For All Carnivorous Plants Nepenthes Ventricosa. This photo is courtesy of Jeff Shafer. These growing instructions should give you a basic idea of the conditions you need to provide in order to successfully grow carnivorous plants. Carnivorous plants eat insects for a reason - they live in extremely poor soil with little or no nitrogen or other nutrients. As a consequence, they have sensitive roots and should never be fertilized.
Most people use some kind of fresh or dry sphagnum moss for their carnivorous plants.
If you buy dry peat moss hold a clump of it in your hand and submerge it under water, then squeeze all of the air out of it. If you do not do this it will take a long time before the peat moss takes on and holds water. Carnivorous plants usually live in bogs where they are always moist and they only get natural rainwater. Therefore you should always keep their soil damp but not soaking and you should only use water with no minerals in it, because minerals can build up in the soil and damage the roots of your plants. The best water to use is distilled water.