FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

elaineo wrote:@murrkywaters, it looks like they are growing in a solid plastic box, and the aquarium tube is going into the soil. is it just blowing air into the bottom of the soil? very interesting design.

It's actually two shoe boxes, one with holes for water. They come apart easily if I need to drain the water to mitigate mineral build-up.

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very cool @murrkywaters!

My growing conditions are very different from yours, but in my experience, my sarrs do not mind sitting in water in warm weather as long as the containers are tall enough so that the vast majority of a plant’s roots are not constantly submerged in water. For my sarrs in 1 gallon nursery pots and 5x5x7 pots, that usually means no more than about 2” of water. For sarrs in 20 ounce styrofoam cups, that would be about 1- 1 1/2” of water. For my much taller 3 gallon containers, that could be 4-5”. However, plants will use more water in a hot, dry desert, and the evaporation rate will be higher. Currently, with temps occasionally spiking to the high 90s, most of the water will be gone within 24-36 hours, and I top off my water trays daily.

I have found minors to be the most sensitive to higher water levels. No problems with my leucos, flavas, or purps. I use a 50/50 to 45/55 peat/perlite mix for my sarrs. I haven’t noticed a significant difference between a fresh division and a more established one when it comes to being able to handle higher water levels.

My rationale for lowering the water level revolves around the idea that when the surface of the soil is very hydrated and the plant hasn't yet fully acclimated to the new environment, that can cause rot, even with a very healthy plant. These plants were always in a 5x5 by 7 inch tall pot, and never in more than 2” of water. I don’t know. Since these were newly divided and purchased over the course of the last 4-5 months, I just was trying to isolate why a few developed rhizome rot and died. I guess they could have had an issue when sent to me, but knowing the sellers for the ones I lost, I doubt it.

If its warm weather I tend to put divided Sarracenias in tall pots and keep the wetter than normal as they will be in shock, have fewer roots than possibly they need and will need to draw water at a high rate to compensate for the lack of roots and transpiration rates.
When transplanting seedlings, recently I've started to fill the trays to pot height for a day, and then drain to settle the smaller roots into the peat.
I dont normally get rot but do treat fresh wounds, but there is always the chance of having pathogens in your soil or in the air even.
Cheers
Steve

elaineo wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 3:40 pm I never understood live sphag for top dressing. Doesn't it just turn brown and die right away? there are some red sphag species that tolerate surface conditions, but they are very difficult to find.

When I used non-draining pots for my Sarracenia, all of them had a healthy carpet of live sphagnum on top of the peat/perlite/sand mix: Because the pots didn't drain, it was easy to keep the moss damp. However, I found that this arrangement wasn't optimal for the Sarracenia. They were too wet (believe it or not), and the bottom-half of the pots was an anaerobic environment. When I repotted the plants, I found that they didn't send any roots into that zone, and the lower soil smelled "skunky". Last year, I moved all of them into draining pots. The plants are much happier now, but I can't keep any live sphagnum moss on the pots because the surface dries out too much.

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.