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Pros and Cons

Timmy

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What are the pros and cons of having alot of pots or a small bog?
 
Smaller pots have less "inertia." They have less soil so they dry up faster, change temp faster. However, it's easy to label individual pots in addition to using tags. You don't need to worry about plants growing too close together and forgetting which tag belongs to which. Pots tend to degrade in the sun over time, it can be a pain in the butt to deal with a bunch of UV-degraded pots instead of replacing one or two larger bog-like ones. Larger pots can also have nice aesthetics, affording you a greater degree of creativity in your organization of plants. Also, depending on your pot size, you may need to repot more often than you'd like (applied for both pot types though, really). If your plants are separate, you can move individual plants to suit their needs (more/less light, etc) or move diseased plants away from the rest more easily.

Personally, I like big undrained pots. There's less worry about having them try out, there's greater flexibility in creating an aesthetically pleasing setup, and it feels less... sterile and domestic. You need to be smart though, and avoid planting similar-looking plants together in the same area of a bog. I know I've caused a lot of frustration with that one. ;)

Depends on what you're growing, though. I grow a lot of Sarracenia, Drosera, Utricularia, moss and VFTs, so those all work together (or the ones I grow do, anyway.) If I was growing Neps and Helis, they may not appreciate the setup quite as much. :p
 
My answer is, the pros and cons depend on what plants you are going to grow.

Many people use small bogs to grow various types and species of CP together, and achieve good results. As Est said, small bogs have many advantages, compared to pots. However, I have to say, small bogs are only good to those easy-growing plants.

You need to realize, by using bogs, all the plants in a bog are provided almost the same growing-environment. There is little flexibility to give different species different growing-environment (like water-level, light, water frequency, humidity). So bogs are suitable for those easy-growing plants. Fortunately, many popular species are all the easy-growing plants.

But if you want to grow some species that are picky to their environment, bogs are of course not suitable. As I know, some sundews are only thriving in a 2.5 inch pot, but not thriving in big pots, not to mention bogs. And some sundews and Sarrs love high water-level, compared to other sundews and Sarrs. Based on my experiments, even the easy-growing sarrs. and sundews are growing better in my pots than in my mini-bog.

Mini-bogs seem easy to build up, but you need very smart methods to provide the perfect growing enviroments. Just remind, in wild every bog has the moving water to clean the accumulated mineral. But in the artificial mini-bogs, the accumulated mineral cannot be completely removed (I know the tube-and-draining-hole method, but it actually does not work very well -- I mean, "not very well").

Also, the soils generally only last one year. That means, you need to change the soil each year. For pots, that's easy to do. But using mini-bogs or bogs, that's not an easy job.

If some plant in your bog is dead, then it is not an easy job to dig it out without disturbing plants nearby.

There is a compromise: put pots in the mini-bog with each plant growing in a pot, as described in The Savage Garden by Peter.

In summary, if you are growing those easy-growing species, then bogs are OK. But if you are growing some special species (which need you special care), choose pots.
 
Now if you use good-sized buckets as a mini-bog, it's like having one huge, transportable pot, that can house several plants.
 
Also, the soils generally only last one year. That means, you need to change the soil each year.
Wow!! :0o: I am so glad that this has not been true for me (...or more accurately - my plants).
 
Flower planters. They're essentially mini-mini bogs. No assembly required. Just buy a huge one and you can house like 6-12 sarrs and it does a better job of soaking up rain than pots + water tray.

I can't speak for mini bogs since I don't have one, but digging up sarrs is pretty easy come division time. You don't exactly have to mind the roots as much as you'd think. They ship with far less from very reputable places and do just fine.
 
Individuel pot:
PRO: easier to move around
Con: Dry up too quick, plant can out grown the pot and repot, higher risk of outdoor dormant, humidity and temperature change like blinking.

mini bog:
pro: I believe plants tend to grow more vigor at mini bog, ( i know mine does) no risk in outdoor dormant even the whole mini bog covered in ice/snow for a week, (undrained mini bog = never have to water or worry about the pot will dry up) higher humidity? look more neat when they grow all together but make sure you don;t mislabel them.

Con: hard to move around, other plants like weed will also grow in your mini bog.
 
Well, I think when all of you talk on the mini-bogs, you implicitly mean growing sarrs or some easy-growing sundews like D.capensis in such bogs. Admittedly, almost all the sarrs thrive in mini-bogs. But I don't believe some sundews can also thrive in such mini-bogs, such as D. neocaledonica and D.schizandra. Even for pygmy sundews, using pot-tray-method is better than mini-bog-method (based on my experience). Besides, I am confused on the undrained mini-bogs. For such bogs, how to solve the problem of fungus? I once used an undrained mini-bog for my sundews. But after some months, I found there were some green fungus on the soil surface, and the undersurface soil smells bad. So since then, I've never used undrained bogs.
 
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