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Need Winterizing Help!

I have 5 sarracenias and a VFT I need advice on... They are all in 4-5 inch pots except for the purpurea and VFT, which are in 2" pots. I took them out of their water trays yesterday. I am in zone 6a and the temps have been in the low 30s and high in the low 50s if we are lucky. Next week it is going back up to 64˚F for a high. What do I do to get them though winter???
 
Yes, but it is detached and not insulated well. Probably gets fairly cold in there still? I've never put a thermostat in there, but my fiancé uses it sometimes and puts the heater on.
 
You need to find a place that stays between 35 and 50 degrees F all winter..Scot

BTW, Leah, et al, are now residing at a local nursery for the winter. The greenhouse is set at 40.
 
^ excellent!
sounds like you found a great location!

How did Leah do for the rest of the season?
my guess is "she didnt do much" ;)
I have found Leah puts up 3 or 4 pitchers in the spring, then she is basically done for the year..
my main plant had about 4 pitchers this year, then 5 more phyllodia by autumn..
a very pretty plant, but not a prolific pitcher maker..

Scot
 
I took them out of their water trays yesterday. I am in zone 6a and the temps have been in the low 30s and high in the low 50s if we are lucky. Next week it is going back up to 64˚F for a high.

I'm in an almost identical situation, except that my five Sarrs and various VFTs are all on one large bowl... (And this is my first year growing cps OUTdoors.) As such, I've been letting the rain take of watering since early September. With the temps going back up this week again, I haven't yet shielded them from the rain...

How can I assess whether or not my Sarrs are yet dormant?

My intention is to let the LFS media dry itself out over the next week and then mulch the bowl into a bin in my shed to ride out the next few months, but it may be too soon, yes? My main concner is that I'll dry out the media ('til damp, not bone-dry) before the plants are dormant... Last year I didn't fridge my indoor VFTs until after Thanksgiving...
 
How can I assess whether or not my Sarrs are yet dormant?

Mine slow right down to almost no new growth at all. My plants are in a zone 5a, I believe, and have been asleep since the first week of november. They almost form what I can only describe as "spikes" on the rhizome, like tiny little pitchers that never get very big at all. I suppose it would be akin to hibernacula...

But I have a similar situation where outside is WAY too cold (so much so, that I don't even trust mulching techniques that so many have described. Additionally, being away for college there is no one to obsessively collect temperature data throughout the day) but inside is, well, typical inside temps, which are too warm for these purposes. My solution as been to place them in the basement under grow lights with many other tropical non-carnivorous plants. The light is pretty low, not to confuse them into growing full strength, and the temps are in the forties steadily all winter.

Retard their growth, keep 'em just moist and fungi free, those were my goals.

Hope this helps,
CJ
 
Keeping them slightly above freezing like Scot mentions is ideal. If you can't, though, at least make sure to shelter them from the wind, and keep the pots in a little water. Not too deep - you don't want rot cropping up - but cold air is very dry so dehydration can happen surprisingly fast.
If you can't prevent them from freezing, try to at least keep them frozen once they do freeze. Repeated freezing and thawing is far more stressful than a few weeks of a cold spell. Mulching, covering your plants with a tarp, and using large, deep pots that fit closely together and don't allow drafts to blow between them are also helpful.
Jonny - the shortening day length and cooler average temperatures should be enough to clue your plants in to the season. VFTs will close slowly, partially, or not at all in response to stimuli once they enter dormancy. Temperate sundews will (typically) die back to waxy hibernacula. Sarracenia may produce phyllodia as dormancy approaches (this behavior is mostly limited to the taller species and related hybrids,) and then slow or halt growth entirely. Look at the crown of the plant - if it's making little stubby pitchers that don't mature, like the spikes Unstuck described, it's dormant. If your plants have been outside for the past few months, it's highly unlikely that they haven't entered dormancy.
~Joe
 
  • #10
If you can't prevent them from freezing, try to at least keep them frozen once they do freeze. Repeated freezing and thawing is far more stressful than a few weeks of a cold spell. Mulching, covering your plants with a tarp, and using large, deep pots that fit closely together and don't allow drafts to blow between them are also helpful.

The reason why mulching seldom works around here is because its not "a few weeks"..
The "cold spell" below freezing could last 3 months! ;)
basically all of December, January and February could be easily spent frozen solid for plants mulched outdoors..its too much, they usually die.

yes, the plants do freeze in their native habitat..but in South Carolina a cold snap below freezing is measured in days..maybe a week..but never 3 months..

