Post by zafak on Sept 5, 2018 22:10:00 GMT -5
Hi everyone, my name is Daniel and I live in Northern Kentucky, zone 6a. I started growing Sarracenia a couple of years ago when I was a manager at a company I no longer work for. I had a really hard working employee who was really into plants like I am. One day we were talking about Nepenthes and Utricularia and he told me that he was thinking about growing Sarracenia purpurea on his apartment balcony but was afraid to buy one because he was afraid he would kill it. That got me interested enough in Sarracenia to buy The Savage Garden, read it, then buy two S. purpurea plants. One of which I gave to that employee. Before then I was only interested in tropical carnivorous plants grown indoors.
Within a few weeks of buying that purpurea I bought a few Sarracenia off eBay (from Dean Cook) and a few from Wellspring Nursery and set up a little bog garden of potted plants sitting in a concrete mixing tub outside my front door.
Original purpurea:
The plants from Dean Cook's Ebay:
The plants from Wellspring:
Original Bog Garden:
After a couple of years of noob mistakes and sometimes outright lack of attention I have lost a couple of plants, including my original purpurea. I have been terrified of leaving them outside over winter which I believe has actually been the biggest problem for them. Every year around mid to late November I bring the whole bog into my garage which stays warm enough to induce flowering in January.
So by the time I move them outside in the spring, one has already finished flowering and others are still flowering.
In 2017 I did manage to get (hopefully) viable seed from one of the flowers, which I put in a bag and stored with my garden seeds until last week when I decided to try cold stratifying them:
Finding those seeds again got me to go outside to take a look at my plants and realize that I should start taking better care of them. I got them a bigger bog and I re-potted a couple that had rhizomes cracking the sides of their pots (like I said, noob mistakes) I also pulled some weeds that had started growing in the pots. The current bog isn't much to look at but here it is:
The two that had always produced the biggest pitchers for me have only been producing phyllodia lately which worried me and is actually what brought me to this forum. I have been researching nonstop and after finding a post calling out lurkers to join I went ahead and created an account. Between neighbor kids messing with them, not getting a real dormancy period, not being re-potted soon enough, and the occasional drying out they have been very forgiving plants. I am currently trying to decide if I should dig a bog before winter this year and let them experience a real winter mulched with pine needles or if I should try to refrigerate them. In past winters in the garage I lost some to rot, including my purpurea, plus they always started growing way too early. I would love to hear overwintering experiences from other zone 6a growers. Most of what I can find online is zone 6b or 7.
Within a few weeks of buying that purpurea I bought a few Sarracenia off eBay (from Dean Cook) and a few from Wellspring Nursery and set up a little bog garden of potted plants sitting in a concrete mixing tub outside my front door.
Original purpurea:
The plants from Dean Cook's Ebay:
The plants from Wellspring:
Original Bog Garden:
After a couple of years of noob mistakes and sometimes outright lack of attention I have lost a couple of plants, including my original purpurea. I have been terrified of leaving them outside over winter which I believe has actually been the biggest problem for them. Every year around mid to late November I bring the whole bog into my garage which stays warm enough to induce flowering in January.
So by the time I move them outside in the spring, one has already finished flowering and others are still flowering.
In 2017 I did manage to get (hopefully) viable seed from one of the flowers, which I put in a bag and stored with my garden seeds until last week when I decided to try cold stratifying them:
Finding those seeds again got me to go outside to take a look at my plants and realize that I should start taking better care of them. I got them a bigger bog and I re-potted a couple that had rhizomes cracking the sides of their pots (like I said, noob mistakes) I also pulled some weeds that had started growing in the pots. The current bog isn't much to look at but here it is:
The two that had always produced the biggest pitchers for me have only been producing phyllodia lately which worried me and is actually what brought me to this forum. I have been researching nonstop and after finding a post calling out lurkers to join I went ahead and created an account. Between neighbor kids messing with them, not getting a real dormancy period, not being re-potted soon enough, and the occasional drying out they have been very forgiving plants. I am currently trying to decide if I should dig a bog before winter this year and let them experience a real winter mulched with pine needles or if I should try to refrigerate them. In past winters in the garage I lost some to rot, including my purpurea, plus they always started growing way too early. I would love to hear overwintering experiences from other zone 6a growers. Most of what I can find online is zone 6b or 7.