FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

It's time for me to stock up on soil ingredients. I had been using Premier peat moss for a while, but I wasn't thrilled with the quality: too much debris (twigs and sticks) in the product. This time, I decided to order a 3.8 cubic-foot (107.6-liter) bag of SunGro Black Gold Canadian sphagnum peat moss from Ace Hardware. It costs $5 more than a bag of Premiere, but it was money well-spent. I really like SunGro's peat moss. It's the highest-quality peat that I can get my hands on, with very little debris. It'll take me a while to chew through this huge bag, but I plan to go back for more.

While I was out, I stopped at the farm-supply store and picked up two bags of medium-grit filter sand. Or should I say "struggled to pick up the sand." Did you know that a cubic foot (28.3 liters) of quartz sand weighs 100 pounds (45 kilos)? And because it's loose material, the bag is "dead weight": everything shifts around, and there is no internal support. Fortunately, I was able to get them out of the car trunk (boot for those of you in the U.K.) without wrecking my back. I bought two bags so I won't have to go back for a while.

I spent the rest of the day mixing up a huge stockpile of carnivorous plant soil so I can do some serious repotting this week.

Yeah, that Black & Gold was the best peat I could find before I found the Theriault & Hachey Peat moss. I think the quality is quite similar, at least to what B&G used to be. In recent years it too was shipping some bales with lots of sticks and quite high in minerals, according to my friend who uses it religiously.

MikeB wrote:Or should I say "struggled to pick up the sand." Did you know that a cubic foot (28.3 liters) of quartz sand weighs 100 pounds (45 kilos)?

Yes, I know that all too well!!!! We buy our sand by the pallet, which has 35-some-odd bags of sand on it. I had to move each individual bag 4 times this year!!! Once to get it from the place I purchased it (they don't deliver) to the car (took several trips), then from the car to the side yard where it eventually became in the way of where I wanted to run electricity to the new greenhouse. So I moved it again, ran the electricity, and then moved the sand back. That's 7+ tons of moving sand over the course of about a month. At 43 years old, I'm lucky I didn't hurt myself moving it so many times!!

Glad to hear you didn't injure your back and are ready to roll with some seriously good ingredients for potting

I have only used "Premier" brand and it has been hit and miss, one cube will be perfect and the next have a lot of trash. I remember doing my peat research online and i came to the conclusion that all the 4cf cubes were the same and its just luck of the draw, what was scooped out of the bog and got put in that bag. Is that not the case? Is one brand better, cleaner?

optique wrote:I have only used "Premier" brand and it has been hit and miss, one cube will be perfect and the next have a lot of trash.

Exactly. I bought most of a pallet of Premier this year to use in the bottom part of my huge bog planters seen in this thread:
my-new-bog-garden-planters-t49241.html

I only bought the Premier to fill the bottom part of the planters and planned to use T&H peat mixed with silica sand and perlite on the top 8 inches or so. But to my surprise, the Premier peat was almost nearly as good as the T&H stuff! Every bag I opened from that particular pallet was really good quality. But every bag I've ever opened of T&H is always good quality.

To the contrary, Premier varies a lot in quality and most bales are mediocre at best. Some are extremely bad quality with tons of minerals in them. I can recall a couple of bales that nearly wiped out my collection when I did a repot before switching to using the Besgrow New Zealand long-fiber sphagnum for most of my flytrap potting.

I like sun gro, but I find that there is a "problem" with it: it really compacts! It turns into a veritable peat bog pretty quickly. This is good for water wicking, but isn't exactly the best aeration for the roots. The twigs and other little things in Premier are pretty handy in the end...

My standard soil mix is 3 parts peat moss, 1 part perlite, and 1 part coarse sand. The perlite and sand do a good job of discouraging compaction.

Matt wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:32 am We buy our sand by the palate, which has 35-some-odd bags of sand on it. I had to move each individual bag 4 times this year!!!

Hmmm, sounds like an acquired taste. (I know you meant "pallet." )

For supplies, you might also checkout Roberts Flower Supply. http://orchidmix.com/ It is run by a nice elderly couple.

DragonsEye wrote:Hmmm, sounds like an acquired taste. (I know you meant "pallet." )

Haha! That's like the 5th time this year I've made mistakenly typed that word when I meant "pallet"!!!!