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By rwalls1978
Posts:  6
Joined:  Thu Mar 21, 2013 2:30 pm
#169776
Hello all,

New to the board (but not to the site - been gleaning information from here for a while now). I wanted to share a helpful tip that allowed me to put my indoor VFT (actually on my desk at work) into dormancy this past winter.

Cold Water.

I had issues with finding a cold enough ambient temperature to put the plant into dormancy. It is a 'little' colder by my office window (I live in Maine), but that in itself was not enough to trigger dormancy. What ended up working was:

Allow the medium to dry out a bit (not completely dry, but close).
Stick your distilled water in the fridge - get it nice and cold.
Water directly onto the rhizome every day for about a week using your now very cold distilled water - be careful not to over-water. We're trying to simulate a 'cold, continuous rain' - i.e. North Carolina winter style.

The Flytrap went dormant shortly after the cold watering, and remained that way sitting in my office window until I brought it out of dormancy just recently (with a bit more warmth and longer light - I use a fluorescent on a desk-lamp). From November to March the plant had no new growth, and most of the leaves died with the exception of a few. I watered it sparingly, continuing to use cold water until it was time to bring it out of dormancy, at which point I switched to room-temp water.

Not sure if this will work for everyone (and it may have even been mentioned before - though I didn't see a topic that covered it), but I figured it might help for those who have an indoor plant (or live in warmer climes) and can't get their plant to go dormant.

Enjoy,
rwalls1978 liked this
By rwalls1978
Posts:  6
Joined:  Thu Mar 21, 2013 2:30 pm
#169803
We have an infrared temp gauge (looks like a little gun - you point it at something, pull the trigger and it tells you the temp) and I don't think I ever saw it get colder than about 60 deg F, even when I would work late at night or early morning. The windows bleed a little cold air, but the office is set to 67 most of the time and what little cold air comes off of the windows doesn't do much. Several hours after watering the plant with cold water the moss around the rhizome would read around 50 deg, even though a spot on the windowsill right next to the plant said 62.

I think the key (as far as temp goes) is to get the rhizome to the correct temperature. It is the 'heart' of the plant - so I have to imagine that it plays the biggest role in triggering dormancy based on temperature. I had been trying to get it to go dormant since about mid-November without luck. Even sitting in the window getting reduced light it was still spitting out new growth. It was almost Christmas when I came up with the cold water idea. I typically keep a gallon of distilled water at my desk for watering, and it dawned on me that pouring room-temperature water onto a plant that I was trying to convince that it was winter time was probably not the best idea. Within a week of using the chilled water the growth started to die back and the outer traps started to turn black.
rwalls1978 liked this
By PiranhaPlanter1
Posts:  181
Joined:  Fri Jan 20, 2017 4:21 pm
#305356
Hello friend.
I did this method as well. I read a post here years ago about someone doing that and I don't everytime. I unfortunately have to use the fridge method because my winters are too cold. So this helps.

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