Reddit reviews Hoffman 15503 Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, 10 Quarts
We found 5 Reddit comments about Hoffman 15503 Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, 10 Quarts. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Canadian sphagnum peat MossPremium grade of horticultural, 99.8 percent organicWhen mixed with soil, increases the soil's capacity to hold water and nutrientsBlend with peat Moss and perlite for custom soilless mixMeasures 2-inch in length by 9-inch in width by 14-inch in height
First off, here is a good guide for growing VFTs, which should help a lot.
> I've been using regular seed-soil, as I read that they like low fertility-soil.
Accurate, but regular seed-soil still has way too many minerals in it - get some sphagnum peat moss and some perlite without any additives or fertilizers, then make a 4:1 ratio mix and repot into that. It's likely experiencing mineral burn on the roots which will kill it over time.
> So far I've been using tap-water, but am going to switch to rain-water.
Good - tap water may also kill plants over time, depending on the mineral content of the tap water.
> It has started to bloom though, which maybe is a good sign?
Not if the rest of the plant is wilting - I'd snip off the flower stalk so the plant stops putting energy into that and can focus instead on making more leaves / traps.
Looks like a few things are wrong with its setup, but they can all be fix-able - fixing the soil should be your first priority, then getting it in a semi-boggy condition (just use a ceramic bowl that you'd use for food or something for now) with rain water.
> Also, will these plants multiply on their own if conditions are good?
Yep - VFTs will put on baby plants over time from what I've seen - you can sometimes also propagate them via leaf cuttings. You might even be able to get new plants out of the flower stalk if you snip it and put it in some sphagnum moss (not peat moss, but the long-fibered stuff) and keep it wet, but I'm only just starting to try that myself.
Good luck! Hope that helps.
>My first mistake, I think, was buying the Miracle Gro Potting Mix. I unfortunately didn't realize that it wasn't just soil, until everything was already mixed and repotted. Whoops.
I want to encourage you, in all seriousness, not to think of this as a "mistake" or a "whoops", but as a learning experience. Really. And not in a pious touchy-feely SoCal "you're okay, I'm okay" kind of way. None of us was born knowing any of this, and this is how you learn--by doin it wrong occasionally.
The mark of a Gardener with a capital G is not when you plant something in a pot. The mark of a Gardener with a capital G is when you plant something in a pot, and it all goes pear-shaped, "Well, crap", and you can either fix it, or walk away. A Gardener with a capital G troubleshoots it, dumps it out, and starts over. Non-Gardeners say, "Meh, I must have a black thumb" and they walk around saying "Yup, I'm a proven plant-killer, I can't keep anything alive."
So today you are a Gardener.
>When I said "sphagnum moss," I meant this: https://www.amazon.com/Hoffman-15503-Canadian-Sphagnum-Quarts/dp/B0000CBITW
Jargon-wise, in the hobby, the words "peat moss" trump the words "Canadian sphagnum". The words "Canadian sphagnum" are modifiers of the words "peat moss". It's peat moss that comes from Canadian sphagnum i.e. not from Ireland or Scotland or wherever.
In the hobby, "sphagnum" means the long stringy gray stuff that florists and orchid fanciers use, and the short-fibered stuff that the model railroad people dye green and then glue to plywood to look like grass.
What you have is "peat moss".
>So it sounds like I just need to repot everything and not use any top-dressing, like pebbles or orchid bark, plus take some cuttings of the calandiva (I'm pretty sure it's a goner)?
>And maybe I should just buy premixed potting mediums, since I screwed this up once already.
Nuh-uh, no being defeatist here. Onwards and upwards, ever upwards.
Actually some of the worst overwatering problems are when people use the premixed potting medium in the bag straight-up. It's rarely ideal for every purpose, and nearly always needs tinkering with. The only ones I can think of, offhand, that you can use straight-up would be the seed-starting mixes, and those are temporary homes anyway.
Learning what all the ingredients do, and how to use them, is part of gardening. It's like saying, "Welp, I burned my first scratch cake, I guess I should just buy Pilllsbury cake mixes from now on." Knowing your ingredients is one of the basic building blocks of growing plants.
It's what enables you to walk through the Walmart parking lot with all the huge bags of soil on pallets, and say authoritatively to your long-suffering hubby who you brought along for his big muscles to load bags in the car, "One of those, and two of those." It's what keeps you from basically putting your hands over your eyes and pointing blindly, "Uhh, I guess...maybe one of those?"
And then you hesitantly ask the Blue Vest, "Which one of these is best for my garden?" and she's four minutes away from her break so she tells you "That one over there", which turns out to be the terrible so-called topsoil that you'd normally use only to fill up the big hole in the backyard where the former koi pond was that you took out when you bought the house.
You can do this. Peat moss is for moisture retention. Perlite is for aeration. Vermiculite is for aeration AND moisture-retention, although not as much as peat moss. Compost is for nutrition, as none of these others contain any nutrients at all.
That's all you need to know. Read labels on the bags.
