FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

When I started this hobby, I used the Besgrow pressed bricks that would expand when it soaked in water. I found it pretty convenient for storage and the quality was on point.

As my collection grew, I needed to get larger packs of moss because it was cheaper. Started off with the 12L, then the 40L, and then the 80. Would have done the 250 but it was nowhere to be found.

I was a little thrown by the 12 being much larger in size than the 8, but I quickly realized it was because it was just dried, not pressed. That's cool. What I noticed though was there were more sticks/debris in it than the bricks. I'm guessing when it's pressed, it either gets pummeled into oblivion or they pick out the better stuff to use.

What I noticed too is that the larger the packs get, the less quality control there is in the pack. Granted, the 80L bags I got were "classic" though the page advertised "premium" and I was like, "there'll be a few more sticks, whatever"

Nah bro, there were a LOT more sticks and debris. The 80L bags were by far the stickiest? By the time I got to the bottom of the bag, I was having to pull apart each piece of moss and separating the trash stuck to it. It was unpleasant as I had a lot of plants to work with.

Moral of the story: if you don't need a huge quantity of moss, pay the extra couple bucks to save the time of tediously separating the stuff. I've always used Besgrow and idk if they were bad batches or they had a drop off in quality control. The moss itself is still good, it's just more of a headache.

I’m just getting to the bottom of the 80L / 1K bag I bought. I will let you know what I find, but so far, I have been pleased with the quality.

I had been using both the 40L and 80L bags. The last one had noticeably poorer quality. I even tried to contact them (both in NZ and the importer) to ask if something had changed. I got no responses. I then sampled the Chilean/Peruvian 5-star moss and quite liked it. So I've switched to that.

Besgrow quality has noticeably declined in the last year or two. We just acquired NZ moss from a different distributor in New Zealand and it is much, much nicer with fewer sticks and "nasties" in the moss.

evenwind wrote:I had been using both the 40L and 80L bags. The last one had noticeably poorer quality. I even tried to contact them (both in NZ and the importer) to ask if something had changed. I got no responses. I then sampled the Chilean/Peruvian 5-star moss and quite liked it. So I've switched to that.

Do you have a brand or link ?
Thanks

@Supercazzola, PM'ed you.

OK thank you

Yeah Besgrow offers various grades of moss. Unfortunately many retailers do not specify the grade they sell, and most of the time the packaging doesn't specify either (sometimes you'll get a sticker.) You're right that the larger packages tend to be a slightly lower grade, though I've never seen anywhere enough debris in a package to worry about. Now granted, I haven't bought moss in quite a while since I got a huge block of it but I'd be surprised to see THAT much of a decline in quality.