FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

hi everybuddy,

The sphagnum I bought started smell when I drenched it. Does it usually happens? The dry moss does not reeks.

The live stuff tends to stink, especially if it's from a department store of some kind (they sell sphagnum moss in bundles here and it absolutely stinks when you start washing it). I don't know if it reflects quality or if it's just the stench of moss but that smell should go off.

cool, thank ya. You make me more confident.

My live moss stinks, think its normal

Same

yeah, its normal, it comes from places where everything is rotting, did u think it would smell like roses in stead of swamp? ^^

I just cleaned out the water from a water tray where the container was filled with sphagnum. I had poured water into the container and let it fill the tray. A week later and it was yellowish and smelled like urine. I think it was yellow when it first filled the tray. Makes me want to rewash all the sphagnum in the container, but I had sown sundew seeds in it and that would not be a good idea.

in my experience only dead sphagnum smells.
As soon as it starts reviving the smell diminishes (and keeping it in a sealed bag doesnt help with the smell either)

Same thing with a different producer. The one at the picture smells like Iodine...

Is anybody using this one? Would you say I should rinse it?

We use Spagmoss for everything. No need to rinse. It's the cleanest potting medium we've ever found.

What about this particular brand? Maybe the smell I feel is just the bog's smell...

I grow my Sphagnum on a layer of Spagmoss and it smells good. Kind of a flowers with a hint of marijuana. Maybe my supplier was growing something else.

lol

mine is grassy with a touch of John's wort.

Sorry to revive an old post but...

I have 9 VFTs in a white styrofoam pot. I top watered them yesterday with melted snow and when I brought them in that evening, there was a fairly strong scent of urine. I have never smelled that on my plants before. I noticed the pot was sitting in a puddle when I picked it up but thought it was runoff. I am trying to figure out if an off leash dog came by and peed on it, which seems very unlikely given we have a decent size driveway and the pot was in front of my front door. I looked at videos from a driveway camera and it didn't catch anything like that, but it doesnt get 100% of all the motion. All the plants are in pure (dried) NZ LFSM from FTS. The pot has yellowed from the neem oil I've been using but one side is much darker. They've been in this pot since spring and i never noticed an odor before.

Does your dried LFSM ever smell like pee when you wet it?

Edit: I'm wondering if the odor is emanating from the deeper, possibly musty layers of sphagnum moss that could possibly be harboring slime mold. The pot is approximately 9x9x8 inside dimensions. I know it harbors fungus gnats, god knows what else.

i would follow my instincts and flush the soil with distilled water or whatever water you used before. Snow?

i went and smelled my moss and it has a slight earthy smell. but generally i think it smells good. Both the dead and living moss smells good. if water sits too long it gets stagnant or swampy smelling and i just flush it out and clean the tray. that usually has to do with dead stuff rotting and not moss. But to be sure its not urine, i would flush it out. can't hurt. What color was the snow?