The pitchers normally shrivel up in winter. They don't last forever. Just cut them off when they get to unsightly for your taste. Perfectly normal!

You live in the SF area? Have you tried taking a trip to Sebastopol, California to visit Peter D'Amatos's carnivorous plant nursery California Carnivores? Peter D'Amato is the author of the well know book Savage Garden and is the owner of the CP nursery. From where you live it shouldn't a trip well worth it if I lived in SF. You can take the 101 Redwood Highway heading north all the way to Cotati, making a left there to 116 Gravenstein, heading west to Sebastopol on. Just keeping an eye for "Old Gravenstein" on your right. You'll have fun there and maybe find Mr D'Amato working their, he will give you good advice.

if you want to go for size i would reccomend a n. truncata highland form, i have 2 they tolerate moderate light levels and low humidity, and they pitcher redily even in the winter months, n. miranda and n. ventrata are also easy to grow.

Hey guys. I think you all need to read this. The following information is (C) Rob Cantley at Borneo Exotics (Pvt) Ltd. Borneo Exotics is a wholesale export nursery based in the island of Sri Lanka, just off the southern tip of India. They have been propagating tropical pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes and other carnivorous plant species for 20+ years using up-to-date and conservation-friendly techniques. All their plants are multiplied in sterile culture in a laboratory before being transferred to nurseries, sometimes being grown on for several years before being offered for sale. Cultivation and Growing Guides Introduction The CP Digest is a great source of information, and it's members are always willing to answer questions from beginners and experienced growers alike. One of the foremost growers in the U.S. is Cliff Dodd who has been successfully growing many of the more exotic species for a number of years to my knowledge. Cliff recently posted a series of articles on the CP Digest that contained a lot of useful information. It is becoming apparent that there are about as many ideas as to how Nepenthes should be grown as there are growers! Thankfully, some common factors are emerging in the information we are collating. We at Borneo Exotics are developing certain techniques that work well for us, but they may not work so well in say, a terrarium, or a glasshouse in a temperate country. As with all plants there are 5 factors to consider when growing Nepenthes : Temperature, Light, Humidity, Potting Media, Watering and Feeding. In general is is vital to get at least 4 out of these 5 factors reasonably correct, otherwise, as one grower puts it, "your plants will merely exist and not thrive". If however, you can get all 5 reasonably correct most of the time, you can grow admirable plants. Nepenthes are quite forgiving really, provided they are given just a little understanding and not too much fussing! What follows is still only a very basic guide and has to be considered in light of the facilities available to you as a grower. For example, if you are growing in a terrarium you will have to consider photo-period, possible stagnation of excess and waste water, etc.; or if you are growing lowland species in a glasshouse in a temperate country you will have to make provisions for the low light levels and temperatures of the winter. Many Nepenthes will manage to survive a European winter just fine, but don't expect to see a lot of growth during winter unless extreme measures are taken! General Nepenthes are tropical plants which grow in a wide range of altitudes and inhabit a great variety of different terrain. Some species grow in sand or peat swamp, others in moss or on cliff faces whilst others prefer ultra-basic soils or grow as epiphytes. It is therefore difficult to generalise with this genus, since different species prefer such different conditions. The good news is that it is possible to grow many species together in the same greenhouse or terrarium if a little is known about their requirements. If you already grow orchids, you should be able to grow some species of Nepenthes alongside your orchids without any major problems provided some thought is put into their requirements. In the coming months we will be featuring individual species and discussing their natural habitats and growing requirements. For now we will simply categorise the genus into two types: 'highland' and 'lowland'. Highland Nepenthes are found in mountainous terrain above about 1,000m, and lowland types occupy habitats below about 1,000m. These are very broad categories, and of course, there are 'intermediate' species which grow at altitudes spanning the 1,000m band. However, since these intermediate species will normally grow well in one or both of highland or lowland habitats, the two categories should suffice. Highland Species Most highland Nepenthes require a temperature swing between day-time and night-time in order to survive. The actual preferred temperature is