The wire mesh is to keep cats from doing their business around my plants! They like the soft soil the berries are planted in so I put down wire to keep them away. The top plant is a Reka which I just bought this year. I wish I had bought 10 of them instead of one! Reka is the easiest plant to grow, I have three of them and all are thriving. The next one is a Northcountry that I have had growing in pure peat for three years. It has doubled in size this summer following three treatments of ammonium sulfate at one ounce per treatment. I need to thin it a bit I think because it's gotten so thick it's hard to water. The next one is a Jersey I just planted this spring. This is an experiment to see if I can grow them in the ground. The native soil here has a pH of about 7. I dug a hole, filled it with peat and fir bark then planted. The plant started out slow but is now growing great. The next plant is a Darrow in a wine barrel filled with peat and fir bark. Darrow has spectacular flavor. The last plant is a Chandler and is another new plant this year, it's actually about waist high but looks small in the picture and as you can see has lots of new growth. Ed, You are probably colder than I am in the winter but these plants stay out all winter. I cover the pots with about 6 inches of leaves and the soil freezes hard as a rock every winter and they come out just fine. Last winter we had a couple weeks around zero and I had no damage on my blues. You could get some chicken wire and make a container around the pots and then fill the space between the wire and pots with leaves to protect them. The first winter I had these, I slid them all close together then wrapped a tarp around the entire perimeter of them and then filled all the spaces with leaves. If you can get some sawdust, just bury the entire pot and put leaves on the top and they will be fine too. RM

Hey xpochian, what kind of Neps have you tried? My first Nep was a Ventricosa (Red) from www.petflytrap.com All my plants have grown in the basement on a windowsill under 2X40watt fluoresent tubes. All have grown with great success as well. The potting media Im currently using for my Neps is 1:2 Peat:Perlite I water them and allow the water to drain into the tray, when it evaporates I simply re-water. The one I gave my wife (my 1st ventricosa) is now sitting on her windowsill that gets hardly any sun, just morning, and I can say it might get 6 hours of direct light if that. It is still a dark pink and is making some great sized pitchers. Infact I looked last night and to my suprise the thing is drooling nectar like a hungry dog!!! There is so much that it is literally dripping this down the pitchers from the lip. I have the hardier types, I do not use any form of terrarium and the only plant I have never hardened off is the Neps. After plunged into this low humidity enviroment the growth slows and stops for a few weeks, but then kicks into gear. If you could list your potting media, your setup and your Nep types Im sure we can figure out whats going on. Remember that they hate having their "feet wet", they must just be kept moist at all times. The self watering pop bottle pot I put on the site seems to be working very well with a 2:1 Perlite:Peat mix with this idea. Just stuff the bottle neck with pure sphagnum peat and then fill with the 2:1 mix. Give a good soaking from above and let the drainige escape into the lower portion via the drainige holes you made. Then plant the Nep and keep the bottom reseviour filled (dont over fill, so dont go above the drainige holes) Cheers Sheldon

thank you most of those yellow leaves fell off in the wind today they fall off suprisingly easy ill take off the rest and ill try the corn meal whats it for i cant really get to the soil its covered by plastic. and josh thats two tomatoes and they do look happy but that may not be good they have just started to produce tomatoes there growin too much theres a cherry tomato in that box too but its growing off the deck looking for light. richard

How do you water your plant? Do you saturate the soil or just give it sips? Do you allow the water to run off after watering? When was the last time you took it to the shower to get a good soak? Fluoride does cause burned tips BUT if you are not properly watering it could mean it's getting burned from salts in the soil already. Take it to the shower and give it a good drench, then return it. Cut off the brown tips at an angle because they are not pretty but do not cut off the whole leave. The plant will withdraw the nutrients from the leaves as they dry and die. This is a normal wintertime activity because it also means the plant is not getting enough light and it is slowing down. I'd also move it closer to a south facing window, if you don't have a south facing window, out it in front of a West or East window. Not to the side of the window, in front of. See if that doesn't help your plant.