FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I have had pretty good success growing my plants in 100% Sphagnum moss.
Yet everyone seems to recommend 50/50 peat and perlite or peat and sand.
I'm going to replanting a lot of my traps into larger containers and I think i'll
try peat and perlite, but what are the advantages of using this mixture ?

I too used to grow in 100% sphagnum peat. The plants can do fine, but in my experience plants will do much better with an airier mix. In the pure peat, it seemed to me that it was either too wet or too dry (very hard to control the moisture level of the soil). The plants never got as big as they do for me in the current mix I use (50% peat, 30% silica sand, 20% perlite). They simply divided a lot and stayed relatively small.

peat soaks up water like a sponge and too much water can cause root rot but adding perlite can reduce that risk

i recently mixed up some 50/50 peat/pure silica sand.

i gotta say, its very good at draining excess water so its almost impossible to over water and flood them. yet it does retain quite a lot of moisture and stay nice and fluffy, not compacting down like more peat mixes tend to.

you also dont get perlite float to the top, so no need to try hide the soil with pure peat on top.