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my new bog garden


bogtrotter2

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.Nice job. Conduit is just so bleedin handy for loads of jobs other than running electric cables. It probably has more uses than WD40 ! :laugh1:

Yeh I know what you mean. Vaseline is really handy too - I use it to free up the mechanism on my old windows, and to grease one surface while beading silicone on another to make a draught proofing on wooden door and window frames, dip screws so they don't go rusty outside, etc etc

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  • 1 month later...

The dried sphagnum moss does soon become green and starts to grow but in a confined area it will start to multiply fast and can swamp the smaller sundews and butterworts and even venus fly traps so its a good idea to keep an eye on this and thin it out around the smaller plants. Good luck Mark

Edited by Pirate.radio.dj
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A few notes. First I'm sorry I'm not big on learning the names. I'm fairly pleased with how its gone this year. The sphagnum didn't take so it looks a but dry but normal moss is starting to populate. I'll try sphag again next year. It needed a lot of watering for the first month. The peat just soaked it right back up so there was no ponding of water. The rain keeps it topped up now though. The leucophylla? White trumpet pitcher didn't do much. The other one was OK probably do better next year. The other pitcher is OK. Flowered early on and is only just starting to make pitchers again. It suffered bird attacks early on too trying to get the flies. The big branchy sundew did fantastically. The big mouth vft did great too. It's a bit crowded by itself though - needs splitting off. The big green vft was good too. I did a homebase rescue job on a big standard vft. Experimented on it - split it. And pulled one apart for cuttings. The teeny one next to it is a left over bit of rhizome I shuvved in the peat - it worked! Strangely the rescue vft is sending up a flower now in sept. I'll cut that soon and stick it in the peat. Big butterwort did great and there are many many little butterwort leaves popping out around the place now. Cover in fleece over a frame for winter soon. Good times. Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

You should have used live sphagnum instead of dead NZ-sphag. This will never become green again.

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  • 2 months later...

Nice work... you'll think you have plenty of room... keep adding to your collection.... and then one day it will be packed! Post away once spring gets here.

 

From my side of pond... I have ended up using small clamps to hold my winter cover sheets onto my pvc frame. The winter winds would sometimes rip the covers off that I had held down with rocks....  and I had to go running out in the cold to cover them back up. Not much fun.

 

Also.... To concur with Pirate Radio DJ... my NZ spag... though apparently sterilized... always gets portions that green back up and starts growing like normal.

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Your bog garden looks great ;-)

 

I hope to do one in the future, I have to learn enough about the plants first before it would be a realistically possible project to attempt.

The white pipe sticking up from the peat it is to fill water ?

How many water butts full of rainwater (imperial gallons, or litres) did you need to store up to get it wet it enough that the rain takes over, on initial set up ?

What pipe layout did you use please ?

I was thinking of a rectangle and pipe runs across.

You could put a solvent weld cap on it that has a rodding eye and o ring seal which you can then unscrew to fill the water and it'll prevent things getting down there over time, and it will also prevent wind ingress that could freeze water in or around the holes in the pipework on the base of the bed, and make the roots colder in winter in an none natural way eg' from the base upwards instead of surface downwards, or potentially if the roots are attracted to the water run which would  move peat like with none cp plants, then wind ingress could hit the roots and scorch/burn them from heat/cold, I am unsure really it was just ideas I had when thinking on it, I read a RHS article not for carnivorous plants but a general bog garden, it said to use a hose pipe but I thought pp waste would be a better too. 

I was trying to factor it in on the planning and it's what I was thinking of doing.

Solvent weld you can get the pipe and rodding eye in a green type colour, it'd blend in easily with the plants.

Also I thought to help reduce drying out of the the peat bed in hot weather through the open pipe faster than with a closed one.

 

I am not ready to make it yet, it's a future project I am just at the early stages of planning.

Where did you buy the large amount of peat from ?

Was it in multiple regular sized bags/bails, or in the tonne bags like builders use ?

 

It will be exciting to watch future posts of your bog garden. Thank You for showing it.

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Thank you for your interest. I'm afraid I was much less scientific than you (I'm a science teacher too haha). I don't use that pipe to water it but to get an idea of the water level its interesting to see after heavy / prolonged rain. When needed, which is rare now after a year of rain, I do about 8 7litre watering cans from the water butt. I just have one large water butt which is fed from the whole of one side of the house roof so it fills up from empty with one good rain.

I used 8 bales of Irish peat from a garden centre.

I'll be a bit brutal with the plants - if the frost kills them it wasn't meant to be, and the survivors what doesn't kill them makes them stronger.

To fill it with water initially I did the cardinal sin of running TAP WATER for about half hour onto it. I was going on the principle of fish keeping where you can leave the water a few days then its safe to put the fish in and not much difference between plants and fish really is there? Well they haven't died yet.

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Edited by bogtrotter2
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Great project and nice to see some updates....

8 bales of peat must of hurt the wallet and then you use tap water!!!!!

There's a few on here have tried boiling, steeping, filtering tap water, the ppm remained pretty much the same and was proved unsuccessful for removing any of the contaminants that WILL KILL cp's in most cases with continuous use.

There are some exceptions though as some areas tap water has been tested and found to be low enough in ppm to use straight from the tap although chlorine and other additives have to be considered, ( I use "tank safe" dechlorinator when I change my fish tank water).

I'm guessing as it was a one off " soaking " it won't have done any harm, that plus natural rainfall would help to flush the soil but unless you've tested your water I'd stick to rain only unless they were drying out and I had no other option.

It would be a shame to contaminate so much peat and have to start again.

Rant aside, the plants look great, roll on summer !

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It was definitely a one off. I don't know how persistent the chemicals in the water are but the volume of tap water I used will have been replaced many times over with rain since and the acidity will neutralise the limey water we have. Anyway like I say, no deaths so far.

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  • 3 months later...

looking good keep the updates coming. are those slug pellets blue ones I see there

regards

jim

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
Nice! Does D.madagascariensis survive there throught winter or will you dig it up later in season?

Is that the little lad with the hands? Maybe I should cover it well with straw for winter or something? I hadn't considered digging it up. I only buy temperate plants but the wife bought these from the garden centre as a gift when I wasn't there. The whole thing gets a thin fleece frame over it.

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Edited by bogtrotter2
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  • 6 months later...
Nice set up, but why not using polytunnel plastic instead of this cloth? So temperature can be warmer inside.


Hi good question. I have chosen fleece to prevent rot. They're surviving the winters and i assume it hardens them / weeds out the weaklings.


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As you can see 

38 minutes ago, The body snatcher pod said:

OK, thank you for your reply! Sounds reasonable. But may be a plastic layer, like a small polytunnel, could allow you to grow a wider selection of plants. :)

It seems as if the VFTs and a Cephalotus have come through winter outside well with a fleece cover, a small poly tunnel will heat up quickly and would encourage rot unless well ventilated, so may cause more problems than it solved.

Cheers

Steve

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