a conversation with “mr. venus flytrap” - joel garner his ... · terrarium of carnivorous...

A Conversation with “Mr. Venus Flytrap” - Joel Garner

His Secrets to Growing Venus Flytrap Plants

Forward A short time ago, I had the honor of speaking with a gentleman who, by his numbers, is probably the number one seller of Venus Flytrap plants on the internet. He obviously knows something about how to successfully grow a Venus Flytrap plant. It is his business. His name is Joel Garner, of www.JoelsCarnivorousPlants.com. In this interview, Joel is going to let us in on the secrets of growing these amazing plants. There are some real gems in here for the beginner and expert gardener alike. And Joel also tells us a little about his story - how a security guard in California went on to become one of the biggest online seller of Venus Flytrap plants in the USA. The following is a transcript of that conversation. This is a great story. Enjoy. And here’s to successful gardening and growing. Mike Green www.VenusFlytrapCenter.com

Transcript of Conversation Mike: Hello. This is Mike from www.VenusFlytrapCenter.com, and I'm really excited

today because I have a great interview ahead of me. We're fortunate to be speaking to Joel Garner, who is the owner of Joel's Carnivorous Plants. Joel grows and sells carnivorous plants, and the journey involves going from a venous security guard, to running his own fulltime business growing and selling Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants.

A Conversation with “Mr. Venus Flytrap” - Joel Garner Secrets of Growing Venus Flytraps

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I'd like to introduce you now to Joel Garner. Joel, welcome to the call.

Joel: Thank you. Glad to be here. Mike: Well great, Joel. Can you tell the listeners a brief background of yourself? Joel: I grew up in the South Bay area, California. I was in and out of college a lot. I

have a lot of college years, but I only have an AA degree, so I never really went anywhere with all my college experience. I worked as a security guard for probably about 10 years.

Mike: Really? Joel: Closer to the end of that time, I became a foster father, my wife and I both

actually became foster parents for a couple of my nephews, my sister's sons. We took care of them for about 15 months and that took a lot of my time and energy. Most of our free time was used up being foster parents. Eventually, they went back to live with my sister after the state of California allowed them to do that.

When that happened, I found myself with money to spare and a lot of free time,

and I didn't know what to do with myself.

I figured with this new found time on my hands, that I better get a hobby of some sort. So I thought back to my childhood with my number of attempts growing carnivorous plants, and how I always had this idea in my mind of having a terrarium of carnivorous plants growing in my room or my house. It just never really happened, so I thought I'd give that a shot. So I went out and got a terrarium actually, I think the terrarium might have been one I had had a long time ago and just didn't every use. I think it was originally for fish.

I bought a bunch of carnivorous plants and stuck them in my terrarium and turned a light on for them. Of course, I killed them just like before. So that spurred me to try to figure out why are they dying. I then researched, mostly online at first, how to care for these plants. As I did that, I figured it out. I actually figured out ways to grow them in a terrarium, although that's generally not the best place to do most of them. I consistently advise my customers not to do that, because they'll probably just do exactly what I did, which is kill them. They have very specific requirements you have to meet in a terrarium. It's not as simple as just sticking them in a glass enclosure with a light. Usually that [a terrarium] is going to grow mold and fungus better than a carnivorous plant.

So as I figured out how to successfully grow these plants, I just inadvertently found the whole carnivorous plant market. I purchased plants from a number of different online web stores and figured out quite a bit about it, and it seemed to be



that it was just basically a very young market, where you didn't just have a few nurseries really dominating it. Instead, you had nurseries that were fairly young. It seemed to me to be a lot of opportunity to expand into it.

This market was particularly true with the Nepenthes, which are tropical pitcher plants. It seemed to me that there was just nobody growing these plants from seed in the United States, in any significant quantities; yet that seemed like a popular plant. So I decided I would try to do that, after studying the market briefly, and just grow carnivorous plants to sell in general, as a secondary thing to the Nepenthes.

My first assumption was that people are ignoring these plants. I just assumed they're not growing these plants correctly, because they don't have a background in botany or horticulture. Most of what it takes to grow a carnivorous plant is what it takes to grow a regular plant. Most people are just buying them and poking their fingers in the Venus flytraps and killing them in terrariums, or by neglecting them when they go on vacation or something like that.

