I actually emailed Peter D'Amato in regard to using vermiculite in my drosophyllum mix a couple months ago. This is what he replied with: "We no longer use vermiculite in dewy pine soils, it's no longer necessary." Same goes for his nepenthes and sarracenia mix. Instead, perlite is used because it has more positive affects I believe. Just throwing that out there. And, as I said before, a lot of the stuff in The Savage Garden regarding vermiculite is a bit outdated seeing that perlite has only recently begun to really be popular among CP growers, at least more so than vermiculite.