specific to each species, but as a rough guide the maximum day-time temperature should be between 20 deg. C and 25 deg. C with a night-time low of between 5 deg. C and 15 deg. C. If the temperature does not drop sufficiently at night the plants are likely to become exhausted and exhibit retarded or deformed growth. If the temperature remains too low during the day, growth will slow down or cease entirely. A high relative humidity is preferable at all times. Highland species are most popular with growers in temperate climates since the temperature conditions can be maintained relatively easily. Furthermore, less heating of the greenhouse is required during the winter months than for lowland types. The ideal potting media varies according to who you are talking to! Everyone seems to have his or her own favourite mix. However, as a rule of thumb, it should be open and well drained - especially for epiphytic species which hate having their roots waterlogged. More detailed information follows in the section on Growing Conditions below. At present, few of the really spectacular highland species are available commercially except illegally wild-collected specimens, or ex-vitro, and often at prices that would probably make Bill Gates hesitate! This situation is expected to change drastically over the next few years and you should soon be able to choose between a wide range of species, forms and sizes of plants at reasonable prices. The ease (or difficulty!) of growing highland Nepenthes species varies enormously from species to species. N. alata for example, is an ideal beginner's species as it will grow relatively easily in comparison to say, N. lowii, or N. macrophylla which require careful selection of potting media (to say nothing of the space required by these giant species!). However, the potential rewards of growing magnificent species such as these are immense as they must surely be amongst the most spectacular of all plants. Lowland Species Lowland species experience day-time maximum temperatures of between 30 and 35 deg. C with a night-time minimum of typically around 28 deg. C. Unlike highland species, there is no evidence that any temperature fluctuation between day and night is necessary to maintain optimal growth. Many species will still grow well at far lower temperatures, especially those that can really be classed as 'intermediate' for example, N. reinwardtiana. As with highland species, a high relative humidity should be maintained at all times, especially for species such as N. ampullaria or N. bicalcarata which naturally grow in very humid peat-swamp forest. Lowland species are usually faster growing than their highland counterparts provided the temperature is high enough. Many species will produce up one leaf and pitcher per month if conditions are right. As with highland species, there are easy and difficult species to grow. N. distillatoria is an ideal beginner's plant as it grows quickly and is very tolerant of changes in climatic conditions. Also N. rafflesiana is relatively easy since it grows well in a wide variety of potting media. N. rafflesiana has an additional attraction in that it is probably the most variable of all Nepenthes species with an amazing variety of forms and colourations Growing Conditions This is a large subject and we're only just able to scratch the surface here. As when growing any plants, the best advice is to first find out how others manage it. For more detailed information it is also a good idea to find out as much as possible about the conditions the plant experiences in it's natural habitat. Some species only grow in very specific environments for good reason! It doesn't pay to ignore this and simply try to grow all Nepenthes the same way. Temperature Temperature requirements are covered in the sections above on highland and lowland species. It's not necessary to go overboard to maintain the precise temperatures experienced by plants in their natural habitat as for most species, maintaining temperatures within a few degrees either way of the optimum will suffice. Many highland species will tolerate daytime temperatures rather higher than in the wild, but they usually need the day/night temperature swing in order to survive. Lighting So far as we're aware, there have been no studies done on either the light levels experienced by plants in the wild, or the effects of different light levels tried by growers. It's all very vague at present. Here in the tropics we find that all Nepenthes we have yet tried, grow well under 80 - 90% shade. The lowlanders are at sea level and the highlanders are at 1,500m (about 5,000') above sea level. We recommend giving your plants as much indirect light as you are able, but be careful to watch for signs of burning on the leaves - an indication that light levels are too high. Some species may do quite well in rather dark conditions, but would probably grow faster and pitcher better if there was more light available. Beware of subjecting your plants to sudden changes in light