I went to what was my college library, which was San Jose State University, and I proceeded to grab every book on Horticulture or Botany that I thought might have any relevant information to me. The major books anyway; small books I mostly ignored. I proceeded to read all of this so that I could make sure that I understood exactly how to grow plants. I would take note of maybe some differences between regular plants and carnivorous plants, but for the most part I assumed that the information in those books would hold true for carnivorous plants.

I figured, if I'm going to do this as a business, I need to know exactly what I'm doing. I don't need to be killing plants in terrariums for years and wasting my time and money. I did that for a good six months, and then after I had done that, I had, of course, formed in my mind, a number of systems and routines in which I could grow these plants and then proceeded to buy the plants and the materials and to grow them out.

I noticed that the Nepenthes take a fairly long time to grow to the size you would sell them at, which is probably about three to six inches around. Often, that takes a Nepenthes somewhere between one, sometimes even as long as four years to do that. So I started to look at the growing and selling Nepenthes is more of a longterm project, and then I needed to have some other types of carnivorous plants that would just grow more quickly and would sell easily in the meantime. As you can imagine, the Venus flytrap is, of course, the main kit for that.

I proceeded to shift gears a little bit. Had a lot of Nepenthes growing on the side, but not selling very many of them, and then purchase a lot of Venus flytraps, growing them from seed, buying them even straight out of culture, and growing



those out and selling them. I found that the Venus flytraps, really were the bestselling plant. So I began selling them on eBay at first.

I sold on eBay, I think, for a couple of years or so before I even sold on Amazon at all, and as I did that I noticed that there are way more Venus flytraps being sold than Nepenthes for the other types of carnivorous plants. The Venus flytrap really is the carnivorous plant market. The rest of them are really just extras. The Venus flytraps, in the United States, are probably in excess of maybe 95% of the carnivorous plant market, is Venus flytraps.

So I sold these, and then I got into selling on Amazon. When I got into selling on Amazon, I started to realize that not only is this the main plant that sells, and that's just how this market works, but most of the customers are not hobbyists. A lot of those of us who are hobbyists and we talk with other hobbyists, we have this idea in our mind that a lot of people are just selling among the hobby community. But really, the hobby community is a very, very small fraction of the whole industry.

A Venus flytrap is actually one of the most bought and sold plants in the United States. A lot of people don't know that, but that's true. That's the reason why it has that number one indoor seller tag on my name listing on Amazon. That's partially because I did a good job, but it's also largely just because that's the type of plant that typically gets that kind of tag.

As I did that, I started to realize that there's a lot more money to be made selling carnivorous plants, primarily targeted towards beginners. The problem I had with that is I had all these Nepenthes growing. A lot of what you call highland or intermediate, some even ultra highland Nepenthes growing. I was living at the time in coastal California. Coastal California is a great place to grow carnivorous plants, because you can grow any kind of carnivorous plant. Some of them won't grow very well, but they can be kept alive and they can grow. So, I had a lot of these Venus flytraps growing. I got a lot of these Nepenthes growing. I started to grow and sell Sarracenias. That was kind of a later addition to it, and a few Sundews, and I saw that even the Sarracenias and Sundews sell better than the Nepenthes do. The Nepenthes will sell for very high dollar amounts, but trying to produce a lot of these, it doesn't usually work out.

They're very finicky grown from seed. There's generally a lot of attrition and a lot of casualties. You might have a few hundred seeds left that you plant, but what's left when they grow up to plants might be 20 or might be 30; if you did a good job it might even be 50, out of hundreds of seeds. That typically doesn't work very well for making a lot of money, even if you're selling each one of those plants for high dollar amounts when it took you two or three years just to plant there.



So I started to realize that the coastal California climate is not really ideal for growing Venus flytraps or the Sarracenia pitcher plants, these are American pitcher plants, that the southeast, coastal plain, in the United States was. I then started to form a plan where I would move my whole business from California to, I actually moved it to North Carolina.

When I moved it there, I realized I have to discontinue a lot of these carnivorous plants, because the only way I can keep them alive is to grow them in a greenhouse, which I would have to pay a high utility bill to cool in the summer and then a high utility bill to heat in the winter time. So the way I dealt with that is I actually discontinued growing and selling Nepenthes. I really liked this pitcher plant, and to give up growing and selling them, was kind of like going through a divorce. But I have decided that it's probably for the best for my business in the long run.

