Triffid Guy

Here is a pic of my newly planted bog pot.

A friend of mine years ago grew a healthy Venus flytrap outside in the uk in ordinary Wilco compost. He told me that the only special procedure he did was using rainwater, so Is it possible that the constant watering and rain got rid of the compost nutrients rendering ordinary compost suitable for carnivorous plants?

Thank you again Dennis.. the information you have given me has relieved my worries. I’m still very new to the hobby. Thanks for the offer of some of your Sarracenias. I will send you a private message.

Thank you for your help Dennis, As regards the water, I’m not using tap water . Ours reads a shocking 240 ppm I meant the rain water collected in the water butt from our roof ranges from 115 to 135 ppm In this case , will I need to use distilled water instead?

I would like to make a bog pot .. about 50 cm wide by 25cm deep. Would it be ok to have drainage holes in the bottom and stand the pot in a large tray of water? My reason for wanting this method is so the water would act as a moat to stop slugs I’ve noticed also the TDS of the water creeps up quickly over a week to about 130 ppm is that something to be concerned about or does the soil in the pot filter some of that out,?

Fortunately there’s no room in our small garden for a greenhouse. Now I’ve done the expensive bit of buying a selection of different specimens I’m hoping they will grow so I can divide,take cuttings of flower stems etc. to grow more plants so that my only expenses will be the soil.

I have bought some Coco Peat to repot some of my carniverous plants and experiment with.. I would like to also try and cultivate some Sphagnum moss. Has anybody had any experience with trying to see if Sphagnum will thrive as a top dressing on Coco Peat please?

Thank you Steve and Paul oh dear.wallet emptying is it going to be that bad?

As I’ve just started out at keeping Carnivores I cannot say what may happen with my collection but my rainwater is collected in a butt from the house roof. The water tested with my TDS varies from 84 up to 130…. the higher measurements seem to happen when it hasn’t rained for long periods of time. For the plants I am experimenting standing some of the pots in seperate dishes, some with distilled water and others with just the rainwater.

Hello, Hope you are all well considering all the Covid situation. It’s the well known story with me. Tried keeping a Venus flytrap as a kid and it died due to not keeping it with correct conditions. Tried again in my teens and twenty’s and failed miserably again.. partly due to lack of sufficient pre internet information. Excuses, Excuses I admit. So I had a resurge in interest after buying a Venus flytrap, Purple Pitcher variant and Drosera Scorpiodes Sundew at a car boot sale 2 sundays ago. I decided to add a few more to my collection from Amazon and yesterday a couple of trumpet pitchers from a locally green grocer, I’ve been watching as many YouTube videos and reading online articles to learn as much as possible as not only would I like to successfully keep them but hopefully propagate some babies.. They’re all outside near the garden pond , seperate pots stood in a large fully glazed ceramic drip dish full of a mixture of rainwater and de ionised distilled water but I’ve been sometimes bringing them into the conservatory over the evening. We live overlooking the south coast and the wind off the sea can be fierce. Some of them were in small pots so repotted them into larger pots with Carniverous plant compost (green bag with Venus flytrap picture from Amazon) apparently a. mixture of blended peat and sand but no perlite.. has some good reviews . I’ve also bought a 5 litre bag of Cocopeat with perlite for future repotting. I used my TDS meter and the rainwater which collects off our roof into a water butt measures anything intermittently between 84 and 130 ppm. As Sod’s law would have it, it’s suddenly become a cloudy wet summer. A friend of mine who keeps snakes regularly buys live sphagnum moss for their vivariums so he’s agreed to give me some so I can also try my hand at growing some more of it in trays for my plants . Hope I’m doing the right things.. Any advice would be welcome though please to steer me towards success. Best wishes, Jay