FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

First time grower, growing indoors inder artificial light, and so far things are going great, but in 3 months, I want my plant to enter dormancy. I have not been able to find any advice on dormancy indoors under artificial light.

My hypothesis is it is entirely triggered by photoperiod decreasing below some threshold, and indoor temperatures should not be a problem. Has anybody successfully grown indoors under artificial light, and made it into and out of dormancy? Does temperature matter at all, or will 8 hours light and 16 hours darkness each day be enough to trigger dormancy and keep the plant dormant?

Yes, I could just move my plant outdoors, but then nothing will be learned.

I've never seen anyone successfully induce dormancy enough to keep the plant going long term.

I'm interested to see what you come up with.

Outdoors you wouldn't have to spend time, money and effort to figure it out, just saying lol

I'm not quite experienced enough on this so I can't really say anything myself, but I have read some interesting things from The International Carnivorous Plant Society website.

http://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/guides/Dionaea

"Dionaea makes a great indoor plant under artificial light. In spite of what many people believe, it does not require dormancy to survive long term. It only requires dormancy if it is going to experience freezing temperatures. The plants do appreciate seasonal light cues. Winters along the Carolina coast are relatively mild and dry so you do not need to refrigerate the plant or otherwise force it into dormancy with cold. It just needs enough natural light to know what season it is. You know the plants are getting enough light cues when they send up flowers in the spring. You can accomplish this by having them in a room that gets good sunlight around sunrise and not having your plant lights come on until 7 or 8 AM. I use 20W of LED lighting per square foot of growing area and keep my lights on 16 hours a day. I use 3000K to 4000K high color rendering LEDs because my plants have always done better or at least looked better to me than ones grown under bluer lights. My indoor plants have grown this way for 10 years. They grow continuously and look nice as long as I feed them regularly. They have been repotted each time the growth point hits the edge of the pot, which is about every 18 months."

— John Brittnacher

This isn't just any random site either, this is a site maintained by biologists and naturalists who've been developing the organization for years. So it's odd to me that such a website would hold information that most growers would disagree with. Weird.

Ive read that before.

Problem is that there are 10's of thousands of people (maybe millions) growing these plants and yet there is no documented proof that they can be grown year round inside with no dormancy.

I have seen threads of people asking why their plant looks like its dying and come to find out they are on year two or three of no dormancy.

Fieldofscreams wrote:Ive read that before.

Problem is that there are 10's of thousands of people (maybe millions) growing these plants and yet there is no documented proof that they can be grown year round inside with no dormancy.

I have seen threads of people asking why their plant looks like its dying and come to find out they are on year two or three of no dormancy.

Every single time I have poked deeper into issues that indoor growers have, it turns out they are clearly not providing enough light. I am starting to think that the belief in the need for dormancy comes from the fact that when growing indoors under insufficient light (and likely insufficient feeding), a fly trap will slowly die over a time period of a couple years.

Even though many plant species are biologically immortal, they are also experts at slowly dying when environmental conditions are not good.

I know many experienced growers that use the refrigerator method..
refrigerator-dormancy-t36505.html

_-SphagnumFromHell-_ wrote:I'm not quite experienced enough on this so I can't really say anything myself, but I have read some interesting things from The International Carnivorous Plant Society website.

http://www.carnivorousplants.org/grow/guides/Dionaea

"Dionaea makes a great indoor plant under artificial light. In spite of what many people believe, it does not require dormancy to survive long term. It only requires dormancy if it is going to experience freezing temperatures. The plants do appreciate seasonal light cues. Winters along the Carolina coast are relatively mild and dry so you do not need to refrigerate the plant or otherwise force it into dormancy with cold. It just needs enough natural light to know what season it is. You know the plants are getting enough light cues when they send up flowers in the spring. You can accomplish this by having them in a room that gets good sunlight around sunrise and not having your plant lights come on until 7 or 8 AM. I use 20W of LED lighting per square foot of growing area and keep my lights on 16 hours a day. I use 3000K to 4000K high color rendering LEDs because my plants have always done better or at least looked better to me than ones grown under bluer lights. My indoor plants have grown this way for 10 years. They grow continuously and look nice as long as I feed them regularly. They have been repotted each time the growth point hits the edge of the pot, which is about every 18 months."

— John Brittnacher

This isn't just any random site either, this is a site maintained by biologists and naturalists who've been developing the organization for years. So it's odd to me that such a website would hold information that most growers would disagree with. Weird.

This has convinced me to try to skip dormancy. My hypothesis is that most people growing indoors do not provide enough light and food, and so their plant dies slowly when grown indoors.

In the worst case, I have a flower stalk clone that should reach adulthood by the time my adult Kronos should die from lack of dormancy, according to people on these forums.

There was a point in time when many people believed the world was flat. Conventional wisdom can limit us.

I don't think that your plants are going to die... But deeper dormancy does give them the rest period they need to thrive. From what I have read reducing your photoperiod is like a nap...did you read the sticky ?
what-is-dormancy-t36504.html

hollyhock wrote:I don't think that your plants are going to die... But deeper dormancy does give them the rest period they need to thrive. From what I have read reducing your photoperiod is like a nap...did you read the sticky ?
what-is-dormancy-t36504.html

Yes, I read the sticky. I have experimented with photoperiods from 16 hours up to 20 hours. After 3 months, my plant got very stressed from a 20 hour photoperiod and the leaves turned yellow green. 16 hours a day seems optimal. The carnivorous plant society says that 16 hours a year can be used, as long as some indication of season is provided, such as varying sunrise through a window.

I will lower from 16 hours down to 12 hours of artificial light in the winter.