And I have three daughters. There are ages two, five and seven, and they were getting close to the point where they needed to go to school and I wanted to send them to private school which of course is expensive. I realized that I really have to do something that's going to make money, and it's these Venus flytraps. To a lesser extent, the Sarracenia pitcher plants, particularly, the Sarracenia Purpurea. So I moved everything from California over to North Carolina. That resulted in me having to leave plants behind, to try to liquidate a lot of inventory. When I moved here, they have something here called cold wind, which those of us who live in California know nothing about. Evidently, cold winds can kill carnivorous plants, though they're designed to go dormant around here. A plant will freeze during a cold day and then the wind will cause the top part to thaw first, and the wind causes it to transpire a lot. But the problem is the plants are still frozen. So the plant basically dries out and dies.

Mike: Right. Joel: So my first winter, I did not have shade cloth over everything and I lost probably

90 percent of my inventory. By the time I was done with all that, I was just a fraction of the size of what I was in California. But in the long run, since I've been here in North Carolina, almost, it's close to a year and a half now, I've actually rebuilt the business up since then, and my sales are much higher than they used to be. I think I averaged about $450 a day in gross sales when I left California.

Mike: Wow, wow. Joel: I actually average about $900 a day in sales right now. Mike: That's good. That's good.



Joel: It's mostly Venus flytraps, so it really boils down to being able to buy large

quantities of Venus flytraps and then, you know, growing them and selling them. The problem I run into really is, as near as I can tell, other than big chains like Home Depot or Lowes, I'm the biggest seller of Venus Flytrap plants in the United States.

Mike: That's amazing. Joel: So the amount of Venus flytraps that I need to buy to keep this business going at

its current level of sales is, I mean it's probably several times higher, quite possible than even the next, my nextbiggest competitor, which I suspect is probably, is probably California Carnivores. I saw them sell quite a bit of Venus flytraps when I visited with them.

And in order to do that, I have to find suppliers who can grow that quantity, and that, at this point, has largely become a matter of having large private contracts with tissue culture lab companies. I have them ship me the plants and then I turn around and I ship them to another grower in Florida. He grows them out for me and then he turns around and ships them back to me.

Kind of an odd scenario, it wasn't quite what I envisioned when I moved here, but the upside to it is the shipping is surprisingly cheap to go from North Carolina to Florida. I certainly couldn't have done this in California. So in the long run, it's been very successful and a blessing really to be out here in North Carolina and not in California anymore. In the short term, it was just disastrous in many ways for me. It was kind of disappointing and a setback. So that's pretty much how I got from the start to now.

Mike: Wow. That's a fascinating story. And it's just interesting how you've just never

given up and how you went from your job as a security guard. That probably wasn’t going to be a great career. Then you had an opportunity of time that came in your life, and you're like, gosh, what can I do now. You went back to having a hobby as scoring carnivorous plants, like it seems like we all did. And you started thinking, well gosh, maybe I could actually make a business out of this.

You've really turned something around. What you're saying is, if someone acquires a Venus flytrap in essentially the United States, it probably came from your store, it probably came from you one way or another.

Joel: I don't know if I'd go that far as to say that, but I would say, particularly if you're

talking online sales, I don't think there's anyone in the United States that's even, close.

Mike: I see, I see. So, okay, that, that clears it up. I understand.



Joel: I mean, I spend, probably the wholesale price of the plants that I purchase is

probably somewhere around $10,000 a month. Mike: Wow. Joel: I don't think anybody else there is buying anywhere near $10,000 worth of plants

a month… Mike: Yeah, wow. Joel: . . . worth of Venus flytraps. I don't want to distort figures any. Really, what I

often do is I put multiple plants, like if someone buys a single Venus flytrap from me, more times than not, I'm actually going to send them two plants. I'm going to send them one that essentially meets what the description says, like an adultsized Venus flytrap.

Then I usually put one and sometimes even two extra smaller ones in there. So, you know, there's more plants than just, for each individual sale that's actually coming in here, sometimes going pretty quick and sometimes growing here for a while before I turn around and finally sell it.

