FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi All,

Not specific to VFTs, but am curious. How all are your storing your soil components, or pre-mixed soil? Are you pre-washing loads of sand/peat and storing that? Are you somehow drying that, or are you storing moist/wet? If so, do you run into mold/mildew/etc growing? Or degradation?

At this point, I'm mainly using 1 and 2 gallon ziplocks for washed components (LFT, Peat, etc), and pre-mixed. The only components I've really had issues with mold is moist/wet coir. I do wash peat well in advance and sometimes forget about it (I've got a half full bucket of washed peat in my yard I need to process. Opening it after about 3 months showed a nice film of algae on the water surface, but nice black peat below. Silica sand, if I bother to wash, I put in a rigid container (food storage container) just because I'd worry about a bag ripping and spilling sand everywhere. Non-washed Silica goes int a 5gal bucket with a closable (Gamma Seal) lid.

Obviously stuff you buy in large quantities (Perlite, Orchiata, Turface, etc) go in their own large containers.

All my bags then largely go into a large rubbermaid tote to keep them together/organized/etc. But I'm really open to ideas of what others do. =)

Peat goes in a big plastic garbage can, mostly dry otherwise it'll develop anaerobic bacteria and be unusable. I rinse it as I use it to mix up soil. Aggregates stay in the bags they came in. Leftover mixed soil and any washed sand I just let sit in 5 gallon buckets. If there's a lot of soil left I'll mix it up occasionally to make sure it's drying out.

nimbulan wrote:Peat goes in a big plastic garbage can, mostly dry otherwise it'll develop anaerobic bacteria and be unusable. I rinse it as I use it to mix up soil.

So do you buy bails and then break them up, or...? And how long would you expect to be able to keep pre-washed peat? I mean, peat forms anaerobicly anyway, so I'm not sure why that would be something that could ruin it.

staze wrote:

nimbulan wrote:Peat goes in a big plastic garbage can, mostly dry otherwise it'll develop anaerobic bacteria and be unusable. I rinse it as I use it to mix up soil.

So do you buy bails and then break them up, or...? And how long would you expect to be able to keep pre-washed peat? I mean, peat forms anaerobicly anyway, so I'm not sure why that would be something that could ruin it.

I just open up the bale and dump it in. It tends to break up pretty well on its own.

Yes peat does form anaerobically, but the particular anaerobic bacteria that get into it outside of a natural bog environment break down the peat and nutrients and minerals that are harmful to CPs and can be detected by its characteristic sulfur smell. Once it gets in there, you can't really get it out again. I've ruined far too many batches of seed and had to save a lot of sickly plants after attempting to use anaerobic peat.

nimbulan wrote:Yes peat does form anaerobically, but the particular anaerobic bacteria that get into it outside of a natural bog environment break down the peat and nutrients and minerals that are harmful to CPs and can be detected by its characteristic sulfur smell. Once it gets in there, you can't really get it out again. I've ruined far too many batches of seed and had to save a lot of sickly plants after attempting to use anaerobic peat.

Great to know. I'll dump my washed peat into something open and let it "dry" at least somewhat. Thanks!