Expert: Sarracenia Northwest - 12/18/2011

Question
Hi! Last night my town had a huge frost and I left my plants (sarr and flytrap) outside. This morning I checked them and the soil is completely hard and frozen and the water trays froze up. The flytrap ;eaves are very green and droopy now. The sarracenia pitchers and pyllodia are now very red and the pyllodia is drooping down. Shouls I be concerned about this or like cut all the leaves?

Answer
Hi Victor,

How cold did it get?  Is this really the first freeze you've had this winter?  I checked your Massachussets forcast for Boston and Springfield, and it looks like you'll be above freezing during the day and in the upper 20's at night.

Don't cut the leaves off at this time.  Bring them into a garage or shelter that is in the 40's unless that is going to happen outside.  After they thaw some clip off any dead stuff.  (When they are still frozen it's hard to tell what is dead and what isn't.  Often they will pop right back up if the freeze wasn't severe.)  After that it's time to winterize your plants.

Find a spot close to your house where you can leave the plants for the rest of the winter.  They should be on the ground, not up on any kind of table.  Keep them in shallow trays still with some water.  Spray them with a fungicide, and really saturate them.  A sulfur based one is great.  Cover them with some kind of porous weed fabric.  Don't use non-porous plastic since you need the plants to breath.  Then bury them in about a foot of pine straw, leaves, wood chips, or other non-nutrient mulch.  If it snows, pile some snow on them too.  About every two weeks check them for mold, or it they seem to need a little water.  If you're in a very cold period, just leave them be.  Next spring when it looks like the temperatures will be staying above freezing remove your covers.

Before bundling them up, cut off most of the leaves on the Sarracenia.  The exceptions would be psittacina and purpurea.  With them just cut off dead stuff.  Same with Venus flytraps.  Leave any living leaves.

Everything I just described in also in our volume #1 DVD (http://cobraplant.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=38&products_id=205), and we show you what that looks like with different options.  This is the kind of stuff you need to be preparing for before a hard freeze actually hits. :)

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com