FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hello all,

I thought I would bring up the question of soil to promote healthy growing of VFT’s. This is a subject that I think investigation may yield better growth for Dionaea. It is common to use a conventional soil mixture of one or more of peat moss, sand, perlite and sphagnum moss. I currently use 80% peat and 20% course sand and perlite for my plants and repot every two years.

I take to heart the words of Barry Rice. He wrote that plants will stress if they are grown in conditions that differ than those encountered in its native habitat. These stress factors may ultimately determine our Dionaea’s ability to flourish or parish in our collections. A few of these factors include water purity, lighting conditions, soil conditions, humidity and dormancy. Of course there are other factors to investigate but they are all good subjects for future discussions.

I have wondered about the Ultimate Growing Soil for VFT’s. My interest peeked about 8 years ago when a friend showed me a small plastic bag of soil collected, (I am not a supporter of collecting plants or soil from the natural habitat) from a site in NC where VFT’s flourished. I found it to be completely different than what I expected. It consisted of 85%-90% fine white silica sand, (almost powder) and 10%-15% extremely fine organic matter. I assume this organic constituent to be highly decayed peat and remains from wild fires.

The soil was light and fluffy and promoted drainage. It also indicates that the roots and rhizome would not be restricted in growth. Unfortunately the soil would also promote rapid growth of competing plants. The VFT would quickly benefit from wild fires because the fast release of nitrogen and other minerals directly into the highly porous soil, (not to mention temporarily removing competition from other plants). The acidic nature of the soil ~ PH 5.2 – 5.3 is most likely from natural rain water, peat and pine needle dropped from the natural vegetation. I am wondering if a planting medium that replicated the NC soil sample would enhance growth. May be?

Any discussion would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Curtis

G'day Curtis, you have put a lot of thought into your post and you have got me thinking...I have a couple of spare (sacrificial) VFT's and would like try an experiment with a soil type like you have mentioned. I will gather the required ingredients and pot up the two plants - one in regular peat/sand (70/30 mix) and the other in the fine sandy mix. This could all take some time, but I'll keep you posted on the results.

Good evening Linton,

Sorry but I have not visited this page for a while. In fact, I am not sure why not more people have jumped on this subject. Outside of water, light, food and dormancy this is a very relevant subject. I have a series of soil experiments scheduled for my spring repotting. I will keep you posted in my results. May I suggest, (sorry this is a weakness of mine) that you adopt the tray method of watering for the “fine grain” sand mixture so as to keep the medium from splashing onto the traps, (and keeping the soil fluffy and aerated as possible)? I greatly appreciate your experimenting spirit. I assume you are attempting your spring repotting soon. I look forward to your results of your experimentation. Good luck in your growing!

Best regards,
Curtis

I've been meaning to post to this thread for a while. I was thinking that if we (as a community) worked collectively, we could gather all kinds of good information about using different mediums in different climates. It could be very helpful to growers in different climates to see what other growers have had the most success with in their climate.

Hello Matt,

I believe this would be valuable to the VFT community. Let me know how I can assist you or the group. I hope all is well in Bolder. I'll try to send more rain and snow your direction.

Best regards,
Curtis

Hi all,

I have been working this experiment for 10 months now and its time for an update. I originally made a soil mix that consisted of very fine peat moss, (sifted through a fine meshed strainer) highly pulverized pine needles and very fine white silica sand, (#100 mesh). The planting mixture was 80% sand, ~19% fine peat moss and 1% pine needle fragments.

The objective was to create a humus type sandy soil that’s similar to Wilmington NC location. Work started in February and I found at first, as with all newly planted or transplanted VFT plants, the growth was slow due from shock and settling in. The plants were grown outdoors in Sonoma County, CA in individual 6" pots and received full sunlight with ambient humidity of 45%-60%. I do not fertilize the plants. RO water is used and delivered by the tray method, (1”-2” deep).