Mike: That's an interesting strategy because you're over delivering. They buy one plant,

and they get two or three plants delivered. Plus if something happens to one plant, then there is a couple more plants alive and that's a great strategy for developing loyalty with customers. I just want to kind of focus, if I can, a little bit more on some tips and tricks of Venus flytrap growing successfully. You made the comment that most people that buy these plants aren't necessarily hobbyists. They are people that think well, I've grown plants indoors before, Venus flytraps sounds like a fun plant, I'll get one. It can’t be too hard. But they can kill their plant pretty quick. On my own website, I talk about it, how they have to work at trying to replicate the natural growing environment of a Venus flytrap. And it's not tropical. It's not from South America. It's not Central America. It's the coastal slopes and wetlands of North and South Carolina, which means humidity and sun, but also it needs cold air in the winter time, dormancy. It's a very different kind of plant. So what's probably the most important lesson you've learned in raising carnivorous plants?Our listeners, if they have a plant or are thinking about getting a plant, they go to your website or go to Amazon and they order one, what's probably the most important lesson you've learned in carnivorous plants as it relates to successfully growing these plants?



Joel: Are you talking specifically about Venus flytraps or just carnivorous plants in general?

Mike: Yeah, let's talk first about that Venus flytrap in particular, because it is so popular,

and that's often how people get started. That's how I got started. I think back when I was a kid, my first carnivorous plant was a Venus flytrap. Then I got a Cobra Lily, the darlingtonia californica, and then a Sundew. It's kind of the first foyer into these fascinating plants.

Joel: Yeah, in almost every instance really, I think in excess of 99% of the people out

there are buying a Venus flytrap as their first carnivorous plant. Mike: Yes. Joel: Sometimes I wish they'd buy the Sarracenia purpurea instead, because they can

just be more forgiving. Some of the beginner mistakes are a little more forgiving with that plant. But that's not how it plays out. So with the Venus flytraps…

Mike: So you said it isn't forgiving. So for a beginner, what do they need to do to be

successful in growing a Venus Flytrap? Joel: The main thing is the watering and the lighting has to be something that can grow

a Venus flytrap, and that is not necessarily the same as growing another houseplant. Some houseplants can be really light deprived, light starved, compared to what most other plants really need to survive. People have the supposition, well if the suchandsuch a plant can live in the corner of my bathroom, then the Venus flytrap can do that, too. That's not really true. It needs a certain amount of sunlight, which usually in the spring and the fall and the winter's about all the light you can give it. In the summertime, they tend to be a little more sensitive where they actually may not like as much sunlight as you can possibly give it. The other nine months of the year, they definitely do.

Usually, the easy way to accomplish that, is just to place it close to a sunny window indoors, usually a south or east facing window is best. West facing will probably still work if it gets a reasonably good amount of sunlight. Now, a northfacing window, may not be enough to keep it alive, particularly during the winter time. It may just die from light deprivation.

If you can get it in a position where you can see sunlight visibly shining on it every day, whether it's direct sunlight because there's not a cloud in the sky or whether it's clouded over, and so you have kind of a diffused light hitting it through the clouds, that's actually still good, usable light. If you put it close enough to your window, usually this is a matter of inches. If it's a really big window that gets great light it might even be a foot, but for most windows you



want it six inches or less next to that glass. That's usually enough light to keep that Venus flytrap alive and for it to grow relatively well.

So the next issue that is the main thing you need to get down is the watering. With watering, the Venus flytraps are very sensitive to mineral content in their water and in their soil. You have to use distilled water that does not have any minerals added to it. Often some brands add minerals to it for taste and they'll put that right in the ingredients, and of course, that's not safe water to use for watering these plants. It's not much better than tap water really, and it will probably kill the plant relatively quickly. Or you can use reverse osmosis water and the same principle applies. There needs to be no minerals added for taste to it.

Or you can actually use rain water. If it's clean and fresh, not something that's been sitting in a container for a long time and dirty. It most likely has a low enough mineral content in the receptacle that it's collected in, that it can actually be used as well. So you need to use one of those three types of waters. Then, you have to make sure that you maintain the correct amount of wetness in the soil for the plant, and that really depends on what type of soil you use. There are basically two school of thought which seem to be the main popular ways to grow them. One is to use peat, this is kind of the more dusty type of peat. You know, it looks like black dirt. It's kind of fine and tends to compact and clump easy, and then you mix this with sand or Perlite. You stick that in the pot, and if you stick it in that type of a pot, usually you don't need to place the pot in a tray of water, except perhaps during the warmest three to six months of the year. It may be that the plant is so warm that the soil just dries so fast, it needs to pull up water. Or you can grow them in the longfibered sphagnum moss. This is kind of the more bushier, stringy looking strands of sphagnum moss. If you grow it in that, you pretty much need to keep it in a pool of water all the time, even during the winter dormancy. The exception to that would be if you had a fairly large pot of it, especially one that's very sealed on the sides so that moisture doesn't escape easily. That type of pot you might be able to get away with the colder half, skipping using the water tray. But with the plants that I sell, I actually use net pots for the pots. The net pots have slits in them all around, and with that type of pot you need a pool of water all the time to keep it alive. In fact, one of the ways I sometimes have to replace plants for my customers, is because they didn't grow it in a pool of water, even though the care sheet told them to do it. But sometimes they think, well, that's just too much water, and they don't do it, and then I get emailed about it and that turns out to be why the plant died. No pool of water.



