Question
Greetings Carnivorous Plant Guys,

I just completed a move and was elated when I found several nice South facing windows in my new apartment. I am in zone 9 South Texas in the Raymondville area.

I use 12200 lumens of true daylight florescent shop lights 5-9 inches from the various plants I own. I also have the plants in a South facing window with blinds.

They receive reverse osmosis or distilled water only.

Their soil is heat sterilized peat/perlite from your nursery.

The species I grow are Sarracenia hybrid seedlings, first year, no dormancy provided this time around. Drosera capensis adult and root cuttings, recently divided Drosera spatulata clump, a pot full of Drosera adelae, three Drosera graminifolia, a Nepenthes sanguinea, and a clump of dormant Dioneae muscipula adults and seedlings and a dormant Sarracenia rubra.

All plants were acquired from or propagated from your stock.

My question involves heat dissipation in a hot South facing window for plants that love sun yet also like their roots cool, like Drosera graminifolia. Today, in mid winter, Raymondville weather rose sharply, causing nearly 100 degree temperatures in the window the plants are in (later in the afternoon the temperatures dropped to about 60 outside). I simply closed the blinds in mid afternoon. What kinds of materials could you suggest to cut back on the heat while allowing most of the light through and where might I find such materials? I am thinking about trying some gauzy shade cloth or curtain material that I could place behind the blinds and just raise or partly open the blinds by day. I really do not want to fry the D. graminifolia.

All the plants are doing great after my move, the Sarracenia hybrids seedlings are really looking nice (one is already dividing its rhizome at 11 months age) and the N. sanguinea is ready to produce new vines from its base.

Also, when will your site have a picture gallery added in again?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Chris

Answer
Hi Chris,

Shadecloth would definitely do the job.  You could also go to Home Depot or Lowe's and see if they have any diffuser plastic like the kind used in ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights.  A small piece of that in the window would do the trick.  In reality, the only plants that need the shading would be the D. adelae, and the D. graminifolia.  The other plants will be fine as long as they have plenty of water, and the room temperature isn't too warm.  I'm assuming there is plenty of air circulation.

Another idea for the D. graminifolia would be the pot it's in.  I have a south facing window in my kitchen that gets plenty hot in the summer and I have a Drosera regia there that has about the same dislike of hot temperatures as the graminifolia.  I potted it and one in the greenhouse in terracotta after an experiment we did this last summer.  The porous nature of the pot has a dramatic cooling effect on the soil.  The results have been quite good.  D. graminifolia would benefit from this also since the leaves like lots of sun, but the roots don't like overheating.  If you use terracotta, just be sure to do lots of top-watering to help leach out any minerals that try to accumulate.  You also have to clean the sides of the pot occasionally because of algae build-up.

I'm not sure when Jacob will have the photo gallery back up.  He's been making lots of positive changes to the website, and isn't quite there yet with the gallery.


Good Growing!

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