Scot
 
  • #11
We go back and forth about this every year Scot, so I won't dispute your own experiences. However, I've been told to mulch by substantial number of very experienced growers, some of whom have even harsher conditions than your own. I would take your opinion on mulching with more weight if I'd seen an account of how you mulched when you lost your plants; as it stands the only details I've seen are your how-to threads, and no explanations of how you did things before then. I strongly believe, based on your own testimonials, that you may have overlooked something in your previous mulching attempts; there is no conceptual reason why it shouldn't work.
Even in the coldest climes of the continental US (excluding high mountains I suppose,) the earth does not freeze below a shallow upper layer of the topsoil. If you go down about four feet, it never strays far from 60F. You should easily be able to keep your plants above freezing if you dig a foot-deep depression and cover it with mulch, a tarp, and a second layer of mulch (or snow for that matter) to hold it in place. Cleverly engineered homes in Alaska manage to store and reuse ambient heat so that virtually no additional heating is required; keeping some lumps of dirt above freezing shouldn't be that difficult.
I understand you lived in an apartment and had to use a porch, and that makes things different. But you can still use the thermal load of your home to prevent freezing if you're clever about it; a well-sealed tarp/cold frame against a wall (or even better, a low-insulation surface like a sliding glass door) will serve to keep average temperatures above ambient if the exposed surfaces are mulched or otherwise insulated. Bubble wrap works wonders in this application. In any case, simply putting a lump of bark on top of a lone pot on a drafty second-story deck is not really what growers are referring to when they talk about mulching.
The fridge method is a viable technique - I don't dispute it. But there are other ways. Can we agree to that? All I'm saying is that there are other options, and for some growers, they are easier and more reliable. Your mileage may vary.
This is nothing against you personally, or your instructions. When I was starting out I read your fridge method threads, and they're very useful; I refer people specifically to your info when they want details on it. But the fact that you report failures with mulching doesn't lead me to believe that you have any definitive knowledge on that technique. If you want to learn how to do something, you go learn from those that can and have done it - not somebody who tells you it doesn't work.
~Joe
 
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  • #12
This was taken ~August:

Picture001-33.jpg


This was right before I shipped everything:

100_8424.jpg


She produced a few leaves beyond her arrival.
 
  • #13
We go back and forth about this every year Scot, so I won't dispute your own experiences. However, I've been told to mulch by substantial number of very experienced growers, some of whom have even harsher conditions than your own. I would take your opinion on mulching with more weight if I'd seen an account of how you mulched when you lost your plants; as it stands the only details I've seen are your how-to threads, and no explanations of how you did things before then. I strongly believe, based on your own testimonials, that you may have overlooked something in your previous mulching attempts; there is no conceptual reason why it shouldn't work.
Even in the coldest climes of the continental US (excluding high mountains I suppose,) the earth does not freeze below a shallow upper layer of the topsoil. If you go down about four feet, it never strays far from 60F. You should easily be able to keep your plants above freezing if you dig a foot-deep depression and cover it with mulch, a tarp, and a second layer of mulch (or snow for that matter) to hold it in place. Cleverly engineered homes in Alaska manage to store and reuse ambient heat so that virtually no additional heating is required; keeping some lumps of dirt above freezing shouldn't be that difficult.
I understand you lived in an apartment and had to use a porch, and that makes things different. But you can still use the thermal load of your home to prevent freezing if you're clever about it; a well-sealed tarp/cold frame against a wall (or even better, a low-insulation surface like a sliding glass door) will serve to keep average temperatures above ambient if the exposed surfaces are mulched or otherwise insulated. Bubble wrap works wonders in this application. In any case, simply putting a lump of bark on top of a lone pot on a drafty second-story deck is not really what growers are referring to when they talk about mulching.
The fridge method is a viable technique - I don't dispute it. But there are other ways. Can we agree to that? All I'm saying is that there are other options, and for some growers, they are easier and more reliable. Your mileage may vary.
This is nothing against you personally, or your instructions. When I was starting out I read your fridge method threads, and they're very useful; I refer people specifically to your info when they want details on it. But the fact that you report failures with mulching doesn't lead me to believe that you have any definitive knowledge on that technique. If you want to learn how to do something, you go learn from those that can and have done it - not somebody who tells you it doesn't work.
~Joe

