How To Make Venus Flytrap Soil Mix: Best Carnivorous Plant Soil Mixture For Pitcher Plants And More!

all right guys so uh we're going to replant these beautiful little venus fly traps um first thing that we need to do in order to repot them is we need to create some soil for them uh and by soil i mean not really soil at all but a media that's completely drained of any of its minerals because that's what these guys like them coming from the bogs of the north and south carolina area they don't really have any minerals in the the dirt that they're in so we're going to recreate that the best that we can um just a heads up too guys if you don't want to go through the process of creating the soil which i don't blame you because it can be kind of a pain you can actually buy this pre-mixed uh there's even a place on amazon that sells a really nice pre-mix that i've actually used before a while back and it's a it's good stuff so there's a link in the description for that if you guys don't want to have to go through this entire process with the perlite the silica sand and the peat moss so just a heads up on that if you want to go that route much easier if you're just planting one or two plants this is probably better if you got a lot of plants to plant or you know if you want to just do this for the fun of it which i'm going to show you how to do today so first thing you need to do and this is kind of optional you don't have to do this but i got the peat moss in here right now i'm going to put some distilled water in there and let that soak for just a few minutes pmos is kind of be can be tolerant of water and it doesn't really absorb very well so it kind of helps if you let it sit for a little bit with that water in there but real quick just to make sure you guys understand what you need here this is uh pmos i know that's upside down and i'm sorry about that this is black gold brand it doesn't really matter the brand but the thing that you really need to watch for is the let me see if i can find it here is the percentage of um peat moss in here and now i'm having trouble finding it but somewhere on the back here it does say that it is supposed to be uh 100 pmos there's no additives in this okay you don't want any additives in it it's really important so make sure that when you do get a peat moss you get some without any of the additives otherwise those additives like fertilizer or other minerals can burn the roots and kill your venus fly trap so what we're gonna shoot for today for the soil um is we're gonna shoot for uh five parts pmos and then we're gonna go for three parts silica sand and then two parts per light so um the reason i have the silica sand right here is in a pot which silica sand is basically just uh ground up quartz really fine um and it just helps create aeration in the dirt and soil so that the the water can drain through there really easily um and then also the perlite helps absorb some of that water and distribute it so it doesn't uh it keeps your plant nice and unsaturated with water but it doesn't create that that root rot problem that a lot of people have it that ends up killing their venus flight traps but so one thing i do that's probably a little overkill is actually rinse my sand and my paralyte so that's why i have this in here so i'm gonna do is i'm gonna after i get done putting the the distilled water in with the um peat moss i'll let that soak for a minute i'm going to start rinsing this silica sand off and i'll go ahead and put my my video camera on a tripod here in just a minute so i have two hands to be able to do all this but um so you got the pearlite that'll go into closed sand what i'm going to do is i'm going to swish the water back and forth and drain into there um and then i'll kind of keep rinse and repeat literally a few times until that the water is clear and it seems like all the stuff has gone off of the the silica sand and pearlite uh the last thing i want to mention real quick is distilled water guys do not use tap water tap water will likely kill your venus fly trap same reason that the any type of normal soil will kill it it has too many minerals in it and those minerals will just destroy the roots it'll fry them and they won't be able to grow like i said these guys need no minerals they get all of their energy from the sun and then if needed they catch animal or i'm sorry they catch insects for um extra fertilizer so you kind of think of the sun as what helps them grow and then you can think of bugs that just sort of helps enhance their growth so you can actually grow these guys without any bugs at all but that's a topic for a different day let's go ahead and start mixing up this soil for you guys okay guys let's go ahead and get some distilled water in with the peat moss so we can start letting that soak a little bit [Music] i'm gonna dump a little bit but not too much you don't want it to be completely soggy it's kind of hard to work with then so just get a little bit of water in there mix it up you might need to pour a little bit more um you can just feel how this just absorbs that is what these plants really like so then you actually got a little bit more in there get all that feel a little better so now it's starting to get there we go see now starting to get more of a almost like a mud type look you don't want it to be completely muddy but just a little bit you want to be able to still you know fall apart a little bit okay here we go okay so we're just gonna let that sit there for a minute dirty hands probably should have worn a glove oh well your hands aren't dirty what are you doing right okay go ahead and open the pair right oh i probably should have bought out a pair of scissors you guys can't see me struggling oh good you can't see me struggling to open the repair light that's good okay [Applause] okay put some of the pearlite in there you kind of see the dust coming off that that's kind of the stuff that i want to just rinse off a little bit okay let's go ahead and put some water in here i probably should i don't really have anything