FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

What is a good way to rinse both peat moss and long fibered sphagnum moss for seedlings? I've had many attempts for starting carnivorous plants from seeds but all of them except for my current attempt were failures. And I think that most of them had something to do with the soil. My first try was with some Drosera Spatulata seeds I got from Etsy. The soil I used was peat moss from the pot of dead death cube plant, mixed in with some sand from my backyard. They sprouted, grew well, and then just started to randomly die. I chalked it up to the sand I used being filled with minerals and decided to try again with Drosera Capensis. This time I tried rinsed both the peat and sand I used. I blasted the sand with tap water, then rinsed it off with distilled water, and repeated for the peat. They sprouted exceptionally fast, grew for a while, then just stopped while mold and algae filled the surface of the pot until they died. So how exactly should I rinse my media? I've switched to using long fibered sphagnum moss so directions on rinsing that would also help. Thanks.

Best bet is to purchase a TDS meter and test the runoff levels. If it's less than 30ppm, I'm pretty confident using it since I use distilled water 80% of the time.

Algae growth for me was a result of low air circulation and low light. I ended up removing the seeds, scraped off the top layer, and altered conditions. For the seeds that already germinated, I removed as much as I could surrounding it. The algae slowed down after being stuck in the sun and open to wind.

Mawy_Plants wrote:Best bet is to purchase a TDS meter and test the runoff levels. If it's less than 30ppm, I'm pretty confident using it since I use distilled water 80% of the time.

Algae growth for me was a result of low air circulation and low light. I ended up removing the seeds, scraped off the top layer, and altered conditions. For the seeds that already germinated, I removed as much as I could surrounding it. The algae slowed down after being stuck in the sun and open to wind.

Okay. I evaluated my growing environment and realized that it was probably a moisture problem. I had 3 inch pots of LFS in about in inch of water with plastic wrap over the tray to retain humidity. There was algae in the trays too. So I decided to pour out the water, clean the tray, and leave it empty with the pots in it until the soil dries out a little. Thanks.

I soak LFSM in boiled rainwater until it plumps up, then squeeze out the excess water. Dunk it back in, squeeze out. Repeat a couple of times. Then I change the water, and dunk/squeeze a few more times.

I wouldn't use tap water for any stage of that, as the point of using "clean" water is to not add all the salts and minerals from tap water. I boil my rainwater in a big pot on the stove, then store in used 1-gallon water jugs. I boil it to kill off any mold, algae, mosquito eggs, whatever might be in it.

For dark-brown peat moss mix, I pretty much do that same thing. My peat mix balls up enough to squeeze.

schmeg wrote: I wouldn't use tap water for any stage of that, as the point of using "clean" water is to not add all the salts and minerals from tap water. I boil my rainwater in a big pot on the stove, then store in used 1-gallon water jugs. I boil it to kill off any mold, algae, mosquito eggs, whatever might be in it.

I reason I used tap water and then distilled water was because I tried using the method from this website http://growsundews.com/rinsing_peat_and ... lants.html

I guess the reason it was done here was to try and conserve distilled water when rinsing a large quantity of media. But I'll try using exclusively distilled water next time.

I rinsed mine the same way as that site but I did it several more times. I guess it depends on the quality of your soil. I tried it only a few but still had algae so the next time I did it like 6 times and had much less.