Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 07:20:48 -0600 From: "Susan Farrington" <sfarrington@ridgway.mobot.org> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg569$foo@default> Subject: Outdoor bogs
Chris and others,
I'm only just beginning the outdoor bog experiment myself, but I'll put
my 2 cents in anyway.... you describe -10C (14F) as your typical
lows and -20C (-4F) as your extremes. From what I'm hearing from
other cp'ers, Sarracenias and hardier Drosera can take these
temperatures without using plastic. I think the plastic definitely
encourages fungus... I would stick to pine needles without the plastic
next year. (Or use burlap as you mentioned). In general, when I'm
protecting tender annuals or other garden plants from a late frost, I've
always preferred an old sheet to plastic. I've talked to a guy in Illinois
several hours north of St. Louis, where temperatures get colder than
you describe, and he has had bathtub bogs for about five years...
some years he hasn't even mulched them, and things all survive for the
most part. Rich Ellis has a bog in Colorado and John Green has one
one in Utah... both colder places than you're describing. Granted, the
last two usually have the benefit of snow cover, I guess, but Illinois
often doesn't.
Good luck,
Susan
> I recently moved into the
> interior region of British Columbia where winter temps can drop as low
> as -20C but generally range from the freezing mark to nightime lows of
> -10C for several months. Once I arrived here, I built a small outdoor
> bog to house my Sarrs, hardy sundews, plus a few experimental plants
> (vft's, Drosera binata, cape sundews) to see how they would fare over
> the winter.
>
> Following common gardeners advice, once temps started dropping
> below zero at night, I covered the bog with plastic sheeting to help
> prevent the frost from hitting the ground level. At this time, I
> started to allow the bog to dry out to help prevent potential fungus
> build-up over the winter. Once day temps were sufficiently low and
> the plants in dormancy mode, I mulched with about 6 inches of dry pine
> needles, covered the bog with plastic, and further mulched with
> collected leaves from the yard. The main problem with the Okanagan
> region is that while temps may drop, this doesn't mean that snow (an
> ideal insulator) will arrive and so these mulching precautions had to
> be done.
>
Susan Farrington
Missouri Botanical Garden
P.O. Box 299
St. Louis MO 63166-0299
susan.farrington@mobot.org
(314)577-9402
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