levels, such as bringing a plant out from a semi-shaded condition into a much brighter location. The difference may not be very apparent to your eyes, but the eye is a wonderful organ and adapts quickly to quite massive changes in light levels. Unfortunately, plants aren't as quick to adap and this is a sure way to burn leaves! Any changes are best done in stages over several weeks if possible. This is called 'hardening off' and applies to all changes in environmental factors, not just light levels. If your plants produce healthy-looking but soft dark green leaves and are not pitchering, or producing very small pitchers, then low light levels may be the problem. This is frequently observed in the natural habitat where quite large and healthy-looking plants are sometimes found in full shade under jungle canopies, but are producing no pitchers at all. All Nepenthes experience approximately a 12 hour day-night cycle in the wild, although if you're growing under artificial lighting you may find that extending this to up to 16 hours a day may help provided the plants are healthy and other environmental factors are correct. Humidity There are frequent disagreements about the levels of humidity preferred by Nepenthes. Some people say the higher the better, others say that an RH (relative humidity) of 50% is the lower danger level. We believe that it depends entirely upon the temperature prevailing at the time. Although RH is a temperature dependant factor in itself, we have found that for example, if you are growing lowland species in a facility that gets particularly hot in the middle of the day (and ours sometimes hits 40 deg. C), then the RH must be kept very high during that period or growing tips and young leaves will wilt with disasterous consequences. We prefer relative humidities in the range of 70% to 90% depending upon the time of day. We have often recorded an RH of around 80% in natural habitats. Of course, as with all matters involving Nepenthes, tolerance to any factor such as RH depends upon the species concerned as well as the suitability of the other factors and the general health of the plant etc. All this variability is what makes these plants such FUN to grow. It wouldn't be so much of a challenge if all you had to do was stick it on the kitchen windowsill, now would it? Regulating Humidity There are any number of ways of regulating the relative humidity (RH) depending upon how you are growing your plants, glasshouse, terrarium etc. (Actually we are talking about increasing rather than regulating since it is unlilkely that you will ever want to reduce RH for Nepenthes. It's not a good idea to mist the plants themselves in the heat of the day as leaf-burn may result. Starting at the top end, and if you can afford it, a high-pressure compressed air/water fogging system is an excellent way to keep up the humidity in larger glasshouses. For smaller glasshouses a cheaper system is the type that squirts water onto a high-speed rotating disk. The droplet size is rather larger than with the compressed air fogging system, but I'm told they work well. Simple cheap aids to keeping the humidity up are: Stand your pots in larger mesh baskets containing a damp media. We do this with plants in our nurseries all the time. You can see an example of this here where the pots are standing in batches of 9 in trays of coconut fibre. This helps to improve drainage also. Wet down the floor of the glasshouse at intervals throughout the day. This is achieved automatically in our nursery by means of automatically operated sprinklers. If there is any empty bench space in the nursery, fill them with mesh trays full of any damp media with a large surface area. Coconut fibre is excellent for this, but peat would probably do just as well. If you are growing plants in a terrarium you are not likely to experience too much problem keeping humidity high enough unless the terrarium is particularly large. Potting Media This is a huge subject in itself and it seems that every grower has a different idea as to what is best. We here in Sri Lanka are particularly restricted since in the entire country, the ONLY materials available for sale as potting media are coconut fiber and charcoal! But that's enough as it happens. In general, the potting media should be very well drained (we'll describe a good method for measuring this property in a future edition of this page). "Ah," I hear you saying, "but that can't be true, what about those species that grow in peat swamps, for example, N. bicalcarata or N. ampullaria?" Well, it is true IN CULTIVATION. There's no way one can replicate a sterile peat-swamp environment in a pot without flushing it through regularly with HUGE amounts of water! If the potting media becomes waterlogged the plant will quickly ail and die. All kinds of bacteria and fungi that Nepenthes have no defence against can live in a pot. Root-rot is probably the most common cause of death amongst cultivated Nepenthes with the first sign often being a blackening of the base of the