FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Jagasian wrote:Sorry, I got distracted. Here is the sphagnum food that you can spray your live sphagnum with to accelerate growth.

The mix is simple, it contains two simple sugars, 16 essential plant nutrients, and pure water. Note the nutrients are extremely diluted because sphagnum does not need nor like nutrient rich water. The other key ingredients are the sugars, which unlike other plants, sphagnum can eat directly in addition to make using photosynthesis.

AF0AB414-B0E4-42DE-9E41-C183CB061255.jpeg

I will link to online sources for the ingredients and tools necessary for making your own bottle of this mix, and I will also post step by step directions later.

Which type of Dyna-Gro?

I have refined my sphagnum growth serum to be even more effective by using tissue culture medium as opposed to plant fertilizer. The tissue culture medium contains all of the plant nutrients in fertilizer, as well as vitamins that boost a plant’s metabolism. The tissue culture medium is also more easily absorbed by the moss’s flesh. In addition, the recipe listed below uses the tissue culture medium at 5% strength. In other words, it is diluted because sphagnum does not like high levels of nutrients, but it does love then at the right low level. What sphagnum loves at a high level is water and sugar.

Here is the rocket fuel for your sphagnum. Vigorously mix the following:

- 950mL distilled water
- 50mL Gamborg’s B5 liquid tissue culture media
- 10g glucose

The ingredients are easy and inexpensive to obtain.

Gamborg’s ($1.17 for 1000mL)
https://phytotechlab.com/gamborg-b-5-basal-medium.html

Glucose ($19 for 500g)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DYO7OSK/re ... ACb4FM3GDD

In other words, for around $25 you have enough supplies to create 50,000 mL of superfood for sphagnum. Below are some pictures of a large, thick cake of over 20 different species of live sphagnum.

That's a tasty, I mean good looking cake.

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Jagasian wrote: The ingredients are easy and inexpensive to obtain.

Gamborg’s ($1.17 for 1000mL)
https://phytotechlab.com/gamborg-b-5-basal-medium.html

Glucose ($19 for 500g)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DYO7OSK/re ... ACb4FM3GDD

The shipping cost for Gamborg's is ~$20. Do you know if there are any cheaper alternatives that could be used?

Wow very informative I this is one of the best articles I've read about sphagnum moss. So cool

Wow very informative I this is one of the best articles I've read about sphagnum moss. So cool

Being in the scientific research world myself, I'm loving this post and the science behind the wonderful world of sphagnum! Keep it up!

Could I possibly use ‘ Murashige & Skoog (MS)
Basal Medium w/Sucrose & Gelzan’
Instead of the gamborgs?

The MS has ammonium nitrate while gamborgs has ammonium sulfate and the concentrations vary a bit but the MS already has sucrose in it at 30,000mg/L. I know it’s not the same as glucose but could it possible work?

I attached photos of both the products formulas.

If not, can we just use regular sugar? LOL.

Extremely informative posts, thank you! I was just gifted some live red sphagnum by forum member Nocturne and I'm just getting started on growing my own sphagnum moss. Looking forward to reaping a nice harvest this year, and this info will be a great resource.

Sharmagnep wrote:Could I possibly use ‘ Murashige & Skoog (MS)
Basal Medium w/Sucrose & Gelzan’
Instead of the gamborgs?

The MS has ammonium nitrate while gamborgs has ammonium sulfate and the concentrations vary a bit but the MS already has sucrose in it at 30,000mg/L. I know it’s not the same as glucose but could it possible work?

I attached photos of both the products formulas.

If not, can we just use regular sugar? LOL.

I found this paper showing that MS should work (published after your post, so this might be you for all I know haha)

Ah, sorry, forgot to link it -- https://www.hst-j.org/articles/xml/PaWB/

Very informative read going all the way back to first post and links to how it came to be used as wound dressing. Thanks to all that contributed, even if it was 2018.