Greenhouse Panic Mode
Published on 29.11.2025
Last week I had one of those greenhouse moments that ages you by about ten years in a few minutes. I woke up at 5 a.m. with that strange feeling when something is just… wrong. It was completely dark. No standby lights, no glowing clocks, nothing. For a moment I thought I was just half asleep, but then it hit me: Electricity outage!
Outside it had dropped to –11 °C during that night. Normally fine for winter, but not fine when your greenhouse heating depends on electricity. Especially mine full of Venus flytraps.
Screaming Through the House
The moment I realised what was happening, my brain did a fast-forward of my entire Dionaea collection turning into ice cubes. So, very calmly and maturely… I screamed through the whole house that the greenhouse is going to freeze and my Venus flytraps will die.
My boyfriend immediately woke up, grabbed a bathrobe and went straight outside into the dark to deal with it. I stayed inside in full panic mode, imagining frozen pots and black, mushy traps. After a little while, the power came back finally!
When the Systems Came Back to Life
The electricity came back and all the systems in the greenhouse slowly woke up again: heater, fans, temperature sensors simply everything.
I opened my mobile app, refreshing like an idiot, half afraid to look to see final numbers. Inside my greenhouse it showed 0.5 °C. Just half a degree above freezing. Another little bit and it would have gone below 0 °C, then –5 °C, –10 °C and this story would have had a completely different ending.
Perfectly Wrong… and Perfectly Right Timing
The whole thing felt surreal. Why did I wake up at exactly 5 a.m.? How long had the power been off? How close was I to actually losing a big part of my Dionaea collection?
This time it was honestly just crazy good timing and a bit of luck. The Venus flytraps were fine, the greenhouse survived and nothing turned into a botanical ice cube. But it was way too close for comfort.
The Alarm I Keep Talking About
Every winter I say the same thing: I really need to buy some alarm that will call me or text me when the temperature in the greenhouse drops too low. And every winter… I don’t buy it.
Lesson learned (again): if I don’t finally get a proper temperature alarm system, one day my Venus flytraps – my whole Dionaea collection – will really end up as one big ice cube. And that’s not the kind of “cool plants” I want.
Stay warm, stay snappy,
— Peter 🌱