For years, I have kept Sarracenia in Oregon without spending a minute watering. I visit the plants (and family) once or twice a year and occasionally re-plant, but otherwise perform little maintinance.

This spring, I set up two new containers, as well the gravity-fed spring water system that supplies the particular property. Here are snapshots of the materials and techniques involved.

Supply float valves

These Little Giant float valves ensure that the Sarracenia containers stay damp in the dry season. They are mounted in cavities that are maintained free of potting material by halved 3-gallon pots. The pots are easy to cut using tin-snips.

There are two holes drilled in the container to accomodate the valve mounting hardware, and a third as a rain overflow. This type of float valve isn’t the least expensive on the market, but it is relatively compact, robust, and easy to install.

The 3 gallon pot halves are anchored in place by the clean gravel that fills the bottom of the containers. The gravel functions as cheap fill, mostly. It also helps keep peat out of the fill cavity, and facilitates drainage when the drain plug is removed.

Drain and winter care

The drain consists of a simple PVC threaded plug that is fitted into a poly bulkhead. This bulkhead is for 1/2” pluming, which is more than sufficient for the application. It is easy to install the bulkhead in any container, using a hole saw to make the appropriately-sized perforation. It is also helpful to have a pair of large pipe wrenches on hand to tighten the bulkhead in place.

In the winter, the plug can be removed to reduce potting mix water saturation. Generally, the plug can be safely removed and the float valve supply lines closed from around December to March/April in southern Oregon.

Other considerations

Here you can see the water level I was aiming for when determining how low to mount the float valves. The idea is for only the bottom of the peat to touch standing water.

Here are the completed bog containers, now filled with a peat/perlite mixture and planted.

In other installations, I have used plastic or rubberized commercial livestock troughs in the same manner. Here, the containers are modified 55 gallon poly drums. A local brewery bought industrial cleaning products in them before discarding them in my direction. The drums are easy to cut in half using a circular saw.

I wouldn’t necessarily purchase this sort of drum for growing Sarracenia, but am pleased with the results given the cost.

I chopped up an already-mangled garden hose to make the supply line connections to the float valves. Installing rigid plumbing may have been better in some ways, but this approach was certainly more expedient. The Little Giant float valves also are manufactured with garden hose thread on the inlet side, while the most appealing shutoff valves for the application were also hose bibs, again, with garden hose thread.

If you are curious where the water for the plants (and the rest of the property) comes from, I have also collected notes about the gravity-fed spring water system.