>I think my biggest problem was that when you look at 5 websites for advice on potting mediums, you get 5 different recommendations...
"I was looking for a recipe for a scratch cake, and I looked at 5 websites, and I found 5 different recipes. Which one is best?"
>I ended up just going with what I thought was a happy medium in between all of the different suggestions, but I guess that wasn't the right move.
Because you didn't research what the plants themselves need. You went looking for a scratch cake recipe without asking the birthday girl what flavor cake she wanted.
>I imagine that repotting just a week after I did it the first time might stress the plants out. Is there any way too mitigate the strain on them? I don't think I really did much, if any, damage to the roots the first time.
It's actually better to just get it over with, while they're still shocked. It's better than allowing them to settle in, make new roots (which costs carbs) and then you break those roots all over again. Uproot them now before they've started spending carbs on a lot of new roots.
>Also, would you recommend using terra cotta for most of these, or just putting them in a well-draining plastic pot inside of the cachepots?
Succulents should generally go in terracotta. The bromeliad and the dracaena can go either way. If your winter indoor humidity gets catastrophically low, like <10%, they'll both be happier in plastic.
>Why do they even make glazed ceramic pots with attached saucers, if they're so terrible? Just for show, and to be used as cachepots?
For pretty, and because not everyone is as scrupulous about drainage. If you're just going to use it to grow some disposable flowers on the deck for the summer, you don't care if they're coming down with root rot by the time the summer is over and you're starting your fall cleanup.
The ones with attached saucers aren't intended to be used as cachepots. Those would be the ones sold at Pier One Imports and in the upscale aisle of Home Depot, that don't have even a pretense of a saucer. You use them as a cachepot if the drainage is hopeless, for the good of your plant.
>Lastly, is there any chance that just adding some more perlite or vermiculite to the soil mix that's already there when I'm switching them to better containers may work? Or should I really just start from scratch?
The bromeliad needs a complete redo. It doesn't live in Miracle Gro peat moss.
Neither do the succulents. There are no succulent soil mix recipes that I'm aware of that use peat moss in them. Peat moss is specifically an ingredient that is used to mimic the water-retentive qualities of the leaf mold--the layer of half-rotted leaves--on the forest floor. Cacti and succulents aren't native to forest floors with a layer of moisture-retentive half-rotted leaves, so they aren't given peat moss to live in.
The dracaena is the only one, but then there's the sand which is the wrong kind of sand. And you added even more peat moss to the MG which basically counts as peat moss to begin with. The problem with using mixes that are heavy on peat moss is that once it dries out completely, the root ball shrinks and becomes hydrophobic, meaning that you water it and the water all runs down the outside of the root ball and out of the pot. So you have to soak it for an hour to get the peat moss to rehydrate.
This is why you add vermiculite to the soil for houseplants that prefer it "evenly moist", like African violets and ferns. It has the ability to take up water in the microscopic interstices, and then release it slowly, thus helping to prevent the peat moss from shrinking itself into a nasty hard little ball from one day to the next. It has a moderating influence.
No, I'm afraid you're looking at a complete home renovation. But it's all a learning experience. Seriously.
Bag up your rejected soil mix and use it someday for a big outside planter, urn, half-barrel, or flowerpot. Or add it to a raised bed. Mix it with bagged "garden soil" and grow tomatoes or petunias.
For a few bucks less you can get can 2.5x the peat moss on amazon.
Combine with pearlite and for about $10 more you're getting a way better deal.
My first mistake, I think, was buying the Miracle Gro Potting Mix. I unfortunately didn't realize that it wasn't just soil, until everything was already mixed and repotted. Whoops.
When I said "sphagnum moss," I meant this: https://www.amazon.com/Hoffman-15503-Canadian-Sphagnum-Quarts/dp/B0000CBITW
So it sounds like I just need to repot everything and not use any top-dressing, like pebbles or orchid bark, plus take some cuttings of the calandiva (I'm pretty sure it's a goner)? And maybe I should just buy premixed potting mediums, since I screwed this up once already. I think my biggest problem was that when you look at 5 websites for advice on potting mediums, you get 5 different recommendations...I ended up just going with what I thought was a happy medium in between all of the different suggestions, but I guess that wasn't the right move.
I imagine that repotting just a week after I did it the first time might stress the plants out. Is there any way too mitigate the strain on them? I don't think I really did much, if any, damage to the roots the first time.
Also, would you recommend using terra cotta for most of these, or just putting them in a well-draining plastic pot inside of the cachepots?
Why do they even make glazed ceramic pots with attached saucers, if they're so terrible? Just for show, and to be used as cachepots?
Lastly, is there any chance that just adding some more perlite or vermiculite to the soil mix that's already there when I'm switching them to better containers may work? Or should I really just start from scratch?
Would this be a good mixture? http://www.amazon.com/Hoffman-15503-Canadian-Sphagnum-Quarts/dp/B0000CBITW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1407383942&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=peat+and+perlite