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CP Soil needed - Any ideas?

I have been looking for CP soil for quite sometime now...
- I haven't been able to find any local suppliers
- Online places offer it but shipping either doubles or triples the final price
- I don't know what materials to get locally (that are safe to use with CP's) to create my own soil mixture

I need to have two different kinds of soil. One that is good with D. muscipula, and another that works for nepenthes species. Any ideas, suggestions, general advice?

Note: The cheaper the better, as I am putting myself through college.

Thanks in advance!!
 
Starting out you really only need 3 basic ingredients.. pure peat, perlite, and Long Fibered (non-Canadian) Sphagnum moss. All 3 of these things can be found at almost any local nursery.

For neps just use 50:50 perlite and LFS, and for everything else 50:50 peat and perlite works fine.

If you can't find these locally, the supplies are a dime a dozen online. Oh, and avoid miracle grow products.
 
Should I rinse all of these ingredients before using them? Also, do I just shred the sphagnum moss and mix it evenly with the peat or do I need to layer the ingredients in a certain way?
Thanks for the response!
 
...also be certain that when purchasing your bags of media, you don't buy any that say "Enriched with [insert additive/fertilizer name here]!" Certainly I've seen Miracle-Gro brand bags of peat moss and perlite, and both of those are "enriched" with wonderful things that will kill your cps...

For general use with cps, I wouldn't think that rinsing would be necessary, though if you're using distilled water rinsing certainly couldn't hurt anything per se...

What type of cps are you growing? I'm assuming that these are plants and not seeds, yes?

Generally speaking, a 50/50 mixture of peat/perlite or LFS/perlite is a good bet for Dionaea. For Nepenthes, I used to use 40:40:20 orchid bark:perlite:peat but I've been slowly switching over to 50:50 LFS:eek:rchid bark. I've found that both seem to work well, but after reading up on these forums, I've decided that the lower speed at which LFS breaks down may be preferable to peat moss...

The ingredients should be mixed thoroughly, not layered...

Good luck!
 
Just peat moss and perlite. Also you do not need to rinse it no you mix them all together except the sphagnum just put that on top.
 
Except when I'm using sand, I never rinse my substrate. You can rinse it if you want to, but in my experience it isn't necessary.

For nepenthes, it helps if you dip the LFS in some distilled water, get it good and wet, and then squeeze out the excess water. Then you can just dump it in a pot or a baggy and add the approximate amount of perlite (or in my case, I use orchid bark--either way this extra ingredient is to help with drainage). You can go with a 50:50 mixture like mass said, but I generally use more LFS and less bark. There is no set formula for soil, so as long as you stick to the general guidelines, you should be fine. Stir it until the ingredients seem pretty evenly mixed, and then you're good to go. You can put a layer of live sphagnum at the top if you want to, but that isn't really necessary.
 
I am repotting my N. ventricosa into a bigger pot. (By the way, when I repot, do I just place the soil and plant directly in a bigger pot ful of soil, or should I rough up the bottom and loosen the roots a little first?)
I wanted to try growing some VFT's from seed.
Thanks for the replies, never dealt with this stuff before and am clueless!!!!
Any and all details anyone can give on repotting would be great!
 
As for the LFS, wear something over your face like a Dr's mask or pull your T-shirt up over your nose when shredding it. The air born fibers can be really bad for you when inhaled..
But yeah, just shred it as finely as possible.. soak and rinse, then squeeze it out. Add your perlite, and your all set for your nepenthes.
Yes you can go with other ingredients like orchid bark, charcoal, etc.. but I thought we were talking about the basics here. :scratch:
 
When you repot try not to disturb the roots if you can help it. If there is any old substrate which is not connected to or entangled with the roots, then you can just remove it and replace it with fresh soil.

I thought it would be good to mention a substitute for perlite, because I never have been able to find perlite locally (at least not any that was free of fertilizer). The more options you have to choose from the more likely you will be to find everything locally and for the best price possible.
 
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Peat and perlite are basically all you need to get started with Drosera, Dionaea, Utricularia, Sarracenia, and the more moisture-tolerant Pinguicula... the vast majority of commonly cultivated carnivores will do wonderfully in various proportions of these two ingredients. To expand your options further, look for silica or quartz sand (commonly sold as pool filter sand at the hardware store, or at pet shops there's a Zoo-Med line called Repti-Sand made from quartz.) Be careful to avoid sand that comes from limestone or other soluble minerals, because it will dissolve into your water over time and make the roots of your plants unhappy. Quartz and silica aren't water soluble, so they're safe.
At the risk of going too far into detail, I don't really like LFS for most applications. It breaks down faster than I would prefer when kept consistently wet. If you have any hydroponic suppliers nearby, you can use coconut fiber (AKA coir, cocopeat, etc.) in place of LFS for plants that need to be moist but not sitting in water constantly. Another good additive you can get from hydroponic shops is hydroton, large fired clay beads. (Over in the UK I think they're often referred to as clinkers.) Hydroton serves the same purpose as perlite, providing aeration, spacing and moisture-holding capacity to your mix. The nice part of hydroton vs perlite is that hydroton doesn't crush easily, and won't float to the top of your mix when immersed in water. Also, it's recyclable - when you're done with your old media, you can sift out the hydroton, wash it out, and it's pretty much good as new. Ceramic chips serve similar functions - brand names in the US include Schultz Aquatic Plant Soil (often referred to as APS here on the forums) and Turface (same product in bigger bags, sold as a soil amendment for sports fields and such, much much cheaper.) Cedar bark mulch, or general-purpose orchid mix (unfertilized) can also be a good additive for Nepenthes.
Peat, perlite and LFS will get you started, so don't worry too much if these alternatives aren't readily available. If you have a shop nearby that carries them, though, it may be worth your while to review your options and see what the pros and cons are. Nepenthes mixes are highly varied and debated; the trick is finding a mix that works well with your other growing conditions (temperature, humidity, frequency of watering, etc.) What works for someone in a warm, dry climate may be totally inappropriate for someone with cool temperatures and moist, still air. This primer on Nepenthes cultivation has a good, if slightly outdated, review of various lines of thought in Nepenthes media:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050407082837/www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq6010e.html
(From an old version of Barry Rice's CP FAQ, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.)
Best luck, and welcome to the forums.
~Joe
 
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