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Discuss Nepenthes plant care here

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By alecStewart1
Posts:  208
Joined:  Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:45 pm
#433857
Hey friends,

Nepenthes seems to be the species that gives me the most anxiety. :lol:

I have 2 nepenthes, ventricosa x aristolochioides and ramispina. Both are indoors, as the concrete South-facing porch I have with my apartment gets a little too hot sometimes. I some 500 watt grow lights from Amazon that the VTFs and the one sarr I have seem to do perfect fine in. Honestly the VTFs and sarr seem to not care if they're inside or outside. The neps get enough indirect light, their medium stays moist enough to wear they won't get root rot and I recently got a humidifier to put near the plants to help raise humidity.

The neps still stress me a little, though. The ventricosa x aristolochioides has really slowed down on pitcher growth, though that was in part to me repotting it and it also developing a basal growth. It is growing out new leaves for pitchers, but slowly. The ramispina, which was seed grown from California Carnivores, is a little bigger than a quarter and seems to be struggling under my care (as seen here. One tragic thing was I managed to snip off the one developed pitcher it had when I was unpacking it, but it did develop a new pitchbut now that one is drying up not long after I gave it a tiny osmocote pellet and a teenie tiny droplet of maxsea and distilled water. A new one is coming in though, slowly.

I feel like I'm missing something when it comes to care for them, or maybe it's just my impatience. What are some things you had to figure out when first growing nepenthes and, if you can glean anything from what I've said here, what suggestions would you give?
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By Intheswamp
Location: 
Posts:  3307
Joined:  Wed May 04, 2022 2:28 pm
#433864
I know nothing about neps but have one rooting and another cutting arriving next week, so I will hopefully be learning about them soon. I thought I'd mention that you might want to give what kind of a growing medium you have them in. It sounds like you're keeping them about the right moisture level but other folks might have different opinions. It seems, from what I've read, that a 50:50 mix of sphagnum and perlite is a popular mix while some people swear by a 50:50 mix of orchid mix (bark, perlite, and charcoal I think it consists of) and sphagnum moss. I'm subscribing in hopes of gleaning some info from your thread. ;)
Last edited by Intheswamp on Sat Apr 15, 2023 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By alecStewart1
Posts:  208
Joined:  Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:45 pm
#433916
The first is my hybrid. The second is the ramispina. If I have it backwards, the smaller plant is the ramispina.

The blue-ish thing in one of the pictures of the ramispina is the humidifier I got.
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By alecStewart1
Posts:  208
Joined:  Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:45 pm
#433918
Also the damaged looking leaves on the ventricosa x aristolochioides are from a assassin bug that somehow managed to get into the apartment and suck on the leaves before they fully grew out and split. That bug was squished between a pair of tweezers and fed to my drosera.

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