I am grinding up clean no dye and unprinted paper with moss and sand and a spoonful of greensand For starter pots ,, All mixed together

Only a place to start ,, talk about anything your mood to .

Are you using this mix for specific plants or is it meant to be a general-purpose starting mix? What kind of moss are you using?

A couple of seed starter mixes from the bags that did not do as well as could of . The mixes seem to need some mineral and water retention assistance Only moss I add is some of the carpet moss around here , the Sphagnum is in the mixes already ,
Meant to be a general purpose use ,

When you said "moss", my brain went right to the green stuff outdoors rather than peat moss. Have you tried using a little bit of vermiculite for water retention? For the longest time, I used to think it was for improving drainage. Boy, was I wrong.

There is enough Vermiculite in one of the bags , the green sand helps as might a few additives after some thought ,
The first part of this without the Vermiculite and sand makes good worm bedding with a puree whipped banana peel ,,
That makes a good starter additive after the worms are through
I don't have many for the time being (the worms) . But they will be back munching shortly .

You had to include the banana puree!

After a lot of this occurs, it is not a bad additive , I have this nearly a foot long at one side of the house

" The Green stuff "


I have green carpets "out there"

I do have a beautiful patch of moss that I actually weed during the growing season. Just never thought of using it as part of a growing meadium.

A few seasons ago Mine Bloomed ,,The carpet moss , I keep looking for sets where it grow under and between pots ,
It also makes oxygen like algae does ..

Yes the puree What would a mix be without worms

Very interesting about the oxygen. How to utilize that...

Have to find an article someplace , Use to have a few ,,
Only a interesting fact to me too

Would be interested to hear about it.

Here is one , not super but good , Moss making it's own food and Oxygen ,,

http://home.howstuffworks.com/...

Let me get this straight in my head. You'll be using dried moss? mixed in the soil? So it's going to be more of a water-holding tool than creating the oxygen (air space) in the soil? Acting sort of like properly dampened peat moss?

Sure Cindy , That's what I'm doing , as I have before . Thing is though ,, it will still grow sometimes ,,
Moss driving up the wall ,, lots of this

Bulb pot sets and Venus Flytrap's might like it as is I don't do that usually , Although I might try some for the Amaryllis mix ?

I wonder if you have a different type of moss than I do. Mine's all flat and very short - sort of like indoor/outdoor carpet. Yours looks like it has longer strands.

I have that in the pot above very short and small . The mature moss that is growing up the Blocks and sides of pots , May be the other referred to as short southern Sphagnum , They grow this near Cicero a great big field of moss for marketing ,,
Not all from Canada ....
A lot of the times they look exactly the same , other times not so much ,, Two types of carpet moss ,
If I feed the moss , the longer type blooms and seeds

I ordered some plants from Hirt's Nursery once. They came in tiny cells, like 1.5 inch square by 2 inches deep.

The surface was covered very tightly with moss.

At first I thought it was a cool way to keep potted plants from shedding soil during shipping - the moss held the soil surface together.

Then I realized it was just sloppy: the surface also had strands of grass and weeds in amongst the moss. They had just pulled up clumps of soil with seedlings (or cuttings) from a very unweeded bed and shipped wherever came out.

Plus, they had advertised Lavatera thuringiaca var. 'Barnsley', a valuable "periclinal chimaera" but sent L.thuringiaca var. 'Rosea', the most common and cheapest variety.

Maybe it reverted to the non-chimaera form, but it sure reverted before even one 'Barnsley' flower showed itself.

I have some of it growing on old carpets ,outdoors , hence possibly ,, Carpet Moss ,, couldn't be , that graphic to name ,,
A good way to grow moss , (this one anyway ) peck it clean . mix it with buttermilk , sweet milk ,, , put a little on a few old cement or asphalt blocks , Put the towel down on the blocks , Dirty it a bit and weight it down slightly ,, poof moss everywhere ,,

What is charged for it is extreme ,,,

Also I dug out a compost bin type worm bin once , covered it with a wooden board cover , Had Giant Sphagnum growing over a foot tall for a while ,, looked like Ferns ,, was cool looking