:0 whoaaaa what are you using?! And how much? I am thinking about fertilizing my ventrata but im scared i might kill it :/

I don't believe anyone fertilizes more than I do. Heck, I buy fertilizers by 5 gallon drums of liquid seaweed and #25 bags of Peter's do you see any plants with burns?
The growers who say that ferts will kill nepenthes well, let's just say that they don't know how to grow plants. People who say that in the wild, nepenthes don't get fertilized well they don't grow in pots and they don't grow in the media we force them to grow in. They don't eat the same kind of bugs we have here and they sure exclusively get watered by rain water only. But guess what, for all those SUCKERS who think that nepenthes don't respond to ferts or that it will burn and kill them, well they need a stiff wake up call that nothing is natural in captivity and what we try to do is NOT mimic conditions in the wild, but rather cultivate these plants in as optimal conditions as possible and then readjust them to grow in our conditions. Those that can't be grown that way was not meant to grow in captivity. Examples are Darlingtonia, they grow is cold water seepage from ice caps melting and having artesian springs upwell ice cold water to the surface, oxygenating and allowing a plant that would normally suffocate due to the stagnant roots in water that would normally get wet feet and die. This plant I would say is near impossible to duplicate or create an environment to grow this successfully. Those that do, I guess it's the same as people who drop their jaws when they see my weeds in my collection, as I cannot grow Darlingtonias and have tried everything from using a chiller in a circulating tank that houses subzero chilled water and live growing LFS. Can't replicate this environment period!

But nepenthes likes fertilizers and they do respond to it.
N. ventricosa
{{gwi:559429}}

:0 whoaaaa what are you using?! And how much? I am thinking about fertilizing my ventrata but im scared i might kill it :/

uuuummmm, I think your being a little redundant linkman741, perhaps it was an accident though. BTW RainforestGuy, the fourth pic down is my favorite, it reminds me of N. Burbidgaea, I think I spelt it right?

Those are beautiful plants! How long did it take you to grow the nepenthes from seed to maturity? Do you sell those and how much is it?

Btw, are you affiliated to the florist Rainforest at Kilohana Square? I read somewhere or got a message from someone that they occasionally sells pitcher plants.

WOW! I had no Idea you are the same as Rainforest from Flora Nepenthecaea! I was on your sub board when I realized that you are the same guy! I recognized the pictures and your plants... epiphany.

Wow. Those plants are amazing! I can't beleive you went to all that trouble trying to grow darlingtonia! I am from kind of near where they live and have not seen them but I think they live in basicly just a poor soil field/meadow with snow seepage through it. They don't even live in sphagnum moss.

The ice cold water seepage is what makes these grow luxiriantly. I knew a grower who was able to grow this in a fresh water artesian spring (ice on the mountain, melting and traveling underground and upwelling on his property) and was actually able to raise trout (in Hawai'i) and other cold water fresh water fishes. he had along one embankment a clump of cobra lilies, most were about two and a half feet high and plump and solidly like plastic growing in full sun. Clusters of leaves/tubes numbered in the hundreds for each clump, without any older pitchers showing any death or browning due to age. The tubes were filled with marsh flies as you can see them trapped inside. His plants were a remarkable blood red and chartreuse with some purple flecking on white on the heads of the pitchers. Never seen sucj brilliant colors on these. But they were in Hawai'i's bright intense sunlight with its roots in 50 degree water constantly upwelling through the volcanic soil beneath.
I have never seen any grow like these. Unfortunately he sold his property and the new owners yanked them out thinking they were weeds. So ridiculously submental!

It's a cryin' shame!

Wow! What a heartstabbing story. I bet the higher humidity (from like 30% in california to 80% in hawaii) would give a boost as well as the lava rock nutrients. Many people don't know this but I think the Darlingtonia are adapted to survive more nutrients than Sarracenia, like Nepenthes are, because they don't actually live in bogs.

naturaly, the water welling up from the spring would have nurtients. There is not a single sterile environment in nature, that a plant grows in, how would a plant grow if it had no nutrients to build tissues?

The darlingtonias was first started growing there because long tine ago, wild collected plants were taken from the wild and placed into pots with plastic clear dome covers and sold as cobra lilies among venus fly traps and sundews. The practice became illegal when these plants were taken by the hundred thousands for the annual cp sales in super markets and grocers, etc.
The plant never grew well for most people, especially our warm Hawaiian climate. Luckily one person who grew up where th darlingtonias were growing remarked that these plants grew best along the marginal bogs closest to running water from snow seepage and thus a few were planted along embankments of some people who had natural artesian springs welling out of the ground. The plants colonized like it naturally grew there. So much so that it would look weedy to people who did know what they were.
Unfortunately the people who purchased the land where these were growing, had other agenda for buying this. They wanted to raise trout and other cold water food fishes and anything that blocked access to the pools were quickly removed. Among them, the lovely groups of darlingtonias.

WAAAH!:(

I've had a single neps for three or more years. It lives outside in the summer and winters over in the greenhouse. Following the advice on the board, it was 'fed' only rainwater. It did well enough vegetatively and appeared to be thriving, but wasn't producing any pitchers.

Well, it got fed dilute orchid fertilizer earlier this year after the discussion here...and it's an entirely different plant now, to the point that I've got to look really hard to find a leaf that *is not* pitchering. Not as big and beautiful as some of the photos here - but it's going great!

Cheers

This is kind of now straying off the total topic of this thread, but Are there any bogs or carnivorous plants native to Hawaii? Every time I go to Hawaii I marvel at the plants and animals but I hardly ever see a lake, let a lone a bog. Back to the darlingtonias: is there any snow permanently at any of the Hawaii volcanos? I know one time I went to the top of Mauii to see the sunrise and it was 19 degrees farenheight in the summer.

Snow: Snow mainly is kept on Mauna Kea (which literally means white mountain) all year around. The snow goes through phases of melt, snow-ice rain and so on.
I believe our only bog is is at the top of Mount Wai'ale'ale on Kauai the wettest spot in the world (don't quote me on this). It is a shangri-la of protected wilderness and plants that are found no where else on the planet. This seclusion has transformed it into a paradise of sorts. The only native cp is a sundew. Nothing interesting though.
Maui's Haleakala (house of the rising sun) is always freezing cold but since it is dry (waterless) and above the cloud line, there is very little chances for rain/snow. Plants adapted to growing there are used to capturing morning dew before it evaporates by daylight. This is a windy dry region of the islands.