good morning YouTube welcome back to my channel today's video I think we're going to do a two-parter there I've had a lot of requests on how I grow my Spagna moss the live stuff that's in all the pots I wanted to touch base on how we grow Spagna moss and then a second part of this video I wanted to just give you a quick little demonstration on how I pot up my Nepenthes so they have the lair of the live spagna on top because a lot of people are asking how do you get that how do you grow the the live moss on the basket with the other plant then append these so we'll go through those steps as well but let's have a look at Spagna moss first and what it is so normally I grow Spagnola or I grow I buy Spagna Moss like this this is going to be what are using the majority of all my pots so something like this cost me about $5 at my local garden shop and what it makes is this which is a dry dead Spagna moss some people say swag gnome Spagna --m doesn't matter how you pronounce it but as long as we're on the same page as to what it is there so this for me is dead moss this is what I use in most of my pots I have never ever had this stuff sprout any new seeds any new growth on it there's been no spores that have ever activated after time I cannot get this stuff to grow so I don't know if it's a North American thing or a Canada thing anyways but this seems to be heat treated I cannot bring this back to life I have never had any success bringing this back to life so I know you get some tricks or tips on the internet that you can just sort of bag this up and after a couple months it will start to regrow again and for me that just simply hasn't happened so for me I have to start with live moss go on the internet search eBay lies bag no moss I know in the states there's quite a few places to buy it here in Canada there's not so many but just check out eBay or places like that carnivorous plot a carnivorous plant retailers online or in person will have it and it's not overly expensive you get about half of this amount of live moss for about 10 bucks or so so anyways that's what I start with is the live stuff so what I'll do the live stuff I brought out is right below you so I'm just going to bring you down and then we can have a look at the live stuff together and I'm going to tell you how I keep it alive okay this is one of my main cultures of my Spagna Moss here I don't have much of it some people have lots and lots of it growing around the greenhouse I would love to have lots of it but I just simply don't have lots at this point I have enough for doing my my top dressings on my pots but not enough to have it just mounds all over the place maybe at some point maybe someday it's kind of like growing the Spanish moss which is different once you have a fair amount of it it multiplies quite quickly and then you're able to go from there and you end up being able to give it away at this point this is what my main colony looks like I keep it quite moist it's always moist to the touch here in the greenhouse is always very high humidity I'm just going to kind of bring you a little closer there we go it's always high humidity in here if the humidity ever drops the tips die on it and it really sets you back so humidity is super important for this stuff in fact it's the most important thing that you can do with this I find I have trouble with it in the summertime especially in the pots because I want my plants to get Sun this stuff loves bright light it hates direct drying Sun and it dies very easily so you can see the odd dead tip in there and it just so happens that those little tips have dried out somehow over the winter and they are no longer active they're no longer growing to get this started the live spagna moss comes in long strands i didn't chop it up too much I made sure it was in about 4 inch strands in here and just laid it out evenly and then it actually just started growing up from there I didn't have to plant it directly up or down or anything like that I just sort of laid it out and for the most part it did pretty good you can see areas where I've recently harvested for some of my new plants they haven't grown back yet but that is what I've done is just a garden tray basically you can see it from the side and I have no media on this this is just a piece of my old shade cloth and it's just sitting directly on the shade cloth I'll turn this around sorry if that was loud see there's nothing under there's no media under it it's just sort of floating there in the summertime this little tray down here can be full of water but I don't keep it saturated I allow it to drip through but always be moist and it seems like this material this sort of wicks the water around where it needs to go this is a red spag believe it or not even though it's green when it gets more light it'll turn red you'll see that in the next video for me I'm just trying to slowly grow it I'm not trying to you know give it a prime real estate location here I have other plans that need that so it's just it's on a shaded shelf not under lights this time of year so it's it's not growing as fast as it could I don't fertilize it at all I did try one time in one corner in this corner here actually you can see it actually went green so I wasn't happy with that I have used seaweed fertilizer on it if that really counts is very mild which is a very quick spray other than that it just grows it just naturally grows and yeah the biggest thing I think is not so much light it is keeping it humid it doesn't even matter if it's really hot last summer I took some of this in a portion not very big portion about the size of my hand I put it in a large ziploc bag sealed the bag up kept it moist hung it below one of my shelves just with a little hook and it got direct Sun I have no idea how hot it got in that bag it got direct Sun the color of it was nice and red it was growing in the bag I would just undo the bag whenever I needed a bit and I grew it in the bag that seemed like a fantastic way to do it if you're at all worried about humidity or that drop in humidity seal it up it didn't seem to matter about the temperature at all because that was the middle of summer but anyways that is sort of a quick video on how I grow my Spagna moss now I'm going to do a part two video of this so if you're interested in continuing make sure you find that video i'll maybe link them together we're going to take some of this moss and do a top dressing on one of my depending so if you liked this video and you want to see more videos like this make sure you subscribe to my channel if you want to keep going with me to part two hunt down that video now