Carnivorous plants are a type of plants that have the ability to feed and extract nutrients, on the one hand, from the substrate and, on the other hand, from insects and other small living beings that they get with their traps. Due to this, their nutritional needs are quite different from those of other types of plants and, therefore, they require substrates specially made for them.
If you like these curious plants and you are thinking of having them at home and want to learn how to prepare specific soil for them, join us in this Green Ecologist article about how to make substrate for carnivorous plants.
Most carnivorous plants are native to environments where the soil is quite poor in nutrients. In fact, it is precisely because of this shortage of nutrients that they have developed the ability to feed on small insects and other small living beings (amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, etc).
For this reason, planting or transplanting carnivorous plants at home you need to prepare a poor substrate, similar to that of its original environment. If you put them in a universal substrate or in normal soil, the roots are most likely to be burned by excess mineral salts.
Learn more about How carnivorous plants eat with this other post.
When preparing substrate for these plants, your best option and the first thing you look for should always be the sphagnum. It is a substrate obtained from Sphagnum moss, native to New Zealand, Argentina, southern Chile and Tasmania. Is poor in nutrientsIts pH is acidic and provides very good aeration, as well as a high water retention capacity.
Usually the sphagnum is also mixed with sand, although it is very important that it be a gross sand and has been stripped of mineral salts of any kind. If you can, go to an aquarium store and ask for a gravel that they will have for freshwater fish, made up of spheres between 2 and 4 mm in diameter and that can come in different colors.
For make substrate for carnivorous plants It is important that you follow these tips on the materials to use and that you make a mixture that is divided into three parts (with a volume that will depend on the pot to be filled).
For transplant and plant the carnivorous plants, we must take into account the type or species that we have in hand, as they may have different needs. The most important thing to keep in mind is:
To know more about this process, we recommend you read this other post on Transplanting and planting plants: when and how to do it.
Also, you should keep in mind that there are two main types of carnivorous plants: tropical and non-tropical. Depending on the type you have at home, its care will be different in some points. If you want to know different types of carnivorous plants in more depth, we recommend this other article by Green Ecologist. These are some key points to keep in mind for carnivorous plant care:
Here you can see more details about Caring for carnivorous plants.
Carnivorous plants must be transplanted every 2 years, at which point the substrate must also be completely replaced. To change the substrate of carnivorous plants, always use the mixture recommended in the first section of this article and, also, make sure to get rid of as much of the old substrate as you can every time you change it. In this way, you will help your carnivorous plants to stay in good condition and looking good.
If you want to read more articles similar to Substrate for carnivorous plants: how to do it, we recommend that you enter our category of Cultivation and care of plants.