How to Build a Carnivorous Plant Bog

hello i'm kate and this is alison [Music] we're here at california carnivores and we are going to show you how to make a temperate carnivorous plant bog so this is a giant bog that we're going to put temporary carnivorous plants in and that means plants that want to live outdoors all year round these are plants like saracenia or north american pitcher plants venus fly traps temperate sundews like the thread leaf sundews and even some of the temperate pinguicula so these are full sun plants they want to go in a place where they're going to get as much daylight as possible so keep that in mind when you're building one of these big bogs that you want it to do well it's kind of hard to move around because it's so big so pick a place that's super sunny and you're also going to want to make sure that you have access to water that is either distilled or rain water or reverse osmosis water so we're going to show you how to put together this awesome bog and we're going to be putting plants like these beautiful american pitcher plants which are just coming out of dormancy they have beautiful flowers and their pictures are just starting to come up and so we're going to start with this super cool bog container you can get these at you know your local hardware store i got mine at costco and it doesn't drain and it's just some type of plastics you could have any sort of non-draining container try to stay away from unglazed ceramics just because the minerals and the clay will eventually leach in your plants and we don't like that for carnivorous plants so the first thing we're going to do is we're going gonna layer up some kind of like this rocky pumice on the bottom and you know when you fill up a bog like this that doesn't drain it's kind of hard to water so we're gonna show you a little tip for how to make this easier to get water into this giant thing without just deluging the top of your um perlite mix so i'm gonna start i got um this is just regular pumice here you can use like little tiny river rock type of thing [Applause] okay let's just let's just dump some in okay [Applause] so i'm just gonna put i don't know two inches doesn't matter two or three inches it's not specific and then as i layer up the p and perlite mixture i'm gonna make a little channel of bigger chunkier rock that we're gonna use as like a water channel so we'll be able to water our little river rock channel and get water down into the bottom of this thing it just makes watering a lot easier okay so here you you put rocks in the thing this is just a mixture of river rock it doesn't have to be anything specific this is like a horticultural river rock so if you're worried about where it came from give it a little rinse before you start using it in your bog and we just have this plastic cup here we got the bottom out of it we're just we're just improvising here and that way when we [Music] put in i'm gonna start putting in this is peat moss and a quarter perlite about more or less all nice and mixed up we're probably gonna need more mixture beautiful nice okay go ahead another one so one thing to be very sure of is that when you get your peat moss and your perlite from wherever home depot your your local nursery preferably make sure that it has no added fertilizers okay that is key and you can see our website we talk about mixes for carnivorous plant pogs and so this is just regular old peat moss with a little bit of perlite added to it that feels perfect so you can see how heavy this gets so i mean we're doing it here on this table and it's going to take a couple really strong people to move this so if you can build it in place and you don't even have to worry about that [Applause] oh perfect lovely lovely so now every time we water a bog we're just gonna stick the little nozzle of our watering can right here and we're gonna go to get so much more water into this thing than we would if we were just trying to like pour it over the top okay now all right okay so now allison has all these gorgeous giant saracenia she's going to put in here we're eventually going to cut off the flowers because stress is the plan out i mean transplanting a plant like this is very stressful and it doesn't need to be putting energy into the flowers while it's going through this transition so we'll cut them off put them in a vase make yourself a nice bouquet and all right to get these in here literally um i would just i would just dig a hole see how long these roots are i mean they're not always that long but get get them in so that you have at least you have the roots like at least this deep and then we're gonna plant this so that this is the rhizome here and we're gonna get the soil level just above that rhizome so just do the best you can go ahead yeah dig up yeah you're gonna need a bigger hole than that these do have nice big rooms yeah all right go ahead and then just tuck them in as gently as you can also you have to kind of go yeah you can be firm with these plants they're ridiculously tough they're super hardy we don't have to be super gentle and you know most plants like it um they want to be tucked into their mix pretty firmly because you really want a lot of contact with the roots and this dirt because that's how they get their water is like they have contact with the soil and through that wet soil is how they draw out the moisture so really push it in there yeah and then of course we're going to do a little top watering on this a lot of help settle them