bigger than this i probably should have used something bigger but what are you gonna do like a like a like a kid's play tub or something would work probably significantly better but just remember you don't want to do this with tap water you want to do this with distilled water okay just go ahead and get it in there soak it really good the distilled water okay now the thing is is you don't want to reuse this water okay this water is going to have all the crap on it that you don't want to be in with your plants and like i said ideally this tub would have been a little bit bigger so that i could have maybe sloshed it around a little bit um so i kind of misjudged that and i actually think i have a little too much silica sand in here but that's all right so let's go ahead and dump the water here get some of that pear light out too bring it back over there you can see how that water is kind of dirty looking it's getting a lot of those impurities out of there a lot of those minerals that you don't want to go in there with your venus fly traps okay quick skim here real quick let's get save some of this stuff now guys i know this is a little overkill i get that i'm sure i'll get some people in the comments here talking about how much overkill this is for creating the soil i don't see too many people doing this but one thing i'm faced with is that i'm in a climate that's going to be a little bit harder to grow these so i just kind of want to do everything that i can to make sure and give them the best fighting chance that i can so okay so i'm going to go ahead now um now that i've got see how dirty that water is though look at that all that stuff isn't going to be going in with my plant now so that's kind of nice let's go ahead and move this over there and i'm gonna go ahead and take this i'm gonna go ahead and now this has been soaking for a little bit um this parallel this is the stuff that you guys see in uh like like potting soil mix um it absorbs water really well and it distributes the water so that's what that is in case you're wondering but um you can definitely do some research on paralyte if you want but let's go ahead and put this in here you want this to be it's almost going to be 50 50 with the pearlite and the and the silica sand it's going to be just about a 50 50 mix here i think i'm going to have a little bit of extra sand and pearlite here but let me see let's make one more big scoop and we'll mix it up and see kind of where we're at here down there there we go look at that now i'm just eyeing it i'm not actually measuring it so probably bring this over here sorry about that um i hope you can actually see into there what's going on here you want to get that nice and mixed up nice thing about having the the full brick of peat moss is that if you don't if you don't think you got your ratio quite right you can certainly add a little more peat moss or i made a little extra this so what i'll probably do here is i'll probably this looks like it's pretty good actually i'll probably set this aside and then make when i'm done with all this i'll make one more little um batch of it with the peat moss in that so that i have something to set aside for uh replanting whatever so all right dirty hands again okay so what we have here folks i want to break up those pieces yes we have a nice aerated media for growing your venus fly traps it's really light and fluffy um water is going to go through that really well it's going to retain water but it's also going to drain water which is what you need which is kind of the tricky thing with these plants and why a lot of people fail at growing them is they put them in you know soil or the other thing that works really well that i don't have today but i know a lot of people like using it as the the long fiber sphagnum moss and they'll add some pearlite to that and it's kind of more it's a lot lighter than this but that also really absorbs water really well so that's definitely a good option too and i've seen a lot of people using that lots of videos so if you want to go that route you can certainly check out and find a video maybe i'll make a video later using just the sphagnum moss but um there you go beautiful nice and mixed up we are ready to plant our venus flytraps let's do it all right guys there it is so there we go they are repotted now they're watered hoping that they're going to be a little happier that was the before and after okay well uh i just wanted to thank you all again for watching um again subscribe if you enjoyed this give the video a like anything you guys do helps me a lot and helps me get this thing off the ground and going and helps me save and love more of these uh beautiful little plants so uh yeah thank you for visiting and thank you for being here and um oh i just wanted to say to you real quick that i'm going to be posting updates with these guys um i wanted to show you uh how they are going probably by like a monthly basis either monthly or if something dramatic happens with them then i'll probably do uh you know an update video um but yeah you can see how these guys grow and you can check out i'm going to be doing the um the uh sarah saracenia here pretty soon um as well i'm gonna video that one so that i'll i'll link that in the description and then the the um the um the panthers i'll also uh link in the description as well so i'm gonna go ahead and replant both of those and uh we'll see how they all do together thanks guys [Music]

Channel: Carnivorous Plants Hub

Views: 9,722

Rating: 4.8923078 out of 5

Keywords: carnivorous plant soil, venus flytrap soil, carnivorous plant soil mix, venus flytrap soil mix, carnivorous plant soil mixture, venus fly trap soil mixture, best soil mixture for venus flytrap, best soil mixture for carnivorous plants, planting venus flytraps, pitcher plant soil mix, nepenthes soil mix, sarracenia soil mix, how to mix soil for carnivorous plants, what ingredients for venus fly trap soil mix, how to make soil for venus fly traps

Id: q6WaSVn3bKg

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020