FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I am doing my own little experiment to see which is better for me here in Texas. I am using pure sphagnum vs a 50:50 mix of peat and perlite. I have 4 exact clones of similar sized plants of the cultivars D.m “Blood Moon” and D.m ‘Big Mouth’. I am supposed to be receiving 4 spider clones from Jeremiah as well but do not have it yet. I put 2 plants of each cultivar in the different mixes, so 2 plants in peat and 2 plants in Sphag. One of the plants I put in peat will receive a dose of ~100 ppm maxsea sprayed all over the leaves and media for about 3 seconds, as well as a plant in the sphagnum, to see if Max sea has any real affects. The ones labeled “Max” are receiving Maxsea.

This experiment is going to be a long one and may take a couple years, so bear with me

I will have a new video up on my YouTube channel about this experiment, it’s mostly just me rambling on while potting up the plants.

They all seem to have one new trap forming, except one. I’ll be counting the days to see which one forms it’s newest traps first, and how long it takes to form a third trap after the first has opened completely.

Each winter I use the refrigerator method. So for me the most important thing is how easy it is to remove the plants from the potting medium. And I find it incredibly tedious to De-tangle the roots from the sphagnum compared to the Peat and perlite. Very easy to simply wash off the peat and perlite.

I’m going to scrap the Max sea experiment, I will be spraying the other half that did not get treated with maxsea and scrap the maxsea all together. It will be too many variables to work with, and I don’t have enough exact clones. Hope you guys understand

Next year when I have more divisions of everything I will do maxsea experiments, or maybe one of you guys can!

Finally got the spider clones from Jeremiah, here is the data so far

Peat-

Big mouth 1: weighs 2 Grams and has a rhizome of .64 inches
https://imgur.com/a/kYAJ9VB

Big mouth 2: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .44 inches
https://imgur.com/a/mR3hD9B

Blood Moon 1: weighs 1 gram and has a rhizome of .29 inches
https://imgur.com/a/47J77xG

Blood Moon 2: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .28 inches
https://imgur.com/a/qWa4wil

Spider 6: weighs <1 gram and has a rhizome of .45 inches
https://imgur.com/a/EpokW6K

Spider 7: weighs <1 gram and has a rhizome of .48 inches
https://imgur.com/a/Vr8BZ8i

Spider 8: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .50 inches
https://imgur.com/a/4SWqVbF

Spider 9: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .44 inches
https://imgur.com/a/nj6a5en

Spider 10: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .55 inches
https://imgur.com/a/iaKab1x

Sphagnum-

Big mouth 3: weighs <1 grams and has a rhizome of .42 inches
https://imgur.com/a/rPI6trr

Big mouth 4: weighs <1 grams and has a rhizome of .43
https://imgur.com/a/iia4Lvw

Blood Moon 3: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .40 inches
https://imgur.com/a/zP30p1v

Blood Moon 4: weighs <1 grams and has a rhizome of .30 inches
https://imgur.com/a/geb0Qg1

Spider 1: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .56 inches
https://imgur.com/a/0XLRiWu

Spider 2: weighs 2 grams and has a rhizome of .52 inches
https://imgur.com/a/7MtLlg3

Spider 3: weighs <1 gram and has a rhizome of .54 inches
https://imgur.com/a/P43uVfq

Spider 4: weighs <1 gram and has a rhizome of .37 inches
https://imgur.com/a/9cs8Kuu

Spider 5: weighs <1 gram and has a rhizome of .41 inches
https://imgur.com/a/N8YAz4R

Here are the spider clones

Phillyphlytrap wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 4:19 pm Each winter I use the refrigerator method. So for me the most important thing is how easy it is to remove the plants from the potting medium. And I find it incredibly tedious to De-tangle the roots from the sphagnum compared to the Peat and perlite. Very easy to simply wash off the peat and perlite.

Agreed. Although I have been growing some of mine in LFSM lately as well. It works fine but yes, de-tangling the roots is a bit of a pain. It's certainly cleaner stuff to work with however.

Quick update on everything, I have been quite busy and from now on I will be snapping pictures of every plant every week on Saturday. Here are the plants today, May 15, 2021.

Wow,there is quite the competition going on between the 2 soils!And yeah,IMO I think ditching the Maxsea was a good choice,as this is a soil test,and if we have to many variables we won't know if it's the soil or one of the other variables.

Photos for the week

These pics were taken on May 29, 2021

I don't know if this is already obvious,but the LFSM seems to be doing much better than the peat/perlite mix.

Here's some of my observations:
Spider seems to be doing well in both soil mixes.
Blood Moon is definitely doing better in LFSM (color and size).
Big Mouth is developing somewhat larger traps in peat moss.
The competition for which soil mix is better is currently tied.

Great experiment... interesting results so far. Keep us posted! It might depend a bit on the clone as well which is why Blood Moon really looks to be liking LFSM and Spider doesn't seem to care.

These Photos were taken on Sunday June 6th

It’s a really close match and right now, the sphagnum I’m using cost half the price of what 80 liters of Besgrow spagmoss is usually, I payed $26.85 for 80 Liters of sphagnum not including shipping or tax. For the peat and perlite combined I got 28 liters of peat + perlite (combined) for $63.63 not including shipping. The peat alone was 13 liters for $33.95 and 2 bags of 7.5 liters for perlite was $29.78. The sphagnum in my case is way cheaper.

Peat seams to be doing slightly better, though, I did give peat the better plants with slightly larger rhizomes if you watched my YouTube video.