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greenthumb87

Winter

18 years ago

Hello, I am fairly new with carnivorous plants. I was wondering if I need to do anything with them while they are inside for the winter months?

Comments (6)

  • 18 years ago

    What species? Where do you live?

  • 18 years ago

    Yeah, what Ilbasso said. If you have tropicals, leave them be in good lighting and keep enjoying them all year. If they are temperates, they need to go dormant. Give us a grow list and we can let you know which are which and options on how to overwinter them.

  • 18 years ago

    okie dokie. I live in northeast Ohio. I have sundews, venus flytraps, and pitcherplants. They are growing in a glass container.

  • 18 years ago

    Hi greenthumb,
    Do you know what sundew you have? Some suundews are tropical and some are
    temperate. If you don't ,post some pictures or describe it.The rest are temperate
    and will go dormant in winter.To do that, let the soil go a little drier over the
    winter and reduce the light level.You can place them in an attic, the refridgerator
    or let them go naturally dormant outside.You still ned to give them some light
    unless you keep them in the refridgerater.It's really simple.
    Good luck,
    Adrian

  • 18 years ago

    Thew VFT's and (American / Sarracenia) pitcher plants should be provided with a dormancy, with temps in the 30's and 40's (attic, fridge, garage), with ~8-9 hours of light, reflecting this time of year. Depending upon the sundew, that determines what to do with it. Do you have a picture?

  • 18 years ago

    The Flytrap will certainly be ready for dormancy if it has been in a window getting natural light to tell it the time of year. It will drop immediately into dormancy when it gets chilled down to about 45 degrees. If the window you have it in gets cold, it should be almost there. Just let it drop to 40-50 degrees (as Petiolaris indicated by placing it in a cold garage, room, in a plastic bag in the fridge, or simply outside in a protected spot where it will not completely freeze) and stay there all winter and it will be fine till spring. Just give it a little water every so often to keep its soil barely moist.

    There are literally dozens of species of tropical, temperate, and sub-tropical sundews and five genera of pitcher plants making up another 100+ species of tropicals and temperates. Assuming you have Sarracenia pitcher plants and Drosera rotundifolia or Drosera filiformis they will require the same dormancy requirements as the Flytraps.

    If your pitcher plant is a Nepenthes (unlikely if it is being grown with a Flytrap, but I have seen it tried in stores), it is tropical and does not require dormancy. Drosera adelae, Drosera spatulata, and Drosera capensis, along with a host of other sundews, do not require dormancy and are common in cultivation.

    Some pics would help us with helping you identify them or you can peruse some pics at cobraplant.com when they get their site up again (they are conducting some upgrades). You could also just type in some search terms for the genera you have and see what varieties are depicted in webpages and try identifying your plants that way.

    If you got them in a store they might be mixed temperates and tropicals which makes life harder for new growers. The tropical sundews will generally not survive winter weather like the North American sundews if they are accidentally placed in cold with Flytraps to overwinter for instance.

    If you happen to get lucky and have all North American temperates, you will not have to dig them all up and shuffle them around too much at least.

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