FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Yes, completely surround them with pine needles. Also, before you put the pine needles on them for winter, spray them with sulphur fungicide. I dug a 4' hole in the ground and put pine needles all around them. That deep in the ground stays like 50 degrees year round so they'll be fine.

I am not sure if I could dig a 4' hole in the ground as there is a layer of shale about a foot below ground in my yard. Would it be better to just put the bog garden in a shed, garage or basement?

Have a read of this site its a well-known grower in zone 6B and if full of useful information and will help with your pine needle conundrum etc .
https://zone6b.wordpress.com/
Cheers
Steve

sanguinearocks101 wrote:I am not sure if I could dig a 4' hole in the ground as there is a layer of shale about a foot below ground in my yard. Would it be better to just put the bog garden in a shed, garage or basement?

You don't need to dig the hole 4' deep, I made mine 4' x 4' x 2' deep. I thought it was four feet deep because the other dimensions were four feet. Oops ! I think you should be fine if you dug the hole 2' or so in the ground and covered the top with lots of pine needles. I also saw somebody on Facebook in zone 5 (I forgot if it was a or b) who overwintered their sarrs by putting an upside-down baby pool on top of them. For them, the snow helped insulate and they didn't have to put any extra insulation such a pine needles. Also, I think they were only overwintering mature sarrs. That website Steve Booth linked is also really good.