Question
I live in northwest NJ across a field from a horse farm, so there tends to be 4-8 horse flies in my house at any given time.   I can't get myself to kill them myself either by swatting, fly paper, or chemicals. I just feel bad - don't tease me please, I just value all forms of life. It wouldn't bother me though if something else wanted to make it food.  We have large windows that face west and get direct sunlight because there's nothing that way but a large field.  I've never been much of a gardener... I'm hoping it wouldn't be too difficult to maintain.  Can I successfully use a carnivorous plant?  Thank you.

Answer
Hi Trish,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the answer to this is carnivorous plants can help a little, but are mostly not useful for insect control.  In addition, horseflies are blood-feeding flies, so they are attracted to the smell of animals.  Carnivorous plants use sugar as their lure.  I order to see any effect you would need hundreds of them, and even then you may not see a difference.  We have thousands of plants here at our nursery and we still have bugs.

If you wanted to try a plant out just for curiosity to see if they caught any Horseflies, American Pitcher plants (Sarracenia) are the best fly catchers.  Good species would be Sarracenia alata, our Alatamin hybrid, Sarracenia leucophylla "Tarnok" S. flava and the Judith Hindle hybrid would all be good candidates.  For care information visit our caresheet pages at http://www.cobraplant.com/caresheets

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com