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Drosera Filiformis - Soil Mix


SilentGuy

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My filiformis standard form ended up in the bin because it picked up grey mould. The Tracyii I bought had two hibernicula but only one fully opened althought it's really slow growing. The other hiberniculum opened a tiny bit, but then started to rot, and I noticed grey mould forming. To prevent it spreading I decided to just take it off and bin that too.

For those who grow this species, is it really susceptible to rotting if the base is wet or rather watered from above. Carnivorousplants.org suggests using a cm of sand on the top layer.

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Hi,

I grow D. filiformis in quite some quantity and I don't find it problematic at all. It grows well since many years in many different conditions. The only thing I can say for sure about typical form of D. filiformis is that it is sun loving species and that would be all. I have grown it in a little drying conditions, in a sandy mix or like now, in pure peat. Currently it is growing in one of the pots that is a part of my small cascade. It is constantly standing in the water so I could say that the soil does not matter (it is pure peat). From time to time I find seedlings around in other pots. I also selected fully hardy plants that cannot be killed by any frosts I can think of in my region (zone 7a).

I also used to have D. filiformis var. tracyi and 'all red'. I lost the first one, because I left it outdoor for the winter. That year I also lost about 2/3 plants of the typical form. The red form I knew it is sensitive, so I kept inside. Because I was not at home for long months, when I came back, it was dead for unknown reasons. Still I had all the clones for several years and I never found them hard to grow or propagate. They all grew in the same pot in summer, in same conditions. The soil does not really matter, they always had pure peat, but I think that the amount of sun and air movement they had, did matter. If only I knew how hard it will be to get those plants back, I wouldn't ever let them die or experiment with all of them at once.

Oh, when it is raining, which does a lot in my region, it has water from above, like all normal plants. :) It is totally fine with that.

Here is my current pot, the smaller one is a hybrid: D. filiformis x intermedia, a weedy one, but a beautifully looking too. :)

IMG_7378_zpsdf096e9d.jpg

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i gave up growing filiformis years ago because it it prone to rotting,even when grown from seed,i think its just the conditions in the U.K.

It will survive for a few years but always succumbs in the end.

ada

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I don't have a problem with it at all. Up until this spring my filiformis ssp filiformis was growing outside and the water level spent most of the time incredibly high, covering the moss on the soil as the water tray was a deep cat litter tray. I've now got it in the greenhouse with my D. x filiformis California Sunset and both are doing extremely well. I desperately want to get hold of tracyi as I love it's white colour, also fFlorida Giant and the red form. I shall likely use one in an indoor minibog in the greenhouse.

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  • 3 months later...

I am growing it now D. filiformis var. filiformis for 3 years. The first year I lost more than half of the plants and I grew them in a mix of peat and perlite. So next year I decided to put half of the survivors in a pot with life sphagnum and D. rotundifolia. The plants there grew really fast and were more than twice as tall as the ones from the peat/perlite mix. I have fund out that in live sphagnum D. filiformis has no problems with being wet and I didn't loose one plant since I put them in there. The hibernacula are completely covered in the sphagnum and that protects them in the winter. I think that a lot of them rot because the wind in the winters causes dehydration. If there is any snow I always put as much as I can on the pots. That's the best isolation for hibernacula in my opinion. Last year all my plants survived in both peat and sphagnum and it was very cold (-20 Celsius). The first year when I lost half of my D. filiformis plants to rot I also lost a few D. rotundifolia and that year I didn't cover them with snow. The strong winds in winter dried the sphagnum out in one day and I suspect that made them prone to rot.

I have also found out that the hibernacula in the sphagnum are about 50% bigger than he ones in the peat. Also D. intermedia is also bigger in sphagnum than in peat, but surprisingly survives the winter better in peat than in sphagnum, because in sphagnum it forms a stem and the hibernacula often dries up in winter. I don't mind that, because D. interemdia is a real weed in my collection. It is the only sundew that survives winter in my country and isn't picky at all when it comes where it grows.

I have no experience with D. trayci. It wouldn't survive the winter in my country, so I would have to put it in my basement during winter and molds would be a huge problem probably.

So my advice is that you experiment a little, put plants in different substrates, because probably not everything works in different climates.

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They will rot if you let them and if you over water in the rest period.

I tend to try and keep the plants elevated and clear of moss at this time and one or two have coarse glass sand as a top dressing.

I grow typical, var tracyii, Florida giant and a large growing seed grown plant but the red form just never lasts long with me and the same for capensis red form??

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