Keep Your Home Pest-Free With This Trader Joe's Plant Find

Trader Joe's has a great solution to those annoying gnats and fruit flies in your home. The pitcher plant is a carnivorous plant akin to a Venus flytrap. Trader Joe's has these plants for $6.99, which are incredibly low-maintenance. We all know how easily fruit flies, along with houseflies, multiply in the summertime. No one likes hanging a bunch of those nasty flypaper traps inside the house, so why not try some of these predatory plants instead? 

You can also do other things to keep pests to a minimum in your home. For instance, fans help to displace the air, and insects will avoid the struggle against moving air whenever possible. Make sure there are no spots around doors and windows where bugs can squeeze through. It only takes a crack, so if you see any place where light comes through where it shouldn't, you can use caulk to seal it up. Make sure you keep your trash in garbage cans with lids, both inside and outside.

Sarracenia purpurea is the technical name for the American pitcher plant. It attracts pests with a faux flower pitcher-shaped entrance that acts like a roach motel: pests check in but don't check out (insert evil laughter). It even has color, scent, and nectar to lure insects inside, never mind that the nectar is poisonous to bugs. The pests in the pitcher plant's diet are ants, flies, wasps, bees, beetles, slugs, and snails. When the insects slide down the plant tube, they land in a bath of enzymes and digestive acids that slowly absorb their nutrients.

These plants are perennials and will go dormant in the wintertime. They can grow up to 3 feet in height. Your region will determine the variety you can grow since several species are native to the United States and Canada. Pitcher plants are easy to care for and are nontoxic to pets or humans. Place yours on a windowsill in full sun and moisten the soil using distilled water to prevent mineral buildup. You can plant it in potting soil specific to carnivorous plants.

Dionaea muscipula is the scientific name for what's commonly known as the Venus flytrap. If you like the idea of getting rid of the pests in your house with bug-eating plants, this is another more well-known variety. A Venus flytrap has two lobes that open and close on the ends of the leaves. When an insect's motion stimulates sensors on the inside of the lobes, the two sides snap shut, and bristles along the edges interlock to prevent escape. It's one of the only plants known to actually move to trap its prey.

The Venus flytrap eats spiders, flying insects, ants, beetles, and grasshoppers. It's also a perennial and blooms white flowers with green veins. After the trap opens and closes a few times, it dies and falls off. But don't despair; it will generally grow a new one in its place and can live 20 years or more. Use distilled water to keep about an inch in a drainage saucer at all times so it will stay moist. It will grow best in a mix of one-third sand and two-thirds sphagnum peat moss. They need about six hours of sun a day. Incidentally, Trader Joe's has both carnivorous plants in stock.