I never said it doesnt work 100% of the time..
there are many confirmed cases here in "the north" where people have mulched bogs in the ground..it can work, I never said it cant..

but..

for newbies, its highly risky..
and its FAR safer to find a place that is above freezing..

the earth does not freeze below a shallow upper layer of the topsoil.

wrong..
it actually freezes down to 4 feet around here..probably not that deep every winter, but for things like fence posts and such, building codes say you have to go down to 4 feet to avoid frost heave..4 feet isnt exactly shallow! ;)

(im sure the "code depth" is *maximum* frost depth..most winters it might be only 2 or 3 feet..not four..but still, its defiantly much deepr than a "shallow layer of topsoil"..)

http://www.charlesandhudson.com/archives/frost-line-depth-map.jpg

http://www.decks.com/images/Articles/US-frost-depth-map.jpg

If you go down about four feet, it never strays far from 60F.

also wrong..it can be easily below freezing at 4 feet under ground..see links above..
in the upper Mid-west and Canada, the frost depth can be 100 inches!
thats EIGHT feet!

One foot of mulch isnt enough to prevent freezing..
neither is two feet..or three feet..
maybe four feet will work..
(but even it does freeze, the mulch should be heavy enough to prevent freeze-thaw..
so even if it freezes, it might *stay* frozen..which could be helpful..but again, frozen solid for 3 or 4 months is simply beyond the endurance level of these plants)
as I have said before, the cold itself isnt the killer..its the duration of the cold.
there is a big difference between 25 degrees for 2 nights in South Carolina, then warming back into the 40's..
versus below freezing for 3 months straight..

mulching can work in zones 6, 5 and lower..its just highly risky..
I would put the risk of death at about 50/50..
while a "fridge method" location is about 99% odds of survival..
most winters I have 100%..

On my webpage, I wasnt referring to the deck where I used to live..
I had some sarracenia and VFT's growing in a pond down my parents house (near Elmira NY)
I put the pots (four pots of sarracenia and two of VFTs) ina tub of peat, buried the tub in a garden..top of the tub was at ground level, about two feet of leaves and pine needles on top..dug them up in late March..frozen solid..put them back in the pond..they never came back..So thats my one experience..maybe they would have lived with a deeper mulch layer?
maybe..all I know is winters around here are far too brutal for what these plants are used to..
if you want to try it, I cant say they will definitely die..but the odds are high..

I think people who dont live in in these climates have a hard time understanding just how cold it is! ;) and for how long...I have gotten into similar discussions with the guys over on the CPUK forum..CP growers in England just have no concept of how cold winters can be..One guy in England was attempting to ridicule my "extreme" suggestions, saying I go way too far, then he said something about "protecting from rain in the winter"..."RAIN??" (I said)
We dont see rain for 4 months..plenty of moisture falls from the sky however, but its all in the form of frozen water..if you regularly see rain in the winter, you dont know what winter is! ;)

Scot
 
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  • #14
Thanks for the links! Love that mini bog! And yes, they have been outside all summer! I will have to stick a thermostat in my coal cellar and see what it registers as.


You need to find a place that stays between 35 and 50 degrees F all winter..
thats the tricky bit..
outdoors is too cold, indoors is too warm..

some suggestions:

http://gold.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/CP/page2.html

http://gold.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/CP/page5c.html


Have they been outside all summer up to now?
If so, thats half the battle right there! ;) they should be fully dormant right now..now you just have to find a spot for them to rest for the next 4 months..


Scot
 
  • #15
Frost heave is different than the frost line; you have to have a footer rooted below the frost line to protect against heave if I recall. I don't know the precise details, but if four feet is what code is in your parts, the frost probably only goes gets close to four feet in really catastrophic winters. I'm surprised, though... I thought that four feet was nearing arctic conditions.
If you just buried your stuff out in a garden, to a foot, when the frost already reaches down a foot, then you're not really getting insulating effects. (Er... geothermal effects?) I think you might've seen much better results with a wider hole, lined with mulch on the sides as well as above to create airspace, and a dark tarp on top to draw in what little solar heat is available. But again, under those circumstances I can see what you mean. It might be worth cluttering up the fridge just to avoid having to dust off the impromptu solar panel each morning.
Now I feel compelled to find a way to make it work. If you get a kooky looking cold frame in the mail, you'll know who sent it. :p
~Joe
 
  • #16
Joe,
Im looking forward to trying out that cold frame! :beer:

I would like to try an outdoor bog..I put in a small pond this year..
Im considering building a CP bog alongside it.
If I do, I will try outdoor dormancy again..

