Nine years ago I kept a nice Nepenthes on a windowsill in my office,
in a conventionally heated and air-conditioned American corporate
office building. It lived in a mix of bark and sphagnum in a plastic
pot with a shallow dish underneath, and I drenched it with warm
chlorinated city water in the bathroom sink every day or two. It
received a few hours of direct sunlight per-diem and indirect sunlight
the rest of the day, and it grew so fast I swear I could sit and
watch the pitchers expand right before my eyes. I think I might have
had a plastic bag over it for the first week or so after I brought it
to work, but it thrived for a year or more without any enclosure
whatsoever.
After moving to the other end of the state, I built a greenhouse
specifically for my lowland and mid-altitude Nepenthes and other
hothouse tropicals, with timer controlled misting, 65F to 70F
minimum nightime temps during -20F February arctic blasts, ultrasonic
*and* centrifugal humidification - the works. My city-fied Nepenthes
promptly turned brown and died.
It was a Phillipine N. alata, possibly with a bit of N. ventricosa in
its heritage, kind of a waxy lime green with a slight blush. I can't
remember where or who it came from. Incidentally, many other similar
N. alata did fine in the greenhouse, as did the fifty or sixty other
species and crosses I had at the time.
What did you feed YOUR plants for Thanksgiving?
- Walter