In June the plants started a normal growth pattern. I normally do not let freshly repotted plants flower but for this experiment I let nature take its course. As expected, the plants were somewhat stressed through the flowering season. Fewer leaves were produced but the traps were of normal size. They captured prey just as well as other VFT in my collection. Normal feeding rate is two “house fly” sized prey every two weeks.

Once the flowering and seed set finished in August, the plants started to grow well with many new traps. The trap size was still of normal dimension but coloration of the new traps appeared more rich than before. My control plants appeared to have the same amount of coloring as the previous year. I will continue to monitor this next year. All the plants in the test subdivided quickly during August and September creating multiple smaller plants. This was not the case with the control plants

During October and November the growth has slowed for winter but the plants in the soil experiment are still sending up new very colorful leaves even though we have had daily light frosts for the past two week. So for now, let’s get through winter and see what spring has in store. I plan on continuing this experiment for another two years.

Best regards,
Curtis

Thanks for sharing your results Solarin. It's interesting that those in 80% sand divided more readily. I wonder how the pine needles come into play, and if ashes of burned pine needles would be an effective part of the soil mix.

Thanks for the detailed update Curtis. I'm excited to see the results between the control group and the experimental group over the next couple of years. Have you taken any photos of the groups for documentation purposes?

This is a very interesting discussion thread. Thank you Solarin for sharing your experiment and experiences. I've wondered for a long time about pine needles as a possible growing medium supplement.

About vegetative division, one thing I have noticed with my plants is that they seem to divide more when under some kind of stress, when conditions are less than ideal. For example, some of my plants that have suffered salt burn in the past for a number of reasons have seemed to produce more divisions during the stress, if the stress was not too great, or during recovery after having been transplanted into better medium.

This is so far just an interesting observation on my part, and far from a scientific controlled experiment.

Right now I am experimenting with coir (coconut husk fiber) for use as or within a growing medium. The first important obstacle to overcome with coir is to desalinate it by repeated soaking, draining and rinsing, testing the TDS (total dissolved solids) between each treatment.

Currently I have two tests going with coir mix (coir mixed with silica sand and some perlite): 2 Drosera capensis (generously supplied by Matt ) both planted in coir mix in the same pot, and 2 pots of Sarracenia leucophylla seedlings, one planted in my usual sphagnum peat moss mix and one planted in a coir mix.

The Drosera are doing great so far in the carefully pre-desalinated coir mix. It's still too early to determine the results of the S. leucos in coir.

Steve

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for the comments Matt, Steve and Veronis.

Hi Matt, this initial year I did not photograph the plants and control plants because of the transplanting stress. Next year will be the acid test. I will be imaging the progress throughout the up coming growing season against the controls.

Hi Steve, historically I have seen stressed induced subdividing from replanting, (maybe 20% chance of occurring). The silica sand has been washed to remove salts but there is always a chance that it was "dirtier" than I had anticipated. The plants are outside and will be washed with our winter rains so maybe this will help further if indeed this is a problem. Thanks, I will defiantly keep this in mind and please keep me posted on your soil testing. Very interesting indeed.

I was interested in the pine needle component because this material outside the sphagnum peat is a main contributor to the native soils pH. I would imagine that this component of the soil would be replenished every year to some degree. Possibly one could embellish on the experiment, as suggested by Veronis, to use pine needle ash to influence growth. This sounds logical because historically natural wild fires were very common to the FVT natural habitat.

The shortest day of the year is only a month away and then spring is just around the corner. We will have more results soon enough.

Best regards,
Curtis

G'day

I from aussie land and new to the site.
Getting some bare rooted VFT soon and I was wondering if TPM (Tref Peat Moss is ok to use 50/50 (sand) TPM Fine is a white fine peat. Graded Peat • TPM Fine has been graded to remove large particle.The particle size has been graded between 0-5mm.
If Ok, I buy a bale tomorrow.
cheers