I recently visited a collector…big understatement…who lives near Homestead, South Florida. It gets well into the mid nineties in the summer and has only three or four chilly days…mid thirties…in the winter. He has hundreds upon hundreds of CPs in approximately 4000 sq ft of sparsely shaded area...VFTs and Sundews grow wild in the sandy soil beneath the wire rack shelves. Some of his collection are very rare and all are in beautiful shape, so he knows what he is doing as he has been collecting for thirty years.
He waters them once every day or so, from his well which he says is no way near acid enough. None are setting in water. No provision is made for dormancy and most are in full, hot Florida sun. I saw one five year old Typical VFT that had very close to three inch traps…it has never gone dormant and was a plant that any collector would be proud of. All of this leads me to two questions: Are we babying our plants too much? Is dormancy really necessary here in South Florida…or anywhere else for that matter?
He waters them once every day or so, from his well which he says is no way near acid enough. None are setting in water. No provision is made for dormancy and most are in full, hot Florida sun. I saw one five year old Typical VFT that had very close to three inch traps…it has never gone dormant and was a plant that any collector would be proud of. All of this leads me to two questions: Are we babying our plants too much? Is dormancy really necessary here in South Florida…or anywhere else for that matter?