen affects the plants would be to divide 1 single plant into multiple divisions and give them different amounts of nitrogen and compare their growth. Of course you could use the other 2 spare plants to do the same so you could collect more data
By the way, what are you planning to do for your experiment?

For a perfect long-term experiment, I would suggest dividing the biggest and healthiest looking of your VFTs and putting the divisions in two identical pots with identical media with identical light conditions, and, of course, using the same water and watering schedule. This will take a few months to get good results as there will be a decent amount of time lost while the VFT is in shock, which means it will be virtually inactive for 1-2 weeks.

For a short-term experiment, I would pick the two that look the most similar and do as little as possible to modify them and repeat the above, except do not repot them. Use the third one as your personal fun plant and just say it's the control.

Just realized another variable you should account for: feeding. The amount of bugs and types of bugs your traps eat will definitely alter the nitrogen content. If you are growing indoors, this will be easy to account for since they shouldn't catch too much unless you feed them. If you are growing outdoors, I would suggest maybe feeding one on a regular interval and letting the other catch naturally and comparing the differences. Or, if you want to, you can cut the traps off one plant right before they become active so the leaves can still photosynthesize but they wont bring in extra nitrogen through bug consumption.

I also realized that my above suggestions don't change any variables so you should get the same results. I am not sure the goal of your study, so you might want to alter the conditions for one of the plants if you are doing a comparative analysis.

Thank you to everyone giving me advice! I don't have to start my experiment for another week and I just transplanted my traps into new pots with identical soil. As for the experiment, I am growing my plants indoors so no outside bugs will interfer. I am doing a dose dependent experiment with nitrogen to see which VTF will grow the most traps. Since I don't have the time to do a year long experiment I picked plants that were about the same size. I am currently giving theme equal water amounts and sunlight to let them adapt to the bigger medium.