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its alive! :D

  • Thread starter upper
  • Start date

upper

Capensis Killer
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it always comes back...
 
Aw, no fair. I tried growing sphagnum but it didn't work. Congrats though.
 
Congrats. Is this the stuff you accidentally cooked?
 
lol, that's like half of it, i loved the white sphagnum. it looks good as a topping on my sarracenia. but yeah, those are the stuff i cooked. well, i'm loving my winter so far. the sphagnum can be in full sun, covered, and it wont cook.
 
See this? All I did was put the dried stuff in the pot and sprinkle sundew seeds on top. I covered it with a plastic up and put under a Grolite. I have no sundew sprouts but plenty of live LFS.

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Maneatingmoo, did you try grinding the sphagnum? That seems to jump start it for me. Left as long ropes it takes a long time to get going, and sometimes what starts to look like living sphagnum ends up actually just being algae. If you haven't tried it, try grinding some up and keeping it evenly moist and illuminated (mist well every day or every other day). I rub two handfuls of dry LFS together until it makes a pile of small chunks and dust floating in a pail of water, I call that "ground". Be sure to pull your teeshirt over your nose/mouth when you do this as it's no good breathing the sphagnum dust!
 
Maneatingmoo, did you try grinding the sphagnum? That seems to jump start it for me. Left as long ropes it takes a long time to get going, and sometimes what starts to look like living sphagnum ends up actually just being algae. If you haven't tried it, try grinding some up and keeping it evenly moist and illuminated (mist well every day or every other day). I rub two handfuls of dry LFS together until it makes a pile of small chunks and dust floating in a pail of water, I call that "ground". Be sure to pull your teeshirt over your nose/mouth when you do this as it's no good breathing the sphagnum dust!

hah, i do this for almost all my new plants now. after i take out all the water and sphagnum, there's like... sand or something at the bottom... i think i cleaned it :-D
 
The Mosser Lee brand sphagnum moss cut in Wisconsin that I used to buy from my aunts garden center was real bad for getting lots of "extras" like: dirt, sand, rocks, twigs, dead raccoons, dog doo, you name it! lol! The blond NZ sphagnum from the orchid shop doesn't seem to be like that but now that they sell the cheaper blond at the garden center I've found twigs and root clumps in some of it, it's not the same as the orchid shop "real" NZ stuff which seems to be the most "clean" outta the bag with only a little sand but you definitely pay for the luxury, I assume it's pre-cleaned. On a positive note, my N. rajah did great in the cheap Mosser Lee stuff that was full of all the extras, I never bothered digging most of the stuff out just the biggest hunks, I just chopped at it with a big pair of garden shears. It did make a nice fast draining highland nep soil though!
 
  • #10
Sphagnum seems to be my nemesis. I cannot for the life of me get this stuff to green up. I've got a batch of the real nice blond NZ kind, and I'm also trying a batch of the crappy, dark Mosser Lee stuff. 4 months later and nothing on either batch. Well, not nothing, the mosser lee stuff is sprouting all kinds of various things except the sphagnum itself. Yeah - I'm being careful - keeping it moist, under the same lights as my neps, highland temps, RO water, etc. And nothing.

So how long does it take you guys to get green out of this stuff? I'm about to give up on it for good.
 
  • #11
you know.... if given the right condition, the moss should naturally sprout out. but! the fastest way is if you could get even ONE living strand, you could continue until you have a whole tray of sphagnum.
 
  • #12
Yeah, Mosser Lee is great for getting all sorts of hitch hiker plant goodies. I actually like some of the extras I've gotten like ferns, liverworts, a sundew once and interesting stuff but often what's sprouted from ML for me that is moss, isn't sphagnum moss but regular forest moss ("cap moss"?) it's short and stiff like a green scrub brush.

I'd try some different brands of the blond if you can get hold of them, or even just start up some new cultures from the stuff you have and see what happens. But keep onto the old ones incase they're just late sprouters. Did you grind it up or leave it as "ropes"? Generally, if it's been ground I'd say within 3 months (90 days) of light and constant moisture/high humidity (but not water logged/floating) you should be seeing some green poking up, sometimes it might take up to 6 months but sometimes packaged moss are just "dead" the only answer then is to try a new package. Once it finally does get growing it's easy to spread around and increase your material rather quickly. Just chop the live green into tiny bits and scatter them on moist sphagnum and they all start growing where they've been dropped. Be sure the tiny bits always get a daily misting to stay well hydrated and not dry up if you do the mince and scatter method.

Good luck and get ready for some fast paced thumb-twidling! Of course you already know CPs are all about hurry up and wait! ;)
 
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