Question
I live way out here in Grand Island Nebraska (USDA zone 5).i have a Venus flytrap, and my little friend lived inside during the early months of the year. Around April, I  repotted it and put it outside. It got a lot of sunlight every day and the days were warm to mild. the only problem was the nights. It seemed that the nights were too cold for them still. I moved them into the garage and kept a 60 watt incandescent grow lamp on them for the day. But the leaves turned soft and yellow, it almost stopped growing, and the traps wont close when i feed them. What did i do wrong??? (sorry  i dont have a photo)

Answer
Hi Joseph,

I checked your weather.  I'm not sure why you think it's too cold at night in your region.  We grow our flytraps strictly outdoors, and for the past month, we've had low temperatures in the 40s.  Flytraps will take a frost.  Your low temperatures are in the 50s and 60s, so right now, our region is cooler than yours.

The problem you're witnessing is due to the incandescent lights.  Under no circumstance do we recommend using incandescent lights for any carnivorous plant.  The light spectrum is not optimal for plants, and it produces too much heat.  Even those so-called incandescent grow lights do not produce enough UV for sun-loving plants, such as flytraps.

We also don't recommend indoor growing of flytraps.  Again, we grow our plants strictly outdoors throughout the year.  While we're not as cold as Nebraska (we're zone 8), we still have very chilly winters.  We even experienced a record low of 8癋 in December.

I strongly recommend moving your plant outdoors in sunlight.  You will, however, see some leaf damage as your plant acclimates from the poor lighting to strong sunlight.  This damage is unavoidable.  Just look for new growth.  From that point on, all new growth will be acclimated to outdoor growing.

I also recommend that you watch our video podcast.  You can see how we grow our flytraps:
http://www.cobraplant.com/videos

Good growing!
Jacob Farin