FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I'm trying to get deep into Pitcher plant growing. I have no intention of repeatedly over paying for long fiber moss. I've tried twice to start Colonies from live Moss and failed miserably. I planted it by setting it on a bed of peat moss non-direct medium length sunlight. Watered often and I killed both colony attempts in around a month.

I didn't find anything in particular about growing a colony. What am I missing?

Were the moss open-air or covered?

I grow mine on the windowsill, some in ziplock bags and some in food containers, and I just leave them there. Whenever I need a new plug I mow off new growth from the top a bit. The temperatures in these enclosures get quite hot in the summer, and quite cold in the winter, but it seems like as long as the humidity is high they do fine.

See if this video helps:

In my experience (which is not a lot), sphagnum is weird about light. I've read a few guides that recommend keeping it in low light, but that ended up working out poorly for me as the moss became thin and weak. They seem to like a lot of light, but the tips tend to burn easily if not hardened off to sunlight or if they get too dry or if temperatures get too high. Growing them in a closed container on my windowsill never worked out for me since the high humidity comes at the expense of high temperatures.

On the other hand, I've had really good results growing it in a closed container under bright grow lights.

Try to keep the bottom layer pretty wet. I fill my tray up to the base of the moss layer or sometimes a little over. Otherwise it has a tendency to dry out on the top. I keep it in humidity domes as a bottom layer for my highland Neps. It does well and I've tripled my purchase weight and have introduced another tray. Ultimately, the real key appears to be keeping it wet enough to grow. My utricularia humboldtii is open air and I made the live sphagnum a top layer. It does fine because it is waterlogged. These are all nder grow lights. Indirect sun would be a good play outside I would think. Full sun would probably burn it out too fast.

I would say that I can grow spagnum fairly well. I have even done so in drier pots where I keep my heliamphora. It even grows in full perlite. Ime the key to growing spagnum properly is high high humidity. Once that basic need is supplied, most species do very well. Red spagnum seems to do incredibly well in low water. The super chunky tight grain spagnum that you commonly see on highland species in my experience likes a lot of water and very low temperatures. And the looser green sphagnum that grows like palm trees tends to use even less water and favors lots of light. I would say it depends lots on the species, so as you acquire plants through trading and purchasing, see what variety works for you. Then, you can use excess sphagnum from all of those pots on the other plants you own.

I almost bought a second alpina just to get the red moss it was in lol. It's impossible to get it seems like.

I got my veitchii from a trade and the guy had red LFS. Traded off a 2" basal of dubia for about a bag of it. My fav stuff, it's a mix of red/green it just colors up well. Also keeps helis well despite no night temp drop.

Very nice, I'm a little jealous. The only place I saw that sold it was a canadian vendor. I remember about a year ago, before I got a heli or nepenthes, I saw some different colored moss for sale and I completely forgot the site. I have a top layer of green for my heliamphora. After it gains some size and it comes time for a repot, I'll probably do live sphagnum for the entire thing.