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Last year i decided to build a bog garden in front of my house, it was a much larger project than i thought it would be. I started by digging out a flower bed that nothing would grow in, i dug the entire bed out to 18 inches deep, the Bed is 25 feet long and 6 feet wide. I then used material from an old swimming pool to line the hole and filled the bed with a sand/peat mix, it took 2 pallets of peat and 2 truck loads of sand and an entire day to get the soil mixed and in. After i got the soil in i decided i wanted to put in Helis and Darlingtonia so i dug out a 6 foot by 6 foot area at one end of the bog and filled it with live sphagnum from a spring at the bottom of the property. I put an old claw foot bathe tub in the bog, it is a turtle pond and we have 2 red eared sliders, some gold fish, and U. macrorhiza in it. I have planted Many many plants in the bog, some of the more notable ones are Ceph typical and giant, D. peltata D. regia, H. heteradoxa x minor, H. minor A few Pings and lots of other common Drosera. The only plants that did not seem to like the bog are P. primuliflora, D. filiformis FL Red, D. alicia, and D. graminifolia, all of these plants died very fast.
I finally decided on a circulation method a couple of months ago. At one end of the bog i have a water meter box surrounded by sphagnum burried, in this box is a float valve connected to a line from a R O filter. I installed a small fountain pump in the box and connected it to a timer that turns it on every 4 hours for 1 minute. The pump pumps water through a large mister over the darlingtonia and heliamphora, this accomplishes two things, the darlingtonia and Heliamphora get over head watered, and the bog keeps circulating. So far the bog is doing good, i am going to try a few other plants in the bog this year, i am going to build a raised area and put Drosophyllum and B. gigantea in on the south end of the bog. In the sphagnum portion of the bog i am going to put P. grandiflora and P. macroceras nortensis.
Here are a couple of pics of the bog, it was planted two weeks prior to these pics so they dont look very good.
bogsouthside.jpg

bognorthside.jpg

Below is a bad pic of the D. regia, it has since been ate by birdzilla but it is finally recovering
bogregia.jpg

Below is pics of the Heliamphora after being attacked by birdzilla, i do not think they are going to recover but i will put more in if they dont
heliategoose.jpg

heli2atebygoose.jpg

In case you did not notice i used a really cheap camera and the pics were horrible. My 1 year old dropped my good camera and it is toast.
 
That only means we should get an updated picture in a couple few months, right? :-D
 
Looking good! I second that, will you update us?
 
Well i will post updated pics but it will be a little while. My wife loves animals, so I brought home 5 canadian geese eggs for her and the kids to incubate. They thought it was great watching the babies hatch and so my wife managed to get about 40 more goose and duck eggs to incubate. I will admit the geese were kinda cute for a month but then i started getting fed up with the mess they make and they kept getting into my bogs. I turned on the electric fences around the bogs and they stayed out of them. Last week i was really busy and one day i forgot to feed the geese, they ate all my plants in the bog, they ate a 1 foot tall D. regia down to nothing, and they took at least one bite from every plant. I decided to install an 1800 volt electric fence, and the next goose i catch in my bog is going to be served for dinner. so maybe next spring i will update the pics:-D
 
By sgardner:I decided to install an 1800 volt electric fence, and the next goose i catch in my bog is going to be served for dinner.
How funny! tell me how it taste:)Jk also that sucks that the plants got eaten:(
 
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Wow!
You grow boreal pings, tuberous drosera, heliamphoras, and cephalotus outdoors in the same bog? Where are you located, I'm guessing the CA bay area?
 
Slurm: If i lived in the bay area i would have nepenthes in the bog:-D I actually live north of the bay area in a much hotter, much less humid valley. I built the bog with deeper and shallower locations to accomodate a wider variety of plants, i also overhead water the sphagnum moss portion of the bog to keep it moist, and to keep the humidity up. so far everything is looking good but only time will tell. I just added B. gigantea and P. grandiflora, i also put a couple of bromeliads and a few more bog orchids in
 
very nice setup!
i hope that wasn't the filiformis 'All Red' that I gave you, lol.
if you need more D. aliciae, just lmk. I owe you one.
*how did you go about cleaning off all that sand? It takes me a long time just to clean a gallon of play sand when I'm trying to use it for CPs
Aaron
 
Um, the bath tub looks weird. maybe you could put a stone boarder around it and make it more pond like (black tarp would help the look to). Cool setup though! Can't wait to see the bog after it is older!
 
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With the price of helis around here I can't believe you are keeping it out in the open. I can't wait to see more pics and I hope that was not the D. graminifolia from me that died.
 
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