Recent happenings

Its been a busy winter here in chilly Canberra – not that you’d know from the blog, which has been silent for some months! Among other things, I’ve had to balance a work trip of three weeks and a complete repotting of the entire Sarracenia collection.

Frosty!

Welcome to a Canberra winter morning! This was our backyard yesterday morning – the temperature was a fresh –4*C! There was a nice coating of frost over the lawn, and the Sarracenia growing outside.

A dormant collection…

Winter arrived a little early this year. Normally, the cold starts in early May, but this year we had two days of frost immediately after Easter, complete with snow in the Tinderry Ranges (30 km south of us) on the night of Easter Monday (9th April) and frost here the following two mornings. The plants normally go dormant before the cold and, true to form, they were down in late March. Here is the greenhouse collection as of yesterday evening, trimmed and ready for the winter. Compare with the collection in full growth earlier this year:

Sarracenia rhizome issues

Sarracenia rhizomes do strange things. This plant, a S. flava var. flava from Gotcha!, buried itself deep into the substrate (although the Sphagnum growing over it probably did not help). This spring, it put up a nice flower… and then nothing. When Sarracenia do this, it means the growing point has failed after the flower for some reason.

You know you have too many plants when…

You fill your wheelbarrow to the brim with the trimmings!