Putting the Sarrs To Sleep

Me Cutting Pitchers Before Putting the Sarrs to Sleep

A few weeks ago, I decided to put the Sarracenia and Dionaea to sleep for the winter. At the time, our fall appeared to be ending with temperatures regularly in the upper-20s-to-mid-30s. El Nino did give us a bit of a respite fora  few weeks following this, but, alas, I hadn't known that we'd have warm temperatures (i.e. 40s and 50s) for another couple weeks. 

Digging a Sarr Out

I decided to purchase a mini-fridge this year and use that to keep the plants dormant this year. Last year, I had merely kept the plants in a cooler location in my apartment. Unlike the year before, when that seems to work okay (I had only lost a few plants that year before), I lost quite a few plants last year. (Different apartments, different conditions). As a consequence, I decided to do something else this year.

Sarrs Bagged and Tagged for Winter

Unfortunately, due to the fact that we regularly have a couple months with temperatures in the negatives (that's in Fahrenheit for you Celsius users), it's simply too cold for all but our native and near-native hybrids to survive outside. The basement is unheated and regularly drops down close to outside temperatures, too. (For those of you from near the equator, the ground freezes almost solid from mid-December to mid-March, usually). So, it was time to try the fridge.

Partway Through the Project

I ended up using the following method: (1) unpot the plant carefully, (2) trim all but a couple inches of leaves/pitchers off unless the plant was small enough that I didn't need to trim anything, (3) wrap in just moist long-fiber NZ sphagnum moss, (4) place in plastic bag, (5) label plastic bag, (6) spray some fungicide in the plastic bag, (7) place in fridge for winter.

Spraying the Fungicide

The fungicide I ended up choosing was Daconil. I bought the premixed, spray bottle Daconil rather than the unmixed Daconil, because I didn't need that much of it and it came in a convenient spray bottle. After about a month, it seems like it's been doing its thing pretty well. At least, I haven't noticed any fungal growth on the plants in the fridge.

The Fridge

At present, here's the fridge. It's quite stuffed. Assuming everything comes through winter well, it looks like I'll be doing quite a bit of dividing in the spring and have a number of plants available for sale and trade.