drying sphagnum?

From: J Mitchell (jmitchell@webaccess.net)
Date: Tue Jan 06 1998 - 14:34:32 PST


Date: Tue, 06 Jan 1998 22:34:32 +0000
From: J Mitchell <jmitchell@webaccess.net>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg82$foo@default>
Subject: drying sphagnum?

I've been frustrated lately with sphagnum (dried), which I need for
several species I grow.
Basically, the cheap stuff is filthy, stinky, full of seeds and spores,
and generally not something I want to put my Heliamphoras and other
rarer plants into.
And the expensive stuff is, well, expensive. I have found some clean,
nice New Zealand moss, but it's available only sporadically and it's
like $10 or $12 for a bag barely big enough to repot a half dozen 4"
pots.

Well, the other day I was trimming some of my live sphagnum, and just
left it out on a table to see if it would dry well. The result was a
fairly nice dried moss, somewhat lighter and fluffier than the bagged
stuff.
I think it would be great if I could grow and dry my own moss; it would
be guaranteed pure and weed free, and cost nothing but terrarium space.

So, has anyone had experience doing this? Does it work, or is something
done to the packaged stuff that is necessary?
I know how to grow live sphagnum just fine, I'm only wondering if anyone
knows how to turn it into usable dried stuff.

Any help would be greatly appreciated-

-Jonathan



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:31:28 PST