elaineo wrote:i wrap the rhizome/roots in live sphag before potting them in whatever, because live sphag generates oxygen. I keep the water level at over 50% of the pot height for everybody, including drosera and VFTs. I have never lost a plant to rot when using live sphag around the roots.
That's an interesting way to use live sphagnum! I've never done it but it does make sense.
ChefDean wrote:I've always used LFSM for my Sarrs and have never lost one. Maybe due to the antiseptic properties of sphagnum.
Yeah, Sarrs seem to love LFSM and grow very, very well in it. But, as we all know, it can be expensive to use in large quantities. Thus, I don't use it for my Sarrs very often.
Just to throw in my experience with growing Sarrs since 2007 or so -- I rarely lose any these days. I received one from CC this year that was weak and I did lose it to rot. But I received somewhere on the order of 200 or so divisions last summer through the winter, some of which were quite small, from other very reputable growers and all of them survived the winter. I water my Sarracenia a lot like my flytraps, trying to keep the soil evenly moist (though moister than for flytrap) and not too wet all the time. Sarracenia will very easily tolerate sitting in water all the time, particularly in very tall pots, but in the winter if they're super wet, some will succumb to rot. The species mentioned in the first post do seem more susceptible to it.
So my watering routine for Sarracenia is to fill the trays with water that's no more than 1/3 the height of the pots and then allow the tray to dry before watering again. This seems to work very well for me here in Oregon. For optimal Sarracenia cultivation conditions, I prefer using very large and deep pots that are 15 inches or deeper and keeping them sitting in 1-3 inches of water at all times. They seem to love those conditions for me.