Decade Old Carnivorous Plant Bog at California Carnivores
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Damon built this bog in memorial to longtime customer, Janet E. Walker. It’s one of our favorite things to look at and is filled with extremely old, full, lush Sarracenia, Drosera and Pinguicula. He’ll take you on a tour of everything in this bog. For more information checkout www.californiacarnivores.com
Always did wonder how these bog gardens do in the longterm. This one has aged beautifully, those pitchers are GORGEOUS!
Such a beautiful bog garden! I took the young lady's advice and moved my little psittacena bog to a place where it can get more sun. I'll email an update in a month or so. Thanks!!
Fantastic bog! And a great tribute. I would imagine you trim it all down once everything goes dormant. Thanks Damon!
We do! We trim it down in winter and thin out the stream orchids and ferns.
Beautiful moments in the bog garden 🌈💞🌈🍃🍃🕊️
That bog garden became it's own ecosystem:)
I miss coming to visit you guys, and your beautiful garden 😢
Thank you so much for sharing
What a wonderful memorial! I love to see the variety of shapes, heights and colors of the sarracenia!
I would love an update on this!
Great video! I just bought a Judith hindle and I got quite excited when I saw it in this awesome garden.
That’s one of our favorites of all time!
I really enjoyed this tour. ☺️
Absolutely beautiful tribute garden. I’m planning on building one In conjunction with a koi pond but I’m in western Massachusetts, zone 5b, full sun on a hill facing east - southeast. I’ll be planting varieties of Sarracenia and flytraps along with some cold hardy Drosera. I’m wondering what I can use as a filler plant that will grow well in peat bog. Your orchids are amazing but not likely a good candidate here .
You may be able to add some bog orchids like Calopogon or Lilium catesbaei which will die back in winter but you’ll need to really mulch it in very thickly. You can also add temperate rosettes sundews like rotundifolia or hybrida to carpet the ground but that’s also terribly cold for them. A nice local moss may be the best way to go!
@@California_Carnivores Thank you for your quick and useful reply.
With the binata, it's native to the Blue Mountains near Sydney in Australia. There is one form called 'Giant" but I am unsure whether this is the same plant as Binata Multifidia Extreme. Multifidia 16 points - I did count them one day. Boaz Ng - Fierce Flora has done some great work on locating CPs in the wild in Australia and photographed multifidia in it's natural state, exactly as you have it, surrounded by other plants, growing to around 40 cms. Multifidia will die back in the heat or in the cold but is a very tough plant. We have both binatas in our collection and of course it's cousin Marstons dragon. But you're very right, hard to understand that this tiny plant will be huge eventually. We have seedlings coming up everywhere and I don't want to lose any of them in case we get we get something very interesting. cheers
the giant form is called "Dichotoma" and has a more a light green/yellow color
Beautiful 😍
When you create a large bog garden like that, do you cut drain holes into the pond liner? If so do you cut them in the bottom or the top? If it we create one outside of a greenhouse, do you recommend drain holes for when it rains? I am in California, Inland Empire area.
There are no drainage holes, it can fill with rain water which is why we put purpurea near the low spot as they don’t mind getting flooded
Amazing !
Hello!
I have a question I believe you might be able to help me with. Something that I have been wondering for a while, but haven't quite been able to find an answer to online, is how come Sphagnum peat degrades so quickly in a pot when it takes centuries (if not more) to form in the wild? Online growers always insist that you fully change the soil of your plants every two to four years because peat will degrade and it's not good for your plant. I've even heard people say you can tell based on the smell. But out in the wild people are not changing the soil (obviously), which stays just as wet (if not more) as our pots, and the plants in these bogs do just fine. So, is it true that peat degrades?
I understand that bogs are an entire ecosystem with bacterial fauna but how can there be such a stark difference? My concern is that we are periodically replacing a lot of peat moss and perlite that are not renewable when we might not have to. To top it all off, what I understood from your video is that the pond doesn't actually drain into the soil, right? It all stays contained like a burried vause. And the plants seem to be perfectly fine after a decade! It makes me wonder all the more, does peat degrade? LOL.
On a similar note, is perlite even necesarry? In the wild these plants grow in water-logged material broken up only by sand and organic material.
I've designated a Sarracenia specimen to stay in an unchanged pot of soil and perlite mix. I want to see if it will truly perrish if the peat should decompose. Hopefully I don't give in to the urge to save it.
Thank you and sorry for the rant and endless sentences.
The peat moss forming in the wild usually isn't exposed to oxygen. Deep in the bog under layers and layers of dead moss and water there is no oxygen so the anaerobic conditions prevent it from rotting the same as plant matter does on the surface. It does break down kind of (breakdown of long fiber sphagnum is what eventually becomes peat) but it's a very different process to simple rotting.
@@sarrakitty yes, but couldn't anaerobic conditions be replicated in a pot? The peat moss that we buy tends to be very thick and water fills any air pockets remaining, so maybe it wouldn't rot if it isn't ammended with perlite. I honestly don't know. The question still remains how come they have a decade old bog garden if peat goes bad after two years or so.
Sarra Kitty is correct that the anaerobic conditions of the natural bogs help keep the peat from breaking down. There is actually a really interesting book on the preservative qualities of the peat bogs called Bog Bodies - bodies and household items dating back to the Bronze Age have been found perfectly preserved in large bogs.
One small pot or mini bog can’t really replicate those conditions and the peat will break down with time. Using pure water helps; this bog only has rain water and low TDS water which flushes it and keeps the minerals from building up. That’s why we haven’t had to change out the soil yet. In small pots, it’s hard to mimic that momentum of soil ecology.
You can use sand instead of perlite but the mix is quite thick and doesn’t drain as well in a way we like. We prefer perlite for how it allows flow.
@@California_Carnivores so will you guys change the soil in the bog at some point?
How do you water all that
Our nursery is on a well with very low TDS water so we are able to just use the hose on it and we water it very deeply.
I have a question. I ordered a Sarracenia off of Amazon. Now it looks half dead and dying. I transplanted it and the roots look healthy and white. I see these small green balls on the soil when I got it any tips or hints. Any idea what those small green balls are?
It’s hard to know what the green stuff is. As long as the roots are healthy and the rhizomes felt firm, they can totally bounce back with lots of TLC
Stream orchids? I’m in!! What are they called that’s what I heard but that doesn’t sound right 🥰
California stream orchids are Epipactis! They’re so fun!
I have analysis paralysis....pH vs ppm....for example, ive read venus flytraps thrive with a pH of 5 ish....so if i had a small ammount of lemon juice, vinegar, etc to lower the ph of
distilled water to the 5...then the ppm increases to about 20. I did this all last summer with no (evident to me) detrimental effects but I saw from one of your videos (thank you) the
the minerals will accumulate in time (duh...didnt think that metals just dont fly off into space when the water evaporates). Am i overthinking this? ps and FYI...I am in Georgia (USA). I left my entire collection of flytraps and Sarracenia out this past winter. Not a single flytrap survived. I think i kept them too wet. Lost one pitcher plant. Next winter i will keep them less wet. Thank you.
I wouldn’t worry about the pH and just focus on the distilled water. You want the TDS low, under 100 is ideal but as close to zero as possible is best! Checkout our videos on dormancy and maybe they’ll be helpful! It’s a nuanced time, when they’re dormant, and sometimes they need a little bit of mulch to stay warm
@@California_Carnivores Will do. thank you!!
Damon how big is the frame on this bog?
It’s fairly large; around 6’ x 4’
@@California_Carnivores cool! Thanks 😊