Year-round dionea seedlings?

[gr8oz]

I've had great success, thanks to this forum, growing sarracenia without dormancy through the first 3 years of the plants' life, but it got me wondering... Can the same be done with dionea? Has there ever been an attempt to grow out dionea from seed under the same conditions indoors over the course of 2 or 3 winters without dormancy?

 

[fish30]

Dormancy gives you a much healthier plant in the long run, for the hassles of keeping it out of one you might aswell let it live natural!

 

[seedjar]

It can be done, but there's a trick to it, and you can't get away with it as long as you can with Sarracenia. I believe there's a CPN article about VFT germination that explains it.
~Joe

 

[chezilla]

Last fall I had 6 seedling S. oreo's. I left most outside, but brought 2 in just in case they were too immature to survive the winter. They were kept with my lowland plants and didn't have a dormancy. The grew pretty well all winter and looked good come spring, much healthier looking than the ones I left outside which had most of the above ground growth brown. I wasn't sure if they were going to live or not. This spring I put them together in an outside mini-bog. The sarrs that were kept outside to experience a natural fall and dormancy are now twice the size with many more pitchers than their counterparts. The main reason I believe is that the plant is able to concentrate on root developement in the fall and early winter instead of being underlights and putting out pitchers all winter.

 

[tommyr]

Well I started some VFT seeds a month ago and they're up now. SLOW growing little buggers!

 

[gr8oz]

I'm not having any trouble getting seedlings. I have enough to experiment this winter to see how they do with and without dormancy. Given that they do grow so slowly, I'm curious to see if they can be jumpstarted the way sarracenia, growing them year-round for a couple seasons.

 

[tommyr]

I will refrigerate some and keep some out in a south window through winter.