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rescued a sad looking sarracenia yesteerday

I dont have a lot of hope for it...but i have some. saddest looking little plant at the plant store, And the growing medium looks to have become complete mush...its like it is sitting in a black slime. I wanna put it into a new pot, but i have very little experience with sarracenia.
 
the type of pot doesn't really matter as long as it's not terracotta. Just use a mixture of pure peatmoss and perlite. Just avoid miracle gro products. a 1:1 ratio should do just fine.
 
What's wrong with terracotta?

Also: I try to avoid rescuing plants from the store. The store profits from their crappy handling instead of having to pay for the dead plant.
 
Terracotta tends to leach minerals into the soil that can be harmful to carnivorous plants. Not to mention that the constant moisture would be an algae magnet and your pretty clay pot would quickly turn to ugly slime green.

I'm not a huge fan of big box stores myself, but as a member of the horticulture industry as a whole, a little knowledge goes a long way. Big box stores like Lowes, Home Depot and Walmart do not lose money when their plants are not sold. The way they operate is that ALL plant material in their stores belongs to the grower all the way until the plant is scanned at the register. At that point the retailer makes the money with which they pay for the plant. It's genius for them because they can never lose money on the plants they sell. Reduced price plant material generally varies in how its cost is distributed, but at will almost always swing in favor of the retailer and not the grower/distributor. So overall, the only people that are hurt by the death of the plant is the plant and the grower. At least that is how the American system works in the big box stores. Small-time retailers are much better both keeping the plants alive and having better business practices when dealing with growers.

I will say that some of my most prized carnivorous plants and orchids were sale plants though.
 
I'm sorry, economics aside I consider stores such as Lowes and Home Depots to be the plant equivalent of a pet shop buying their stock from "plant mills". Much of the orchids sold do not come from stateside growers but come from large factory nurseries in Taiwan. Those that are grown in this country, not just brokered through a middle man, are grown in plant factories whose greenhouses cover acres. This includes any plant mass produced for the big box pot plant trade not just orchids. To worry about the "grower" losing on a few plants is akin to worrying about Frank Perdue having to eat the cost of a few bad chickens. The loss is already built into the purchase price and deducted as a part of doing buisness in the overall operating plan.
 
well it was a local store who had almost no CP's two years ago and now has a lot of them. The store also knows very little about CP's, but they have an ungodly amount of neps..which makes me smile, cause i get them when they are marked way down and then get them growing nicely. They have tried to convince me that my neps cannot be repotted this time of year, and they say to keep other CP's inside of the little glass terrariums with out being exposed to outside air. Any ways, i like to get my plants there because they always seem to have something in stock, and the sarr caught my eye, sad looking plant sitting in a puddle of black slime, and slightly moldy...as i said, not much hope to rescue it, but still a chan ce as there is 4 tiny green pitchers left, I just wanted to get it out of there and into a place where it may have a chance, i am the same way with betta fish lol. So back on topic, peat/perlite mix....I dont have any peat on hand but have a lot of LFS...will that work?
 
Hi Aggun1231

The LFS will tend to break down quickly and is probably better used as a top dressing, however by the sounds of it the plant is in dire straights and will more than likely be happier in LFS than in the, what is probably a nutrient enriched soup, that it is in now.

Put it in that till early spring, and if you can find some peat and perlite before it starts growing again, repot it into that then.

Cheers
Steve
 
The majority of my Sarrs are in a peat, perlite, silica sand mix however I'm now moving away from perlite and sticking with peat and silica mix of mostly equal parts. I also have the majority of my plants in ceramic pots that are glazed inside and out, which I have found at Home Depot actually. They are quite nice. I also have a layer of silica sand on top because I had a bad fungus gnat problem which I no longer have and the plants seem to do pretty well with it.

Do you have a picture of the plant? You should take a picture of it for before and after whenever you make it thrive! Good luck!
 
I think i will throw it into an LFS perlite mix, since that is all i have right now, and then get some peat soon. The plant is in really sad condition, could someone point me towards a thread that will help with repotting basics.
 
  • #10
Hi agunn

Try this for starters, the important thing is to make sure the roots are spread out and there is good contact with the medium and always top water the first couple of times to settle the substrate onto teh roots.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVz45YtMyk

Cheers
Steve
 
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  • #12
got it repotted, that thing was a wreck that's for sure...im not going to be too upset if it doesnt recover, but at least it is out of that soup it was sitting in
 
  • #13
sarrs are tougher than you might think. i found a pot under the porch (i blame the cats) that was there for at least a month with no rain and it ended up recovering.
 
  • #14
A month later... Any update on the plant?
 
  • #15
it started to recover, but ended up rotting in all this rain we've had since it was already stressed and weak
 
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