So with the longfibered sphagnum moss, you're usually going to need that pool of water, and definitely if you're using either a short pot or a net pot or a rootpruning pot, something that has lots of slits on the sides of it, a lot of air can get in and out. That type of a setup, you're going to need to have a pool of water in it all the time. That type of setup also aerates the roots really well so that the plant can actually even handle being grown a little wetter than it normally can, kind of like growing a plant hydroponically, where you're actually keeping the roots wetter than what the plant normally experiences but it's so well aerated and so well oxygenated the plant can usually handle that and often even thrives in that type of condition even better than it would if it was just grown in soil.

Mike: Wow. So there's a pretty important relationship between sun and water and the soil. Those are the three critical things.

Joel: And some other things that some people think are necessary like feeding the plant.

Feeding the plant is not necessary to keep it alive. Mike: I was just going to ask you about feeding the plants. Joel: Is that one of your questions? Mike: Yes, that was actually going to be one of my questions. Does someone ever need

to feed their plants? Joel: It'll just grow more slowly. If it never eats at all, it may get to the point where it

starts getting a little bit of a mineral deficiency, as you might see a little discoloration in the leaves, but it's not likely to die from it. It can actually survive without, or even just very rarely eating an insect that it only on occasion catches on its own. It can do that and still stay relatively healthy.

The other issue is the humidity. Venus flytraps do like high humidity. If you can get a combination of humidity and at least some air movement because they don't like stagnant air like in a terrarium. If you're making a terrarium to try to trap humidity, often that's counterproductive. They actually like a little bit of air movement, too. They don't really like perfectly still air all the time. So, if you can get some sort of combination of air movement, either from growing it outside and it happens to be humid where you're at, or if you're growing it in a greenhouse, they do actually benefit from the humidity then. But if you're trying to trap humidity in a bowl or a dome or a terrarium, that's often counterproductive and actually harms the plant more than the humidity benefits it.

They can actually grow relatively well without high humidity. If everything's perfect, humidity's good and helps. If everything's not perfect, one of the growth factors that they really don't need to grow reasonably well is the humidity. So



from my perspective on a commercial scale, I want the humidity because it's going to make my plants grow from small size to sale size faster. But for someone growing them in their windowsill, the humidity really should be one of their least concerns.

Mike: So say if someone is in Arizona and they're trying to grow a plant and they do all

the other things but they don't have the humidity, the plant will still be fine, it just may not grow as fast. That's what you're saying.

Joel: Yes. But you have to keep in mind, too, that there's kind of a balance between air

movement and humidity. If the humidity is low but the air movement is very little around the plant, that tends to not stress it very much. But if there's a lot of air movement and the humidity is low, or there's just a lot of really high heat and the humidity is low, they can't handle that. So for example, someone in Arizona would not be able to grow this type of plant outside during the warmer six or seven months of the year. I mean, they'd probably kill it doing that. Unless they could just heavily shade it with shade cloth and perfectly protect it from every beam of excessive light, they might be able to pull it off then.

The easiest way for them to do it would be to just stick it in the south or eastfacing window and not even worry about the humidity. As long as they do everything else they're supposed to, to keep it alive, it's probably going to do relatively well overall.

Mike: Those are great tips, Joel. So I think you mentioned it, but how do people avoid

the fatal mistakes that can kill a Venus flytrap quickly? There's probably a couple things that, if they don't do something right, they'll kill it quickly. Can you summarize those top two or three things for us?

Joel: Like the ways that I find people who are beginners typically kill them? Mike: Yes. So again, who's going to be listening to this is going to be a lot of beginners,

and people thinking about Venus flytrap plants or may have just bought one. It's a little sickly, it's not doing well. What could they be doing, that essentially they think they're helping the plant but they're actually killing it?

