FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Wanted to pick your brains for what you guys like to use for top dressing for your different carni plants! And some of your preferred medium mixes for them as well? And curious on how you go about sourcing your stuff and make sure it's gonna be safe for the plants?

I was looking at silica sand as possible contender? Just not sure if will be good for top dressing them all. And I've been looking at sphagnum moss and perlite as the main things for medium but I recently got Carnivero's premixed stuff for Neps and liked it a lot! I would just need to figure out the ratio but ik its perlite, dried sphagnum and coconut chips.

I currently have Neps, sundews, Cephalotus and Pinguicula (getting regia soon).

Thanks guys!

live spag works pretty well. this is peat/perlite with live spag covering it


neps like it too

If your plants are going to be exposed to overhead watering, especially rainfall, then you'll need some top dressing that will prevent soil splashing all over everything.

Live sphagnum works well for tall plants like Sarracenia and renews itself over time but will overgrow smaller plants like vfts and sundews. For those, I like to use chopped dead sphagnum which works very well. Sphagnum of any kind also has the benefit that you can tell when the pot is drying out just by looking at the color of the moss.

The only exception for me is cephalotus where I use aquarium gravel to help prevent fungal invasion.

Hope that helps!

I topdress everything with some sort of sphagnum. Live if they are larger plants, or dried if they are smaller.

Thanks guys!! Seems like sphagnum moss will be my friend then since I have mainly have lots of Neps, I might get some sand for top dressing my Cephalotus, pings and maybe my sundews

Any things I should look for when searching for moss? I've heard of there being some places that mislabel other moss as sphagnum and such

Not knowing where you are located, BetterGro Orchid Moss that you can get from Lowes is a good, cost effective moss. Stay away from Moser Lee brand. It is garbage. Online you want to look for Long Fiber New Zealand Sphagnum Moss. Spagmoss, which is all over Amazon, is good but pricey.

Oooo ... that's a nice scarlet belle

optique wrote:live spag works pretty well. this is peat/perlite with live spag covering it


neps like it too

Depending on how much you need, I'd look at Josh's Frogs for their Chilean sphagnum bales. They're well priced for bulk purchase. Other than that, I don't think it really matters too much since you'll just be using this as a top dressing. You'll be picking out debris from any packaged product except maybe Spagmoss, which sells at a premium. Honestly, the best stuff would probably be what you can grow your own. Why not just trim up your nepenthes pots and start a tray?

FriskyBiscuit wrote:Thanks guys!! Seems like sphagnum moss will be my friend then since I have mainly have lots of Neps, I might get some sand for top dressing my Cephalotus, pings and maybe my sundews

Any things I should look for when searching for moss? I've heard of there being some places that mislabel other moss as sphagnum and such