stem and then it's too late - time to take cuttings! In milder form it results in stunted and deformed growth. Roots also need a good deal of oxygen to remain healthy, so really, the more air around them the better. It's possible to grow healthy Nepenthes in an upturned polystyrene cup with a hole punched in the bottom and the cup suspended over a dish of water, i.e. aeroponically. Whilst Nepenthes can, and do, absorb small amounts nutrients through their roots (e.g. when grown in-vitro), it is possible to replace this entirely with nutrients absorbed through the leaves and pitchers. We've seen huge plants of N. lowii in the wild that are hanging in trees having long ago abandoned their root systems. Potting media should also be at least slightly acidic. Many growers use peat moss in the mix to achieve this. In our case we are now growing all our plants in very course (spun) coconut fiber. It looks like blonde hair out of a horse's tail and when chopped into strands of about 25mm (1") in length, it is nearly all air. The roots seem to love it so far. We have to top it off with a very thin layer of fine coconut fiber to seal in the moisture and prevent it from drying out too fast. If we had access to sphagnum moss we'd use that as a topping instead as it changes colour when dry and gives a good indication that it's time to water. We'll eventually give a list of all materials that we can find that people have used successfully in which to grow Nepenthes, but here are just a few of them: Bark - as a component of a mix, but may be useful on it's own Charcoal - as a component of a mix. Clay Balls - as a component of a mix. Coconut Fiber - good results for us so far on it's own. Expanded Polystyrene Chips or Balls - may be useful to open out a mix, but NOT coloured ones, they're toxic. Peat Moss - useful for acidifying a mix, but not on it's own, it water-logs in time. Perlite - careful! As it ages it can emit fluorides which are toxic to Nepenthes. Rockwool - we haven't had much success with this, but some people use it. Sand - as a component of a mix and course river sand only, not beach sand for heaven's sake! Sphagnum Moss - holds a lot of water, but useful if used with other ingredients or as a topping. Vermiculite - used by us in Brunei in the 1980s, quite useful but compacts when old. Wood Shavings - must be course and MUST be hardwood. Used extensively by us in the 1980s. Of course, there are many other useful materials. We'll compile a more comprehensive list later on. Watering The best advice I can think of is to water when the potting media is nearly dry and then wait until it's nearly dry before watering again. A topping of sphagnum moss gives a useful indicator as to when it's time to water as it turns white when dry. Avoid over-watering as this is worse in most cases than under-watering. A healthy Nepenthes can absorb water from the fluid in it's pitchers in times of need. The type of water is important. Rain water is useful as it's slightly acidic which the plants prefer. Tap water isn't usually a good idea as it is quite often hard (alkaline). If you must use tap water, then either it should be treated in some way to acidify it (such as wrapping a ball of peat moss in a cloth bag and soaking it in the water to make 'peat tea'), or the potting media should contain an acid component. Again peat moss is good for this. Tap water can contain several other nasty chemicals which can build up around the roots and poison the plant in time. Finally, water only in the early morning or late evening. Droplets of water on the leaves combined with strong light levels can result in unsightly leaf burn. Feeding Be VERY CAREFUL about using any fertilizers!! We have learned the hard way over the years of the damage that can be done by the injudicious application of fertilisers to Nepenthes. If your plants are large enough, it's probably best to feed them the natural way - drop 'prey' into the pitchers. Don't overdo it though, and DON'T drop in chunks of raw meat unless you want to see the pitcher die in days. Insects are best, and apparently they find crickets delicious! Nepenthes have adapted to survival in the wild by catching insects which allow them to compete with other plants that grow in similar nitrogen deficient environments. However, they are pretty good at getting along with only a very small amount of nutrients. If you must fertilise, conduct a trial first. Orchid fertilisers seem to work best but at a tiny fraction of the strength recommended for orchids, usually about one eighth or less. We apply it in the late evening and wash it off well with LOTS of water before the heat of the following day. So-called 'non-burning' fertilisers such as fish emulsion or seaweed extract can do just that to Nepenthes - burn them badly, especially young plants which can have the growing tip burnt right out of them! Some species are particularly sensitive to fertilisers whilst young, e.g. N. albomarginata, N. macrovulgaris, and a lot of highland species. Growth stimulants and vitamin extracts (e.g. 