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Dormancy questions

i'm trying to devise a strategy to give my two VFT's dormancy this year (TC plants bought last august, skipped dormancy this past winter), and i'm not quite sure how it will work. i have them up at college with me now so my plan was to have them ready to enter dormancy at Thanksgiving, so that I can leave them home in my garage window. this gets some light since it's in the front of the house, facing east-southeast, and while it gets cold it doesn't (or shouldn't) quite freeze. i have two holes left in this plan: 1. when should i start cutting back on light to stay on this schedule and 2. how wet should i keep the plants when they're in the garage? i was planning to move the plants from their current location under a flourescent lamp to the west-facing windowsill soon to take advantage of the naturally decreasing light. when should i move them to have them about dormant by thanksgiving?

thanx!
 
For dormancy you just need to decrease the light and lower the temp to around 35 to 40 degrees. As for the moisture, just keep the soil damp not wet. Don’t let it dry out. Just imagine North Carolina. Around 10 hours a day of sun light, just not as bright. And remember, it snows in North Carolina. You just don’t want the soil to freeze.
 
When I re-kindled this hobby 2 summers ago, I had my VFT's, also TC, from Home Depot, kept on the window sill at work, where they gradually eased into dormancy, via the lower photoperiod. Their sill is also drafty, so the temps were in the 50's throughout the Fall. Now I went through a convoluted process in November when I brought them home (in between the storm and regular window, followed by screened in porch). I ended up taking the open tray set up, with no fungicides or baggies, and placed them both in the butter keeper for the next two months, before bringing them back to work and the window sill to gradually warm them up. They did just fine and rewarded me with flowers in April. Basically, I tried to gradually reduce both light and temps and keep them that way for the Winter, followed by gradually increasing them both.

Might you have a 2-paned window and/or a small fridge in your dorm room. If there is a way of safely putting them outside now and let them stay out there until November, that would be cool. That's how I plan to do my cobra lily until I can put it in a fridge.
 
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