Quest. for northern dwellers

[ilbasso]

If you live in colder regions and bring your sarracenia out of dormancy rather than let mama nature do it in a few months, how do you keep 'em alive? This is not going well and I'm sure that light is the problem. I have nice new growth start and then the pitcher gets soft and "grassy" feeling and then wilts and dies. I pull it off and the rhizome is brown on that spot, but white elsewhere. On some, it started under the lights and then outgrows the area so I move them to a sunny window and then they wilt and get funky.

What I have is several pots of rhizomes with no green on them whatsoever that are still white inside. Several of these started out very promising. Artificial lighting is always tough since the pitchers get too tall so I was wondering if anybody has figured out a way around this problem? This is my first spring of waking the plants up and I was about to give all of my plants away this afternoon and just quite the hobby out of frustration!

I've rigged up a clamp light today for some of them but can't afford to run out an buy enough of those to surround all of the sarrs so I'm hoping that there is a good solution.

Most of you probably just plop them in the window and are fine which makes me wonder what the heck I'm doing wrong. They are in a big south window and a west one as well and that doesn't seem to be working.

[Woodnative]

ilbasso-
I live in NJ, zone 6 or 7, my plants spend the spring, summer, and fall outside, winter in an attached garage that gets close to freezing. Here I leave them outside until late October or November....they get a few frosts, but I bring them in before we get a really hard, prolonged freeze. Likewise, I have already put min outside, about a week or two ago, whilie it is still getting freezes at night but not a long hard freeze. They will wake up on their own. My garage doesn't have light of significance, but it doesn't matter when they are completely dormant.
I grow them in large, undrained pots. This works for me, but it is only one of several possible ways. Did your plants grow dormant, and you are only having problems now that they are beginning to grow? How much light is coming through those windows, is it just "birght" or is it full sun uninterupted by curtains, trees, etc.? How are the temps?

[scottychaos]

If you live in colder regions and bring your sarracenia out of dormancy rather than let mama nature do it in a few months, how do you keep 'em alive?

Im not quite sure what you mean..
how did the plants spend the winter? for dormancy?

Scot

[ilbasso]

Im not quite sure what you mean..
how did the plants spend the winter? for dormancy?

Scot

some were in the fridge (experimenting with that and it work quite well) and some were in the unheated garage. Now they're in my living room and kitchen while the temps are still dropping into the 20s and 30s at night. I suppose I could take them outside during the warmer days when possible, but I didn't want to keep changing the environment.

[scottychaos]

some were in the fridge (experimenting with that and it work quite well) and some were in the unheated garage. Now they're in my living room and kitchen while the temps are still dropping into the 20s and 30s at night. I suppose I could take them outside during the warmer days when possible, but I didn't want to keep changing the environment.

hmm..well, assuming they got a normal dormancy, which it sounds like they did,
then your current problems has nothing to do with the window or the amount of light.
my plants are also in windows for 6 weeks every year, before they go outside:

http://gold.mylargescale.com/Scottychaos/cp/page5.html

and they always do fine..
so I doubt the problem is the amount of light in the window..
it must be something else...

Where were they growing last season *before* you put them in the fridge or garage?
and how long have you owned these particular plants?
(the ones having problems..)

Scot

[Alexis]

What are they potted up in?

[scottychaos]

and how wet were they over the winter?
sounds like some kind of rhizome problem to me..rot perhaps.

Four new questions:

Where were they growing last season *before* you put them in the fridge or garage?
how long have you owned these particular plants?
What are they potted up in?
how wet were they over the winter?

Scot

[ilbasso]

Got them last summer. They slowed down in late summer when droughts hit the area, but they were still growing. They got no water over the winter-the soil remained damp so there was no need.

peat/perlite.

Some were great until I moved them from the light to the window and then went south. I may go get the water tested again, but I don't think that that is the problem either. It is from a RO vending machine.

[Zero]

I had problems last year moving my plants inside to get a head start. Not enough light, even in a sunny window under floro lighting, they grew long and thin.
Then grew badly outside all summer.
I lost most of my vft's and some sarras. This year they are staying on my unheated porch until the temps stay above freezing, then they are going outside.

[jimscott]

Before we moved and don't have an attic or garage or basement, I just put my Sarrs and other assorted temperates in the attic, right by a south window sill. I kept them (minibogs) slightly moist and waited the winter out. Temps got close to freezing but never froze, even though we got outside temps close to zero.