Scot

---------- Post added at 10:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 PM ----------

a wider hole, lined with mulch on the sides as well as above to create airspace, and a dark tarp on top to draw in what little solar heat is available.
~Joe

Solar heat..thats a conundrum..
because lets say you have a cold frame, you would want solar heat to warm the inside..
but also there is often several feet of snow on the ground for much of the winter..
should you remove the snow from the coldframe, (or from a dark tarp) or leave it?

Snow is a great insulator..if the air is +5 degrees, you would want a nice snow layer to protect the plants from that cold air..the plants might be at 25 degrees under their blanket of mulch and snow..below freezing yes, but still better than zero to +5 F..or even below zero..

Or..should you keep the snow off the cold frame? hoping the feeble winter sun might warm the inside of the frame and keep the plants warmer?

I would say leaving the snow on would be better...the sun cant win against +5 degrees..
I think it would be MUCH colder for the plants if you constantly removed the snow layer..without that added insulation of snow, the plants will be much colder...sunlight would be pretty much a non-factor for warmth..especially at night..

At 3am when its +5 degrees..any minor solar heating is long-gone..the inside of the coldframe will also be +5 degrees..but it could be warmer if you have heavy insulation on top.

So IMO any solar warming benefits of a coldframe (or a hole with a dark tarp on top) simply dont factor in up here..
(which is the same reason a greenhouse is useless in the winter..
We often have bright sunny winter days when the air is a balmy zero degrees..the sun has virtually no warming power on those days..)

So I dont think a coldframe, tarp or greenohuse would even be a benefit at all..the sun just cant warm it up enough inside to be of any use.
heavy insulation is the key..the plants will have to be buried deep, in pitch-blackness, for 4 months..
thats the only way it can work..and IMO even that is *highly* risky and far more severe than their native winter conditions..
I dont see any point in even trying it, if you have a better alternative.

Scot
 
  • #17
Snow is a sturdy insulator, but it has to already be frozen to work. A layer of loose mulch with lots of little air pockets is better, if your goal is to keep temps above freezing to begin with. If you have enough mulch to curb conduction, and a decent surface area to your tarp, convection could win out, at least enough to keep the temperature above a deep freeze.
The way water works, once temps hit freezing, they stay precisely at freezing until the surrounding air gets substantially colder. I don't know what it's called... I want to say thermal plasticity but I'm almost certain that's wrong. But anyways, there's energy released by water settling down into ice, that doesn't actually contribute to the physical temperature; as water solidifies, the temperature stops changing while this energy is released. So, if you can steadily add even a small amount of warmth to your system, the ice and snow should help to buffer against extreme/rapid changes in temperature.
As for a cold frame or shelter, it all depends on the size and shape. By balancing a large solar surface and total volume with minimal heatsinks, you should be able to offset all but the harshest temperatures. I think it's at my mom's house, but I have a winter/high altitude survival guide that I'm pretty sure has a solar still in it, which means that you can even get water to evaporate with proper design. (They certainly aren't boiling the water, probably relying on the low moisture content of freezing air to do most of the heavy lifting, but still.) I suspect that an easy, reliable design might be bigger than some of us would find practical, but I'm rereading my old diff. eq. books now so maybe I'll try to make a model and see where the sweet spot is.
~Joe
 
  • #18
Joe,
keep us posted on what you find out!

if your goal is to keep temps above freezing to begin with.

thats really the crux of the problem right there..
in this climate, I dont believe it is actually possible to keep plants in the ground above freezing..
it cant be done without an artificial heat source..and the sun does not provide enough heat.

When solid packed dirt freezes to 4 to 8 feet deep, 3 feet of mulch isnt going to protect the plants from freezing..

I dont think you *can* actually keep the plants from freezing in zones 6 and below..
and once they freeze, they can stay frozen for months..thats really why it doesnt work..

so its not a matter of keeping the plants above freezing..that cant be done..
the question is..how much cold, and for how long, can the plants tolerate?
Some people have success with outdoor bogs because maybe their winters arent quite as harsh.
maybe they live near a large lake or the ocean, making slightly milder conditions..
maybe they have lots of winter sun..maybe they have very cold tolerant plants..

