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Hello Folks, New here and just started with Carnivorous Plants


Triffid Guy

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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

 

7A62CB68-1639-4ADF-8962-BCC0EDFA2305.jpeg

Edited by Triffid Guy
I Missed out some information
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Hello and welcome.

5 hours ago, Triffid Guy said:

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

Yes it can certainly get that way over time when you decide the plants would be better in a greenhouse then you buy loads more as the greenhouse looks bare with so few plants. Then oops you've too many plants and need a bigger greenhouse.

Only joking.

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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.

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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,?

 

Edited by Triffid Guy
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Hi Jay

you don't need a TDS meter to tell you that Brighton's tap water is too hard for most CPs.  A few years ago hardly anyone (possibly no-one) used them.  Since then their use seems to have been copied from the USA.

Collect as much rain water as you can.  Even is sunny Brighton it rains regularly and any other dissolved solids washed from your roof will quickly settle out and in any case they won't harm your plants.

You will need a back up supply of soft water and there have been many discussions on the forum on how or where to get it.

The alternative would be to move to Devon where we can use our tap water.

Standing pots with drainage holes in a water tray of some sort is a standard way of growing CPs.  

Good luck.

Dennis

 

 

 

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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?

Edited by Triffid Guy
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Hi again Jay

unless you live next to a cement works, lime stone quarry, gypsum mine and the like which makes your rain hard, it is extremely unlikely that your rainwater contains calcium, magnesium carbonates, bicarbonates or sulfates.  Your TDS meter is detecting other minerals washed from your roof - non of which are likely to affect your plants.  In the wild CPs do not get absolutely pure water.  It will typically contain peat particles,, other vegatative detritus and minerals leached from the surrounding soil and will be on the acid side of neutral.

I have more sarracenia than I know what to do with.  If you would like some freebies PM me with your address.

cheers

Dennis

 

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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.

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On 6/23/2021 at 7:20 PM, dennisB said:

Hi again Jay

unless you live next to a cement works, lime stone quarry, gypsum mine and the like which makes your rain hard, it is extremely unlikely that your rainwater contains calcium, magnesium carbonates, bicarbonates or sulfates.  Your TDS meter is detecting other minerals washed from your roof - non of which are likely to affect your plants.  In the wild CPs do not get absolutely pure water.  It will typically contain peat particles,, other vegatative detritus and minerals leached from the surrounding soil and will be on the acid side of neutral.

I have more sarracenia than I know what to do with.  If you would like some freebies PM me with your address.

cheers

Dennis

 

Here is a pic of my newly planted  bog pot.

 

54AFE86F-AD98-4C1B-B98B-9261206C9E21.jpeg

Edited by Triffid Guy
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