Joel: Well, if they are buying from me, the best thing they can do is to follow the care

sheet directions that I give them with the plant, because when they do that I almost never have to deal with the death of the plant. It is very rare for a customer to tell me, that hey, my plant died, but they did everything the care sheet said to do or not to do. Usually if the plant dies, they did not do something that the care sheet said.

I really believe that most of the people who have a plant die, just honestly missed it. The right information for keeping a Venus Flytrap plant alive is not an



excessive amount of information, but it is a decent amount. And sometimes people who are just not careful or thoughtful, and they don't have a system in their mind to have plants in general. Sometimes they just honestly miss something that was important, and the plant dies.

The things that are typical beginner mistakes are, they just don't give enough light. Sometimes, like I pointed out earlier, they'll stick it in the corner of their house in a bathroom, or they'll put it some distance from the window thinking, well, it's near the window, it's getting some sort of light. But it's just not enough. That's one of the main ways that a Venus Flytrap plant dies.

The other way is that they don't water it correctly. Well, this used to be a problem for my customers, but I seem to have preempted the watering issue in my care fact sheet that comes with my plants. I enclose a care fact sheet to my Amazon and eBay customers, warning them about what type of water they need to get. As a result, I don't have nearly as many waterrelated fatalities, as far as using the wrong kind of water goes, that I used to. The wrong kind of water that used to be the number one thing that killed them.

Now the third most deaths are because of the wrong kind of soil. It is probably because they improvise and they go get some regular potting soil or they'll go with another type of peat that they think is safe but really has fertilizer in it. It would be usable if it didn't have fertilizer, but they don’t' always think to look for that on the label of the bag. I find that they die that way. I see them do things like put pebbles in there with the moss.

I use a heating pack during the winter time to ship plants to places that are pretty cold, but it isn’t so cold that the plant can't survive without a heat pack in transit.

I actually found some of the customers will open the heating pack up, think that it's potting soil, dump the contents in with their sphagnum moss, and of course the plant dies. Because watering is no longer in issue for my customers, I would say the main way that I've seen plants die is that they mix something in with the soil and that tends to be fatal to them.

Mike: I see. Joel: But, so I would say for most people, if you're just talking United States in general,

it's definitely the watering would be probably be number one problem still as the killer of Venus Flytrap plants.

Mike: Okay. Again, those are great tips. The water has to be distilled?



Joel: Yeah. Distilled water is usually the easiest one that people can get, because virtually every grocery store has at least one brand of distilled water that does not have anything added to it.

Mike: And reverse osmosis. Joel: That's what most people are buying and that usually winds up being perfectly

safe. Mike: There you go. And it's pretty cheap. I mean, people use it for their irons and for

other things so, it's pretty cheap. Joel: Yeah, definitely. Usually, it's about a dollar per gallon. Mike: Yeah. So it should last a long time. Well that's great. So obviously those are the

mistakes, but then those are the ways to maintain plant health also, is to make sure you give it enough sunlight, to make sure you give it enough of the right soil. Growing a Venus flytrap plant can be pretty easily done if you pay attention to these things and recognize that it is not your typical house plant that you can ignore and just give it any kind of soil and kind of water and let it grow.

No, this carnivorous plant is different. It is special and requires some attention. You have to pay attention to what you're doing with it. The potting medium or where you put it, if you're going to put it outside or indoor near a window, and what kind of water. You just have to pay attention to these things.

Joel: Yeah, it's basically hit or miss. I mean, all the customers usually have one of two scenarios happen. Either they follow the care sheet directions and the plant thrives, or they miss something, usually, honestly, as near as I can tell, and the plant not only dies, but it dies fast. There's not a whole lot of in between.

Either it thrives or it dies, and if it dies, there's a specific reason why. If you can isolate that, you can figure out what it is, then that person can then get another plant from me and they know exactly what to avoid the second go around.

Typically, the customers I have that say, hey, my plant died, and it's really dead, because sometimes they'll assume the leaf trap shedding, which they're always slowly doing with their oldest leaves, is a sign, and it's not. Or they'll see spring leave that are all prostrate on the ground and they think that it's wilted and that's just how they make leaves in the springtime. So excluding all of those customers who have mistaken claims of a plant dying, the ones that actually have the plant die, usually if I can isolate, if I can pinpoint what the problem is, then I can tell them, okay, this is why it died. And then send them another plant and usually they don't have any problems with the second



plant. I mean, maybe six months later, they went on vacation and nobody watered it and it died, but nothing in the short term. It seems that once I can pinpoint that, that problems dealt with and someone can just get another plant and they have a reasonable expectation that it's going to grow good the second time.