I would love to hear if ANY one has ever overwintered VFTs or southern Sarrs outdoors all winter in North Dakota! ;) I honestly dont think it can be done everywhere..sometimes (quite often IMO) its simply outside the tolerance range of the plants..

Scot
 
  • #19
Well, you can still strive for it, even if it is difficult to obtain 100% of the time. You yourself say that the biggest problem is that plants stay frozen solid for three to four months. So, if that could be reduced to a few extended freezes of a couple weeks' duration, and otherwise just hover at near-freezing, that would be a substantial improvement, don't you think?
I don't agree that it can't be done; at the very least you should be able to shave several weeks off the beginning and end of the hard freezes, which is bound to make some sort of difference in survival rates. Again, this will make an interesting math project, but I would be willing to bet (if I weren't destitute and trying not to default on my student loans at the moment, LOL) even without crunching the numbers that you could bump up your effective USDA zone by at least one half-point (likely more) with the right provisions.
Have you ever done any reading on permaculture? It's a very popular course of study at my school, and I've been amazed at the things my friends manage to grow in their weird overstuffed gardens. If some spaced out hippies can grow subtropical shrubs year round in a cold-temperate environment, then I'm pretty sure temperate CPs can be coaxed through a subarctic winter. Of course it won't be as good as a heated greenhouse or what have you, but I don't think that's a good reason to give up on it entirely.
~Joe
 
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  • #20
there is a book i thumbed through recently, and still have it laying around somewhere. can't remember the name off-hand, but it was entitled something like "winter growing". it had nothing to do with CP's, but it was applicable. if i remember correctly, he was in Maine, and was growing cold-hardy vegetables over the winter, spinach and I don't remember what else. his basic set up was a cold-frame, within another cold-frame. he said that alone moves you 400 miles south. there are other amendments you can add beyond that, such as digging it deeper than surface level, as well as adding things such as large, dark rocks, or even a dark container of water, to add as a heat sink during the day/source at night. i think i will try this next winter with a few of my plants - i'm not prepared to do it this winter.

being in WI, winter always makes me nervous. i'm in zone 4 and have been here since 2004. i have always kept my mature plants in our garage over the winter. it is attached, but unheated and uninsulated (not counting the attached side). i had a thermometer in there a couple of winters ago (not sure what happened to it since then), but the coldest I saw it get in there was around 15F, and this was during a cold snap. i don't remember the outdoor temp, but it was likely around -20F. during "average" winter temps, it stayed in the 20's. and this would be from approx. early Dec. to mid-March. i always keep the mature plants outside until either the lows start dropping below 20, or the highs stay below 32, which is typically around thanksgiving. they remain in there until the lows start staying above the upper 20's, which usually is mid-april. to keep them damp over winter, i shovel snow on them periodically, but usually only a few times/winter. i've never used fungicide, but usually get some spider-web looking stuff that starts showing once it starts warming up in the spring, but it disappears upon moving them back outside and doesn't seem to be lethal, at least in the few weeks it is visibly present. i certainly have not had 100% success doing this, but it has been largely effective. there were 2 winters - '07 and '08 - that I did suffer some decent losses, but only those 2 winters. not sure what the cause was, but I think for my situation, the key is to keep them in large minibogs, rather than individual pots. i've never looked, but I think these minibogs may not freeze solid, even after 3 months of sub-freezing garage temps. most of my losses were to plants in individual pots. i can think of 1 plant that i've lost in the minibogs, there may be more. however, i also still have plants that have been in the same pot since i moved here in '04. therefore, it seems to me that age of plant probably plays a role as well. i know my situation is not ideal, but i just don't have the funds to do any major alterations. i would like to completely insulate the garage, and perhaps putting in some large shop-type lights, just to add a little heat energy in there. that and trying out a small cold-frame-within-a-cold-frame are on my list for next year. my daughter will finally be out of daycare, so that's an extra $125/week to play with right there! my wife teaches botany here and runs the greenhouse, so I 'borrow' space every winter for my seedlings and other young plants, otherwise, i don't know what i'd do with them. i probably wouldn't be starting anything from seed.
 
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