Normal soil........!!!

[aliamyz]

Hello guys,
I saw the nepenthes in the local nursery beign potted with normal soil (high contain of fertilizer) and the plant is doing well but a big plant is having no pitcher but flowers.They have small pitchers.Since i bought a nepenthes there,should I change the potting media?

[plantlover]

Yaloh! My local nursery also pot neps in normal soil. He even told my mom it need high nutrient. I ask him for some cocopeat.(I don't know how it look like) and he gave me some long fibre coconut thingy. Their neps are so small.

[hongrui]

May 19, 2008 7:33:01 GMT 8 aliamyz said:

They have small pitchers.Since i bought a nepenthes there,should I change the potting media?

Do you know what nepenthes it is? Flowering may somewhat reduce the pitcher size as the plant is focusing its energy on the flower stalk. other factors such as insufficient light/water may also be a cause of the small size of the pitchers.

my suggestion would be for you to grow the plant in strong light and with lots of water for some time and observe. (are you growing the nep in a garden? or apartment?) if the plant grows well and the pitcher size increases, then well and good. otherwise, you might need to repot.

[aliamyz]

NO. :(It's not my plant.The plant is RM374.00. :oThe one i bought is a small plant with one dried pitcher and i suspect it's sumatrana so i bought it.What i notice is that the new leaves are a bit smaller that previous one but all the leaves has immature pitchers.The big one has been there for more than a year.People don't want to buy it because it's so expensive.I asked the owner to give a cutting for RM40 but she resist.How cruel. >:(What i care. ::)By the way,when i first saw the plant,the pitchers are so big. :-XIt's not truncata but i suspect it is some veitchii hybrid.The pitcher was the size of my arm.

[hongrui]

so is your suspected N. sumatrana potted in garden soil? if so, my previous suggestion still stands.

[cindy]

Either repot if you are not keen in the flowers or just leave it and water thoroughly each time to flush out the excess nutrients. Like Hongrui suggested, increase the light level as it will also help the Nep utilise the fertilisers in the soil for faster growth.

Normal soil is fine for Neps as long as the plants are flushed daily with water or are grown outdoors where the media is flushed when it rains, to leach out excess minerals. The media (sand, clay, organic material) itself doesn't harm Neps in anyway but the excess fertilisers in it can cause the plant to produce large leaves with small pitchers or healthy leaf growth with no pitchers. Neps are adapted to carnivory in low-nutrient media in the wild. So if they are well-fed in a pot, then there is no need to produce traps or large traps.

[aliamyz]

So do that mean i can use normal soil without using sphagum moss??

[hongrui]

Like Cindy said, you certainly can try growing your neps in normal garden soil. but you need to water it more to flush the soil to ensure it remains low in nutrients. you should also ensure you have sufficient aggregates in the soil to ensure that it's well draining and that the soil doesn't compact or becomes waterlogged.

[aliamyz]

No it doesn't.However i don't want to take any risk.

[arvin555]

I wonder if there is an easy way to determine if the potting mix is already compacted or not? I imagine that maybe we can use maybe how fast water will trickle down the bottom of the pot after watering? Assuming that the medium has already absorbed enough water? Or is there a better way? A friend gave a rule of thumb, that if a nep is not looking happy and you didn't change anything light, water, environment, then look into the potting mix!

A few neps that I bought looked like they were potted in soil, so I just mixed up my usual potting mix and added the original potting soil and repotted the Neps, being careful that the roots are still slightly covered in the same original soil mix.

TTFN
Arvin