Question
Hi Sarracenia Northwest,

I also live in the northwest (Portland, OR). As I'm sure you're well aware, we live in a region that is often very dark and cloudy. Since I already live in an apartment that has terrible lighting conditions, I was inspired to construct a terrarium to give my carnivorous plants some increased chance of growing success.

While that's gone perfectly (I have created an artificial environment that would make the Caroline coast envious), my question to you is regarding plant selection for my terrarium, in particular sundews.

I already have a VFT and a pitcher plant for this environment. They obviously have dormancy requirements and I do the whole "wrap them in sphagnum and carefully store them in the refrigerator" thing. I would like to add a sundew to the mix. Is there a species that needs this same dormancy period in which it could also spend the winter in the fridge? I have no "cool, damp" areas like a garage or anything so it's either full terrarium light blast or chilly fridge winter. Anything else would be a real half-assed dormancy spent in a continually warm apartment with virtually no light.

I know I could get a tropical one but I would prefer to have all the plants on the same schedule for dormancy in order to shut down the terrarium for a while and change out the growing medium and whatnot. Is this a reasonable idea or am I just being picky beyond reproach?

Thanks a million!

Answer
Hi Chris,

The best temperate sundew candidate for what your doing is probably Drosera intermedia.  It grows well and and sometimes doesn't mind a cool as opposed to cold dormancy.

If you're into the challenge, what you're doing can be interesting.  But you have to go into it knowing these are not ideal growing conditions, and it takes much more effort to keep them healthy this way.  You might already be aware from looking at our website, that we spend a great deal of time trying to get people to not do what your doing.  It's so much easier to grow flytraps and Sarracenia pitcher plants outside, and they'll look beautiful.  As a bonus, dormancy takes care of itself.  It's kind of like trying to trying to grow strawberries in a terrarium.  Can it be done?  Probably.  Is it going to yield good results?  Only with quite a bit of work since a terrarium is also a good fungus chamber, and strawberries require full sun.  Most people trying it will probably kill them.  As a matter of  fact, if you were to tell most people you were going to grow strawberries in a terrarium they would think it was silly.  They would say to just grow them outside.  This is what happens to carnivorous plants all the time, however, and people fail with them in terrariums. Then the myth that their hard to grow is perpetuated.

On the flip side, there's lots of stunning tropical carnivorous plants that can be grown indoors without the problems of inducing dormancy.  Many are much more amenable to terrarium conditions if you're looking to display them that way.


Good Growing!

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