Mike: And I think that's part of the fascination with these plants is, you're learning something. Again, because it is a very specific kind of plant, it's carnivorous, it grows in a soil that is mineral nutrient deficient, and so it makes up for it by catching insects. In an active way, I think that's again why so many people are interested in Venus flytraps, is it's not passive, it's not like a pitcher plant.

Pitcher plants are beautiful, but they just kind of sit there and wait for an insect to crawl in and drown. But a Venus flytrap, there's something rather eerie about it’s active traps, and of course there's movies been made about it and everything else, because it actively attracts and then traps insects and there's something very fascinating about that.

Joel: Hard to beat that in a plant. It's one of the prettier ones, too. Mike: Oh, yeah. Joel: Especially when they get kind of tanned, they have a really beautiful look to the

plant. So someone that not only just likes the pretty looking plants but doesn't really care for the insectivorous part of it, they can still enjoy the plant because it's a pretty looking plant.

Mike: It is. It is. And to learn from it. I think that's the value of what you're saying, is

this is a different kind of plant. It grows in a specific environment. We can learn something. If we're not successful, we can try again, because we're learning something. I think that's the value, too, here, is to realize that plants aren't all the same, just like we as people are not all the same and we require different things and we can learn from that.

Maybe one day it'll become more, become a serious hobby. I think that's a great thing, too, to realize that our failures in growing exotic plants, plants that aren't your typical house plant or something, are opportunities to learn something. I live in central Oregon now, and it's a tough place to grow anything. I used to live in the Willamette Valley in Eugene, Oregon. Very moderate climate. In fact, basically you could throw almost anything on the ground and it would grow. I loved growing things.

But I still had my failures. I still tried to grow things, insects would devour them, this would happen, that would happen, early frost, but I learned something from



those growing experiences. I think that's the point, too, is that, for our listeners, they get a Venus flytrap, if you're first one isn't successful, don't give up. Think about what you did, think about what mistakes you may have made and try it again.

Joel: Sure. Mike: Because it is different, and you need to just it's not that complicated, but folks

do need to pay attention to a few very specific things like you mentioned: Sunlight, water, potting medium. They really need to pay attention to those things.

Joel: Yeah, and the Venus flytrap is actually, once you know how to grow it, it's

actually relatively easy to grow and keep alive. It's just a matter of being informed on how the plant needs to be grown, and then sticking to that regiment, and then it's not a plant that's fickle and just kind of dies and you can't figure out why. If it dies, there's a reason why it died. It's usually avoidable, and once you know how to, it's not complicated at all. It's relatively easy.

Mike: That is a great tip, Joel. That is a great tip. Well, before we wrap up this call, are

there any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with the listeners about growing Venus flytrap plants?

Joel: It's a plant first before it eats. The eating aspect may be what everybody likes, but

the eating aspect is secondary. You have to grow a plant and then do the feeding part second. Certainly, if you feed it a bug or two a week and you just consistently do that and all the other growing conditions are right, it's probably going to flourish with that regimen, but it's more important to get the other growing conditions down and then the feeding part, just kind of add that in at your leisure would probably be a wiser way to do it.

Mike: Focus on the proper environment, be successful at that, before, especially inside,

if you're growing it inside, before you worry about trying to enhance the growth by feeding it.

Joel: Right. Mike: So what would you, and just a side question here, what bugs would you suggest or

recommend our listeners use to feed the plant once they're successful, it's growing well, what kind of insects do you recommend?

Joel: If you're talking about catching them, aside from the ones that they'll eat on their

own, like if you get flies in your house, they'll probably inevitably catch one or two of them. Any type of bugs outside are usually good, except you want to avoid, either totally avoid the hardshelled kind like beetles or pill bugs, or just



only occasionally give those and don't feed the other traps heavily when you do that; kind of leave them alone and let them digest that, because they do take a longer time to digest.

