FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Sure, ground up sphagnum and sand would be a fine repotting mixture as long as the sand is clean. In some cases, sand can have minerals and other contaminants in it that can seep into the soil and then be absorbed by the Venus Fly Trap causing it to get sick or even die. Most people use horticultural grade sand to avoid this.

Where do you live? Are you in the United States? If so, peat can be found at almost any hardware store and for sure any nursery. In fact, peat really is just finely ground up dead sphagnum moss.

Good luck with your fly traps!

lozzumsyeah wrote:thanks alot man, i really appreciated and admire what you've set up here. it's a fantastic source of information.

Thanks a lot for the nice feedback. This site is new, but I hope to grow it into a nice little community. I plan to add a blogging feature in a little while so that people can write about their plants and such. Between than and this forum hopefully people will keep coming back to this site.

lozzumsyeah wrote:I suppose using actual peat would be better than spaghnum moss? and the sand could be substituted for perlite as reccomended in your soil section? think i just found some old perlite

Nope, not really. Peat and sphagnum are both good media to plant VFTs in. Either one you want to use would be fine. In fact, some growers prefer using long fibered sphagnum moss over peat. And many people use live sphagnum, which is visually more attractive because it stays green and pretty.

lozzumsyeah wrote:I've had my plant for a few years, and haven't done anything to it and it's split up into 3 separate plants, would it be advisable to separate them completely?

If you are going to repot the plant, it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and split the 3 plants up. It won't hurt to leave them close together, but if you split them up, they can more easily propagate again, like this plant did. If they already have separate rooting systems, then they will be fine for sure. If they do not, there is a small chance that you might lose one of them, but I seriously doubt that would happen.

lozzumsyeah wrote:also the leaves never really go red at all, staying really green, do you have an idea why this might be?

This can be due to one of two reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
1) They aren't getting enough sunlight. How much direct sunlight do they get every day?
2) You have one of the cultivated varieties (abbreviated cultivars) that stays green no matter how much sunlight you give it. I am working on pages about cultivars, a list of all the cultivars and pages for each cultivar. I hope to have this information up in a couple days. FYI, there are a few unofficial cultivars going around that are all green, and the official registered all green cultivar is 'Justina Davis', registered by Barry Rice. No matter how much sun you give the plant, it will never turn red.

Oh, I also just noticed from your picture that it appears that your pot of VFTs is setting in some sort of dirt that is holding water. Be careful with that. If that is regular potting soil, the minerals could leach from the soil, into the water and then into your peat where they will burn the roots of your plant and possibly kill it.

Looks good! That's great that you had 7 plants in there. They could stand a bit more sun, but as you say, they look pretty healthy! Have fun growing them. Post more pics as they start growing again. I would like to see them.