peat: is MiracleGro brand safe for utrics?

[mikulas]

Fellow forumers,

I've been growing CP for 7 years, but just now I'm starting to grow utricularia. I'm looking for peat to use (which I never used before...I've just grown Nepenthes, and generally stayed away from peat), but the only brand I can find (in the US) is MiracleGro Peat -- and the only peat it sells is "enriched" with their fertilizer. Does anyone use this brand of peat? I'm worried about the blended-in fertilizer burning the roots, hence my question.

Or even better, can anyone recommend a brand of peat to buy, and where you get it?

Your help is most appreciated.

~mikulas

 

[Capensis]

No, it's not. :x A rule of thumb is that Miracle-Gro is always bad for CPs. I would recommend checking an Ace Hardware if you have one. They have bales of peat called Premium...or at least mine.

 

[chezilla]

In a pinch when I couldn't find any peat I have used those peat seed starting disks, that they should have at most garden places or large chain hardware stores. The ones I found were not fertilizer enriched and worked very well. They swell up about 10x their size when wet. If you don't need it right away they CP soil is sold at terraforums.com's sponsor's site, http://www.flytrapshop.com/servlet/the-Accessories--fdsh--Soil/Categories

 

[Nepenthes101]

Superthrive is awesome for CP'S. I use it all the Time for all of my Carnivorous plants.

 

[Clue]

Superthrive is awesome for CP'S. I use it all the Time for all of my Carnivorous plants.

Little confused, Mike? SuperTHRIVE isn't the same thing as MiracleGro, the latter is harmful or even deadly to most CPs.

 

[Nepenthes101]

Super thrive is actually just Vitamins and plant hormones. I have used Superthrive lots of times with no ill affects. I even soak my new plants and cuttings in the stuff to treat them for shock before planting them

 

[glider14]

right...
MiracleGro=bad. Superthrive=good(i guess? some people says its simply snake oil.)
MiracleGro is a fertilizer and Superthrive is simply a plant energy drink,

stay away from the MiracleGro peat. like chezilla said you can use those peat disks or you can buy it in mass quantities. if you have LFS laying around you can put it through a food processor and it turns into the consistency of peat and it works the same way.

Alex

 

[seedjar]

Try a local nursery or landscape supplier. If you've been shopping hardware stores, you may even just be looking in the wrong part; at my local Lowes' and Home Depot, they have little two gallon bags of peat for $6 next to the houseplants and potting soils and stuff. But out in back, with landscaping items like cinder blocks and bark mulch, they have bales of peat at some ridiculous size like 14 cubic foot for just $12-$15. (In case you're bad with units of measure, that's more than ten times more for just over twice the price.) The brands probably vary by location; around here, most of the stores seem to carry something called Greensboro or Greensmix... Green-something anyways. Just look for the big 50lb bricks. I'm pretty sure if you find the stuff for professionals, it will just be straight up peat.
~Joe

 

[Kayota]

I have regular peat... couldn't tell you where it's from but it's a huge bag of it.

 

[carnivoure12]

I've used Shultz without a hitch, i make sure its says no fertilizers or added chemicals/minerals

 

[philcula]

Super thrive is actually just Vitamins and plant hormones. I have used Superthrive lots of times with no ill affects. I even soak my new plants and cuttings in the stuff to treat them for shock before planting them

What relation does this information have in helping mikulas find a good brand of "peat"? Perhaps I'm missing something??

 

[glider14]

i think he was thinking MiracleGro and Superthrive are one in the same. for clarification to Nep101, MG is a fertilizer, using micro and macro nutrients to boost a plants growth. ST is basic plant hormones and vitamins. the plant will be stronger and may recover faster from shock. but it wont alter the size of the plant.

real life comparison--- anabolic steroids vs a daily multivitamin.

Alex

 

[mikulas]

Thank you all for your helpful replies. I looked at my local Lowe's pretty thoroughly, and couldnt' find any other brand of peat - but then again, I'm in Oklahoma, so local demand may have something to do with that. As for bales, I live in a small apt, and so I shy away from buying in bulk (especially since I'm growing utrics, after all). I think at this point I'll either buy a bag from the flytrapshop (more expensive, but a manageable quantity), or look for some of the expandable peat pellets.

Many thanks!
~mikulas

 

[swords]

The Home Depots and Lowes here have a square turquoise & white bag that says "Greensmix Sphagnum Peat" and sometimes it says "Greensmix Canadian Spahgnum Peat". I've had both bags. Essentially the same stuff just farmed in different places. It's both just peat raging from small clumps to fine powder plus a few twigs and so on.

I have a 24" x 24" metal screen with 1/8th inch openings and I put a couple handfuls of peat on the screen and shake it back and forth over a plastic tub. This screens out the fines and leaves the larger peat clods ontop of the screen. I use the two types of peat for different things. I like the peat clods for plants which like a lot of air exchange at the roots.

I live in an apartment/codo too but for pure peat a bale is the only way to get a single soil ingredient. The Greensmix is compressed into a square and fits in the corner of my pantry next to all my plastic pots, a sack of NAPA floor dry for potting up cactuses and all my other currently unused plant stuff that needs somewhere to be until it's day comes.