Carnivorous plants! How to build your own Bog Bowl with horticulturist Paul Blackmore

paul blackmore from the atlanta botanical garden is an expert in carnivorous plants i love this topic and i love this grouping of plants it's actually something i don't know that much about and every time i chat with you about them i learned so much yeah today you're going to show us how to build our own little bog bowl and plant these beautiful we've got venus fly traps some pitcher plants i don't even know what this guy is oh that's a that's one of my favorites that's the sun jew a lot of people want to have a bog and we have a huge bog here you know a big bog is you need a lot of land you need a lot of time money it's hard work you need to 100 sunshine so we often suggest to our visitors that they try initially a bog bowl which is the perfect perfect opportunity to make a bog yeah it's as simple as it could possibly be first of all you want a nice bowl that's fairly wide not too deep the deeper it is the more materials you need and that's unnecessary the plants we're going to use today are just a few random selections uh i've included a picture a couple of picture plants of two different types both are hybrid this is so semi-citosina with the parrot head and another hybrid this is serosemia purpurea with something else mixed in really interesting plant of the sun jews sun jews they're called that because you come out in the morning after a a cool night and they're covered in sparkling diamonds of sticky really sticky liquid yeah they insects simply can't resist them and if they go anywhere near them of course as you can see on this one they're absolutely stuck together or whatever they are yeah they're little uh peat nets actually and once they're stuck there this thing will just digest them and then of course the favorite of all favorites is the venus fly trap every school child in america and certainly in the uk they love venus fly traps now i'll tell you something about this plant eric that you probably may not know although you can buy it all over the world because it's a novelty right it only actually evolved in one place in south carolina really one area one tiny area yeah it's endemic to that one tiny patch no one knows why wow but the the whole thing is like a snare it's like a trap an insect can land on one side not a problem it can land on the other side not a problem so basically the idea is that the insect would need to touch both sides for it to trigger and once it's in it's in forever and that's the end of the story for the insect so to build a bog um you need a few basic things as i said earlier you need a good pot this is a permanent liner which is our preferred choice reason for that is because it'll last 100 years your pot needs to have a hole in the bottom for drainage because drainage in a pot a bog pot drainage is really really important here so we're not building a swamp we're building a bog yeah so you put your liner in so the liner really will only just fill you know a third of the part right and that allows water through at about three or four inches exactly you will put just the dust in the sand in the bottom and the reason for that is because you want a a layer in the bottom that actually will hold water through a hot sunny day that can then uh permeate up through the soil compost but it will not go stagnant it's in an inorganic compound like sand this is mason sand it's absolutely essential you get the right sand don't use any kind of sand don't use gravel don't use pavia sand don't use a sand that's from crushed granite because full of toxic minerals you just want mason sand which i believe is washed river sand and then you're planting compost you don't want to go to this to the garden center and buy potting compost why because that's full of fertilizer and that will kill your plants in a heartbeat yeah so all we want sterile canadian peat it's five parts p one full pot of the sand it's always advised good advice to wear surgical gloves when you're working with pete yeah because pee funny enough can contain some pretty nasty fungal things right you basically want to mix the two as fast as possible you won't even see the sand but the sand does two things the sand adds weight to the composture okay so even if i put all the whole pot in there you still wouldn't see the sand it would be invisible um but when you do add the sand to it and then you add the water to it peat moss will take up seven times its own volume in water you see so it's it's fairly greedy when you feel like you've got it well mixed and you really really do need it mixed you pick a handful up you gently squeeze it some water will come out but it will stay like this it has structure you don't have to squeeze it all out now the fun bit you do want it fairly firm because what you don't want is your own air pockets you don't want patches of dry media which you can sometimes find zones of dry media if you plant these plants in a dry compost the plants will be there growing and the compost will take the water out of the plants and that will be a death sentence they will be murdered yeah it really is just a super heavy wet soil yes we wouldn't recommend this for really any other any other type of plant no category specifically you really want to make sure that you get it kind of domed up a wee bit uh it will sink and you don't want it too firm on the top now i think it's time where we could plant something so we'll start with the the sandroo this is a drossera a sunju this guy will take care of hundreds of mosquitoes and then really you just really want to make a nice fluffy hole now the second thing you want to concern yourself with really is the depth depth is everything of all the trees planted every year around the world a significant portion of them die and they die because they were planted too deep right we'll go on to our ceresemia cena hybrid sid cena that basically means parrot nose parrot parrot headed and again you know a little a decent a decent hole keep it away from the edge you don't want it on the edge this guy will fill up it will get wider they'll get wider rather than tall it will spread out and firming is important but do not hammer it down you can't have a bog without a fly trap right you don't have to go to south carolina and knick knees from the wilds yeah you can buy these online and now this guy is perfect for around the outside of the bowl you must make sure that you don't get the compost in the crown of the plant right right so that will rot it with these guys sometimes sometimes the venus fly traps will if they come in contact with the source so if they have a wet cold night they'll lay down they can rot yeah so what we tend to do is we'll lift them up we'll put just a dust in a sand dry sand around the outside so they have a bed to lay on and that's really important we want to put this bog bowl out in the pure white sunshine yeah like as much sun as it can get yeah they don't like shade can't tolerate shade we want to water it check it every day you have to use water that's got a ph of seven and below you never need to waste your money on fertilizer you do a little ham weeding there's a trick and the trick is in the gift of this live moss so what you're gonna do is you're gonna just gently just push it in there and firm it down that's the end all you gotta do is sit back and enjoy it yeah wow end of story it's beautiful paul i can't i can't wait to see this and what you say maybe a month and a half oh yeah you see this in a month and it's going to be amazing you

Channel: Rooted - Gardening, Food, Life

Views: 13,338

Keywords: carnivorous plants, pitcher plants, bog plants, water gardening, plants that grow in wet areas, water gardens, Venus fly trap, growing Venus fly trap, growing pitcher plants, best pitcher plants, container gardening, gardening for small spaces, gardening, planting, containers, garden soil, native plants, garden design, rooted, rooted gardening, pond plants, water plants, rooted tv, Venus fly trap care, houseplants, Venus fly trap eating, moss garden, garden answer, farming

Id: QfWCMCEQftw

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 30 2022