down too there you go perfect it was a little wonky how do you make um like figure out where you put them in a bog this big so um with plants this size uh you just want to spread them out evenly you can also take a look at where the rhizome is growing so if you look at the edges here so i have a big rhizome here and there's the growing tip that's where all the new growth is so in general the growth of this plant is going to be this way so what you just want to avoid is taking that growing tip and like putting it right towards the edge of the pot so i want to think more about you know where do i want this thing to grow so growing um just you know you want to give it some room nice let's get you in here all tucked in [Laughter] complaining yeah you want a stool is that enough do you think and is enough of the right yeah yeah again you might want to get this guy's kind of weird cause he's a little taller than the other ones but you can always just kind of maneuver them around and we can always um add a little bit more dirt on the top here okay and it will settle once we top water yes no matter what you do no matter how hard you pack this in it's gonna settle somewhat mine settled a couple inches over a year so all right do more i think that was the hardest thing for me to get used to at first when i started doing this was i was very timid with yes really packing them in and they really do they can take a bit i think that's the hardest thing for people they're so afraid to kill these plants by handling them too roughly but as you can see i mean these are like really thick rhizomes their roots are nice and thick and you know they can handle a lot so don't worry about being too gentle on your plants it's actually it's actually better um to be firmer because you want that contact with this you want that contact how do you orient this one because the roots are going down so he wants to be like this right here or would you do it um i would generally point there the growing points um in that way especially right here because it doesn't have very far to go gotcha this is going to go right into those rocks that's not where they want to go i know sometimes you don't have a choice and that's okay it'll do what it does so um i'm gonna go get a watering can and we'll just water we'll top water it so we get all of these guys um just really settled in you know get all the roots with lots of dirt and water around them and then cut off the flowers so here take that and go ahead and take flowers off i'm gonna go get off the water because i do love these beautiful yes look at that so gorgeous yeah and you know any pictures that break you can cut them off too and if you want to completely avoid breaking stuff then just do it early in the year while they're still dormant and they don't have their new growth up but generally speaking you know just do it you know if it's like you don't want to wait a whole another year to do it so cut that guy off yeah get this i mean they'll they'll figure it out they'll grow new stuff and it'll be all perfect and then make sure when you're watering this you're using rainwater or reverse osmosis water or distilled water you don't want to be starting out with a like a bog this size with like super mineraly water so i'm just gonna water these guys in really good i really want the dirt to settle in around all of their roots but now i can water is just going to flow down here really easily and look i'm hardly even disturbing the surface of the soil okay so one more important thing since this is a non-draining bog in the winters especially when it rains a lot this whole thing is going to fill up and what you don't want is your precious little plants to be like sitting under water can cause rot so one thing we do is we just solve that by drilling a little hole and put a couple of them around the box and i do this um you know about an inch or two below the soil level and that way when this thing fills up yeah it'll actually just drain a little bit and these guys won't be sitting under water okay so now we got all these big things in here and we got it nicely watered if you want you can add all sorts of smaller temperate plants like venus fly traps or any of the temperate sundews or the temperate pinguicula like pingacula premulaflora any little thing you want and it's not going to get ruined when you water this whole thing and you're digging around for these big plants so this would be a great time to just add you know your your little special things this is our beautiful saracenia bog i hope you guys enjoyed it if you have any questions let us know and i hope you guys try it out peter come check it out we're telling people how to make a bog look at this gorgeous fog that is beautiful did you happy did you see the crazy roots on her plants too whoa look at that oh my god that's going to be a beautiful ball i know are those variety no i have lots of uh there's a lot of flava in here but then i also have some specials so i have uh hurricane creek and adrian slack oh royal ruby how are you gonna lift this thing well that's we need your help we know you just detailed your car but can we use your car i'm going to take a nap

Channel: California_Carnivores

Views: 93,951

Keywords: Carnivorous plant, Plant, Garden, Potted garden, Patio garden, Plant nerd, Plant lady, Sarracenia, Pitcher plant, Gardening, Plant care, Pitcher plant care, Sarracenia care, Container garden

Id: WNGezynlxAk

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021