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Hmmm, need your opinions...

Ok, since the horror of what seems like almost a full loss of just about every vft I own, I had brought them in from the freezing temps of down to 5f.

For those who don't know, they were in my unheated garage doing well, then suddenly the temp dropped to the 20's for a week or so. Then we had about four days here of temps in the lower 50's. During that period of time, and i'm an idiot for not thinking about it, the vft's thawed and dried a bit...then the temps returned into the 20's...and far lower for weeks. I brought them in to thaw since they really didn't look well at all, and the field mouse (or it's family) that's apparently living in the garage for the winter decided vft's were tasty.

They are sitting on a porch that's about 50f maybe a few degrees warmer, probably gets into the mid sixties during the day when the sun hits it. The media is thawed, and now the dried up yellow/red/green colors on the plants look mostly limp, brown, black, or for lack of a better description, dead. You know how a vft leaf looks after it's died back and it's been sitting on wet media for a little bit? That soggy dark look? That's what most look like.

I'm guessing they could still exist, but i'd rather not wait until they are completely awake a few weeks into the spring to figure out that they rotted.

I've been debating and debating, plus some extremely heavy thinking...and am 99% sure that I should repot every single one of them so as to inspect the rhizomes for rot, or to see if there is even a rhizome left. I'm hoping that if there is at least a sliver of white left to it, I can repot and by a small chance something late in the season will sprout.

What is everyone's opinion on what would be the best way to handle a situation such as this?
rock.gif
 
Your very own idea of repotting them to inspect the rhizome for live tissue is the best bet, and good thinking on your part. VFT's can be suprisingly tough, but keeping a close eye on them at a critical time like this is the best choice.
 
One reply here, but I actually confered with about 20 or so people about this.

And, here's what we're doing about the situation, since sometimes doing nothing is worse than doing too much.

I'm going home today and unpotting some of the worse looking vfts. I'll be careful like it's a perfectly healthy plant and rinse away as much media as possible with water that's about the same temp as the substrate. Then comes the inspection. If the rhizome looks fine, i'll pot it up like I just bought a dormant bulb from someone. Then i'll move onto another. I'll do say, 20-25%, trying to stick with the more common ones first that I have many of. When/If I end up finding a few that are complete mush, then all the pots get knocked over and we're searching for survivors.

If it wasn't so many flytraps I wouldn't really be worried. But this is definately not six of them. ;)

I'll keep you guys posted on the outcome.

I guess this is a good test at least as to the extremes they can take.
 
If you have some Superthrive, add a couple drops to a bowl of water to swish the roots in when removing the soil from them.  It does help, in my experience, with recovery from root shock.  If you don't have it, you don't have it.  The plants definitely need checked ASAP.

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BCK
 
Sorry to hear that! Sounds like a real bad horor story,if they are still alive you may want to put them under flourecent lights as they have probably had enough dormancy by now . Best of luck,
Noah.
 
<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Vertigo,

Your suggestion of repotting/inspecting is exactly what I would do in your situation.

Tip: I have on several occassions managed to rehydrate some that I thought were a totally lost cause, by soaking them in small cups of pure water in the refrigerator for a week or so before replanting them.</span>
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (PinguiculaMan @ Feb. 08 2004,03:14)]<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Vertigo,

Your suggestion of repotting/inspecting is exactly what I would do in your situation.

Tip: I have on several occassions managed to rehydrate some that I thought were a totally lost cause, by soaking them in small cups of pure water in the refrigerator for a week or so before replanting them.</span>
smile.gif
cool, that is what I am trying with my plant named Green. It's conforting to know it worked for someone else
smile.gif
 
<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>The times when I used this technique successfully were when I discovered that some of my "dormant in refrigerator" VFTs had a leak in their plastic bags and dried out too much. In desperation I tried soaking them in cold water in the refrigerator, (I didn't want them to come out of dormancy yet). I was very pleased to discover that some of them that had been dried to the point of brown striations on the rhizomes and soft limp rhizomes had returned to normal firmess and appearance. They later grew normally after dormancy.</span>
 
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