Getting the best from your neps

John Yates

Carnivorous Plant Addict
After growing neps for the last 52 years i found just a few thing that help :), have seen so many neps in the wild and spent many weeks at a time in the mountains and jungles of nep habitats seeing what the do what they eat, how they grow and the climate and positions of the plants ,then bring that back and some how try to do the same in your green house, many times just impossible , when I was on one of my trips i met a young man how was doing his uni thesis on nep pitchers, he found that just 1 meal worm per month was enough for a substantial plant to grow well , over feeding dose not help nor over fertilizing, this just makes the pitchers smaller as they no longer need to make pitchers to feed ,makes sense and see it in many people grow areas and dont know why, humidity and light is a very important thing too , nep grow realty well when there natural situation is very open a gets good amounts of sun ,as Stew McPherson said to me personally when looking for new nep habitats we look for area that have open space not closed in with trees , so relating these things to G/h growing can make growing that much easier with comprise .
I have never seen even the largest pitcher full with insects or bugs or any thing else with the exception of N. lowii many are that full of shrew poo its over flowing , some of the biggest N.rajah has just a few shrew poos in it nothing else and the plants was 2 m tall , will show a few photos below to show this.

So dont over feed your plants ,keep the humidity up,give them natural light if possible , and if high land dont let then get to hot 30 c is about max @ 70 to 80% humidity , i take all my shade cloth off in winter to get more sun but recover the G/h in summer keeping the humidity up in high sun help not to over heat the plant and stops leaf burn,keeping the G/h or grow are reasonably constant temps helps a lot and watering with tempered water not cold helps too ,as when it rain even in the mountians the rain is not cold at growing altitudes , feeding each pitcher 1 whole cricket if the pitcher is large enough per month ,or 1/2 a cricket or less for smaller pitchers , uses a foliage fertilizer like seasol or a few drops of super thrive in 8 lt water in a spry pump bottle ,over the plant once a fortnight in grow season is ok too ,found nep in pots with live sphgumn growing around the pots seems to help increase the plants health too . may be a few idears for growers to work with and play around with in the grow areas . the N. rajah the young girl is holding she is a adult not a child was the biggest rajah pichers i had ever seen , the atten pitchers were huge too but still just a few bugs in them and a poo or two :)

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John Yates

Carnivorous Plant Addict
Out of curiosity, were you able to observe the soil that the nepenthes were growing in?
Hi over the past 15 years may be more i have being going to Borneo and surrounding country's area and spending a lot of time in the mountains and low lands where the neps habit for weeks at a time ,have seen literally hundreds of thousands of nep plants in the natural habit . the soils are poor Ultramafic soils that look a bit like rocky clay ,hard to believe that there grow in this so called soil :)
 
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Erika

Sprout
Does anyone know?
My neps are in lfs, under led grow light, humidifier and fan also, still, tons of algae in the pots on the media. They won't pitcher, rarely, some I have never even seen. Is the algae enough 'nutrients' to make them not hungry?
For the love of neps. Lol.
Thank you,
 

John Yates

Carnivorous Plant Addict
Does anyone know?
My neps are in lfs, under led grow light, humidifier and fan also, still, tons of algae in the pots on the media. They won't pitcher, rarely, some I have never even seen. Is the algae enough 'nutrients' to make them not hungry?
For the love of neps. Lol.
Thank you,
sorry for late reply ,growing in sphag and loads of algae ?? not pitchersing , can you post a photo of the plant, the media , and grwoing area , so we can see whats going on , :)
 
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