'SUPERthrive' and 'Spray-N-Grow' in the US and 'Maxi-Crop Seaweed Extract with Iron' in the UK) may be useful. SuperThrive in particular has an almost cult following it seems and if the hype on the bottle is anything to go by, it should be used for everything from rheumatism to fuelling the space shuttle! We have conducted an extensive set of trials with this and also with another US 'miracle' called Spray-N-Grow which seems to be unknown to Nepenthes growers at this time. For more details see Fertilizer Trials. One final bit of advice when using fertilisers or chemicals of any sort on your plants - test it first on just one plant. We sometimes haven't and are still counting the cost! Fertilizer Trials I promised to deliver the results of our fertilizer trials to you. We conducted trials using 6 different brands/combinations of fertilizer, vitamin extracts and micro-nutrient solutions on several hundred plants of 14 species of Nepenthes. There was also a control batch that received nothing other than plain water. Fertilizers etc. were all applied at 1/6 of the recommended manufacturer's strength at fortnightly intervals in the late evening and then washed off in the early morning using equivalent of 1" of water delivered through misters above the plants. At first we spent many hours measuring leaf and pitcher sizes and graphing the results, but this was later abandoned due to time constraints in favor of a straight-forward count of the number of leaves produced in a 6 month period and a visual comparison between the plants in terms of general condition, leaf size, leaf colouration, number of pitchers, etc. All the plants were potted in pure coconut fiber. To cut a long story short we observed the following results after 6 months: None of the plants that received any of the fertilizers etc. grew faster than those in the control group. Leaf colouration was slightly better in every case where plants received fertilizers etc., except for the SuperThrive group. Plants receiving SuperThrive showed absolutely no difference in any way to the control group. Plants receiving NPK fertilizers all showed signs of premature pitcher death, and unsightly damage to pitcher peristomes, even on new pitchers. Plants of Nepenthes northiana receiving NPK fertilizers suffered severe leaf-burn and some of them lost their growing tips entirely. No such damage was observed in the control group, or groups receiving just vitamins (SuperThrive), or groups receiving micro-nutrient solutions without NPK. There was a marked increase in fungal and bacterial activity in the potting compost when using NPK fertilizers that caused early decomposition of the potting media (coconut fiber). No such problem was observed in the control or micro-nutrient groups. There are a number of complicating factors when conducting a trial of this sort, and for that reason these results should not be taken as in any way definitive. One factor is that pitchers were left on the plants, and some plants were therefore lucky enough to capture prey during the period of the trial. Another complication is that even the several hundred plants we used are not really enough. The more experienced growers amongst you will have no doubt noticed that Nepenthes grow at a great variety of rates when compared with each other, even amongst plants raised from the same batch of seeds. These trials would be better done with plants raised from the same clone, either by cuttings or tissue culture. Nepenthes have an irritating habit of growing beautifully for a while and then stalling for no apparent reason before resuming growth again after some seemingly random period (don't we all know it!). Anyway, I have drawn the following conclusions with regard to plants grown in our conditions only: SuperThrive and Spray n' Grow don't work for us for the reasons outlined above. Micro-nutrient solutions seem to have the beneficial effect of improved leaf colouration and no deleterious affects as far as we could see. Nepenthes northiana (and to a lesser extent Nepenthes albomarginata) are extremely sensitive to chemicals. Actual fertilizers (containing NPK) are a no-no for us. They cause damage to plants, promote pathogens, and have no observable benefits. We have since observed exactly the same problems with Miracid used at 1/10 of the manufacturer's recommended strength. Conclusion Well that's about it for the moment. We'd be delighted to receive feedback on this page, good or bad, and in particular any information or experiences that would help us expand this page later. There used to be a superb section about growing Nepenthes on someone's web site a few years back. Unfortunately, I can't recall whose site it was and can no longer find it on the web, but it gave a great bit of advice, the gist of which was: "Nepenthes like to be left alone and ignored, if they're growing well - don't mess with them!" It's very true, they're pretty good at looking after themselves providing conditions are reasonable. Good Growing!