Highland Neps and Sarracenia

[witzelsucht]

Howdy all,

I have recently finished building my greenhouse (sort of - it will never REALLY be finished because I'll be continually mucking with things I'm sure). My focus for the greenhouse is to grow intermediate to highland Nepenthes but I have a fondness for Sarracenia as well.

For those of you that grow intermediate to highland Nepenthes AND Sarracenia - particualarly in a greenhouse setting - I'd be interested to hear how you overwinter your Sarracenia. Do you just put them in a colder part of the greenhouse or do you do something altogether different with them for the winter? Any practical experience would be appreciated. I'm growing in the USA in Colorado which is a very temperate climate, low humidity, temps will occasionaly dip to as low as -20f in the winter though typically more like lows of 20f in the the winter. Daytime highs in the winter can be anywhere up to 70f.

Cheers,
Rich

 

[nepenthes_freak]

If you have a garage than you could just move them in there. If there are too many plants for that option maybe you could just leave the greenhouse a little bit colder by leaving the door open a little so that the sarrecenia go into dormancy and the neps slow down in growth.

 

[Est]

Depends how you want to do it, I don't think keeping them together over winter would be a good idea.

I would put the sarracenia in a garage or attic. I'd leave the Neps in the greenhouse, assuming you can keep it heated. Unless you really have a part of your GH which will be cold enough while the other parts are warm enough for your Neps, then you could do that, but that sort of termperature disparity probably isn't a good sign.

All in all, it would probably be easiest to separate the Neps from the Sarracenia, but how you chose to separate them is your call. (Any number of things could work.)

 

[BigCarnivourKid]

Hi Rich, Est summed it up pretty well. I think it might be difficult for you to set up your GH in such a way that it would be warm enough for the Neps to thrive while at the same time allowing the Sarracenia to remain dormant. I'm in Buena Vista, a little over 100 miles west of you. I grow my N. ventricosa outside in the shade during the summer. When the temps start dropping below 40°F at night, I bring 'em in to avoid frost. So far I haven't found a good solution for my Sarracenia's dormancy. As you pointed out, Colorado can have some very nice spring-like winter days. Unfortunately they are often preceeded or followed by nasty cold weather and a couple feet of snow. Between this rapid freeze/thaw and the -20°F cold for days on end, more than a few of my CPs have been sent to that great bog in the sky over the years when I tried to over winter them outside in their pots. This year I'm going to try putting them in an insulated cold frame with heating cable (the kind you put in the rain gutters to prevent ice forming) buried under the pots. Hopefully this will keep the cold frame at freezing or a little above on the cold days without getting it warm enough the plants break dormancy. The insulation will also make the temp changes a little less drastic. If you come up with a solution, let us know.

 

[herenorthere]

You need to buffer the temperature swings. I overwinter Sarrs by burying the pots in a raised bed to within ~1" of the rim; covering them with a pile of oak leaves and putting lean-to over to keep the snow off. They're frozen by mid-winter, but they freeze once and thaw once and do very well. But we don't go below -10. I don't know what your leaf situation is out there, but oak leaves work well because they stay loose (especially with snow kept off) and don't mat down like maple and most other leaves.