FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

what peat mix should i use and does anybody have a website and a link to the ready made peat? after almost killing my Sarr i would not like a repeat on my VFT thanks.

I know I'm in the minority, but I've been growing my VFTs in pure sphagnum peat moss for several years now, and it seems to be working fine.

I'll probably have to try a mix someday, just so I can do a side-by-side comparison and see if it actually makes a noticeable difference.

heathenpriest wrote:I'll probably have to try a mix someday, just so I can do a side-by-side comparison and see if it actually makes a noticeable difference.

I've tried pure sphagnum, 50:50 peat and perlite and 50:30:20 peat to silica sand to perlite (my preferred mix). Pure sphagnum gave me the worst growth results (though the plants divided a lot). In 50:50 peat to perlite the plants grew well and divided a bit. In my (now) preferred mix, adopted from Steve, the plants grow very large, develop incredibly healthy root systems and divide less until they get large (if their pots are large enough to allow them to do so).

That's fascinating, Matt! And were these plants grown at the same time and in the same place, or were these observations made over several years?

I just happened upon 50 32 ounce styrofoam cups yesterday, and I have 20 identical small wastebaskets to use in my upcoming soil experiment. I'm hoping to get a good number of typical seeds, either from my own plants or from the store, so I can try lots of different things in identical circumstances.

carnivorous1123 wrote:... does anybody have a website and a link to the ready made peat? ...

I can't tell from your profile where in the world you are from. There is the above link for US, and if you are from the UK try this site for ready-made potting mixes. As for other countries/continents, I don't know.

heathenpriest wrote:That's fascinating, Matt! And were these plants grown at the same time and in the same place, or were these observations made over several years?

It definitely wasn't a hard-core scientific experiment where I had a large sample size and grew all of the plants in identical conditions. These were more my observations over a few years of growing in different media mixes. Although it's not something that I could publish, I'm confident that flytraps grow better in soil that is broken up with sand or other semi-large granules to help promote a healthy root system.

I can't claim credit for these plants, but mine are looking more and more like these every day (I only made the complete switch to using sand and perlite over pure peat last year other than a few experiments here and there). These are some plants I got from Steve whose potting mix I've adopted as my own:


I've never been able to achieve root systems like that in pure peat, even with very deep pots.

heathenpriest wrote:I just happened upon 50 32 ounce styrofoam cups yesterday

Those would be GREAT for some uses-- Where did you find them? I'd like to try to get some too-- Nice and deep for your preferred method of tray watering while keeping the water table well below the bulb and upper roots. Nice--