You don’t need a rainforest, or even a terrarium, to grow fascinating nepenthes indoors
When I was a kid growing up in southeast Asia, I was fascinated by the bizarre native nepenthes pitcher plants I’d see on rainforest walks, not to mention the dramatic time-lapse sequences of David Attenborough documentaries. Yet even in those ideal, year-round tropical conditions, I could never get the damn things to grow. A frustration that was made even worse by a visit to Kew Gardens on holiday, where I saw the most magnificent specimens tumbling out of hanging baskets and trained over trellises. As they say, desire plus frustration equals obsession, so – 30 years later – I think I have finally cracked it. To share the love, here are my secrets (many of which are the opposite of what the textbooks say) to growing these spectacular plants indoors .
Almost anyone who has bought a nepenthes, laden with pitchers, and brought it home will know the story. It looks great for a couple of weeks, but soon after, the tips of the pitchers start to turn crisp and brown, eventually it works its way down to where the trap joins the rest of the leaf. This was my experience for years, creating plants that, despite being sort-of alive, didn’t have any traps or make any new ones.
Continue reading...from Property | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Ty1fqp
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