The ones that they digest relatively easy are more soft bodied insects like spiders and flies. If you're talking about purchasing insects to feed them, you can just go to your local pet store and get smallsized crickets. The largesized crickets are not going to be useful for anything but really big traps, which most people don’t have on their plants. But the more mediumsized traps, those can be fed a smallsized cricket. If they're too small to feed that to it, just wait for them to grow some larger ones, or you can get wingless fruit flies.

The easiest way to feed either a wingless fruit fly or a smallsized cricket to a trap is with a pair of tweezers. You can usually do it without mangling the trap that way, or the bug easily escaping, because the traps tend to close with the cilia, the eyelashes on the end of them make a kind of bars, and the bug can't get out that way and then you just pull your tweezers out through those bars. A needle and tweezers work the best, but even a regular pair of tweezers is going to be much easier to feed it with than fingers.

Mike: Okay. That was a great tip. That was a great tip. Well, this has been a great

conversation. How can our listeners find out more about you, Joel? Joel: They can find out about me, a little kind of description of the beginnings of my

business, or they can buy carnivorous plants from me at www.JoelsCarnivorousPlants.com.

Mike: So that's Joel's, that's JOELS, so www.JoelsCarnivorousPlants.com. Joel: Right. That's correct. Mike: And if they wanted to purchase carnivorous plants from you, they can go to there,

they click on the link, and that takes them to Amazon? Joel: Yeah, there's an Amazon storefront there or an eBay storefront. I believe I have

three listings up there right now that are directly off the website, but I think the only one that's active at present, is the Venus flytrap.

So if they just want a regular Venus flytrap, they can buy it right off the website, but for anything else, they can buy it right off of Amazon or eBay and there's links to it right there in plain view, right in the middle of the website.

Mike: Okay, great. So great. www.JoelsCarnivorousPlants.com. Well, Joel, thank you

for taking time out to be on this call. I'm sure the listeners are really going to benefit from the call. In fact, I know I did. I've learned something and I've grown



http://www.joelscarnivorousplants.com/



them and I've had varying degrees of success, and now I'm thinking about some of the mistakes I've made and didn't pay attention to, like sunlight. I appreciate you taking time out to be on this call.

Joel: Sure, no problem. You're welcome. And thanks for offering to interview me. It's

been good. I hope it's useful for you as well. Mike: Oh, absolutely. Well, this is Mike from www.VenusFlytrapCenter.com. Thank

you and goodbye.

Recommended Resources Here is a list of resources that I have compiled to aid you in growing and caring for your

Venus Flytrap plant.

Joel’s Carnivorous Plants From Amazon.com - Joel Garner is the #1 seller of Venus

Flytrap plants on the internet and on Amazon. In preparation of this growing guide, I

called him and spent time on the phone with him learning his growing secrets. And he

isn’t a faceless conglomerate - he is a small businessman who loves these plants and

loves seeing his customers happy. Cannot recommend enough getting your Venus

Flytrap plants from Joel. To order your plant securely and safely from Amazon click here

=> Joel’s Carnivorous Plants.

New Zealand Sphagnum moss - Recommend New Zealand sphagnum moss for it ability

to absorb and drain water. Joel recommends this over over peat moss which is very fine

grained and dark. Get and use New Zealand sphagnum moss when repotting your

plants.

Other Home and Garden Resources You

May Like Easy Do-It-Yourself Aquaponics - discover how to grow food naturally, cheaper, and

more wholesome at home, saving time and money. And live a happier, healthier

lifestyle.

7250 Landscaping Ideas - Looking for ideas to improve your garden, your front yard,

your backyard sanctuary? This resource is chock full of illustrations, diagrams, photos,




http://venusflytrapcenter.com/JoelsCarnivorousPlants

http://venusflytrapcenter.com/JoelsCarnivorousPlants

http://venusflytrapcenter.com/NewZealandSphagnumMoss

http://venusflytrapcenter.com/EasyDIYAquaponics

http://venusflytrapcenter.com/Ideas4Landscaping

instructions, and more that can help you move from thinking about your landscaping, to

changing it and enjoying it today.

Ted’s Woodworking Plans - Literally thousands of woodworking plans you can get your

hands on, to build everything you’ve thought about including deck plans, shelf plans,

tables, indoor and outdoor furniture, and much more. If it’s made of wood, you can

build it with Ted’s Woodworking Plans.



http://venusflytrapcenter.com/TedsPlans

http://venusflytrapcenter.com/TedsPlans

a conversation with “mr. venus flytrap” - joel garner his ... · terrarium of carnivorous...

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