[b said:
Quote[/b] (reg @ May 18 2006,3:39)]I know its a couple of months away but I live in the panhandle of FL (I dont know about the zones and everything could someone Pm me about it?) and I have 2 VFTs. Will they be ok if I leave them outside dureing dormancy? Thanks.
Where in the Florida panhandle do you live and how cold does it get in the winter?
The main concern with VFTs in hotter climates is whether the temperatures will get cold enough in the winter and last long enough to give the VFTs a good dormancy and resting period, without going through the bother of artificially refrigerating them such as might be necessary if one were growing VFTs in southern Mexico, Central America or southern India for example.
I have noticed with my own VFTs that they don't need to get colder than the low 50s and 40s Fahrenheit in order to help induce and provide a non-broken dormancy for them, which for me in eastern New Mexico usually starts in latter November and continues until the plants "wake up" in late March.
The days in my greenhouse may get even into the upper 70s or low 80s during the days, but chill to the mid 50s at night although the temperature outside is usually much lower. (I have a gas heater controlled by thermostat in the sunroom.) I can't set the temperature lower than the mid-to-upper 50s because of some temperature-sensitive orchids that share the greenhouse with the CP. Phalaenopsis orchids in particular generally resent regular or prolonged temperatures below about 55 degrees in my experience.
So, what I do to make my VFTs and Sarracenia cooler is to place them on the floor of the greenhouse/sunroom, directly beneath a window where the very cold nighttime outside air chills the glass and makes sheets or waves of cold air fall from the inside of the window and wash over and around my VFTs and Sarracenia. Despite the ambient temperature of about 55 degrees F. in the greenhouse at night, this technique chills the CPs to the low 40s or possibly upper 30s on very cold nights.
I try to ensure that the VFTs get light even when they are dormant, because photosynthesis continues to provide them with food during their dormancy, but I give them very little water and keep the planting medium on the drier side of moist. In general I tend to agree with "hot and wet is fine, but cold and wet is not," with regard to watering my CP. Even in the summer I tend to try to keep my VFTs moist but not soggy.
The reason I asked what part of the Florida panhandle you live in is because, believe it or not, there are some colonies of Venus Flytraps growing wild now in several areas of the Florida panhandle. Someone planted some VFTs there, in a few spots that are very much like their native home in North Carolina, and they accepted their new home and are happily growing without any human intervention at all (except to keep the locations somewhat secret from the public for obvious reasons).