Why don't you try feeding the pitchers and see if you don't think foliar feeding isn't nearly as great as you say
I can't fertilize the media AND grow live Sphagnum, either. I've never heard of an orchid grower who ONLY foliar feeds and doesn't feed the roots, too. Nepenthes in general have pretty waxy cuticles, and the mist just runs off into the media if you mist heavily enough for anything to matter.... oh wait.. that would be media fertilization wouldn't it Think of it like this. How much mist can you put on a plant before it rolls off? Not much at all, and if it rolls off that's media fertilization and ruins your argument that foliar feeding is so fantastic. However, how much solution can you fill a pitcher up with? Neigh, every pitcher on the plant! A whole lot more, and that means the plant gets a whole lot more nutrients.
It's literally like misting your skin with vitamin water. You will absorb some vitamins... but it's a joke when you could take a vitamin orally. I've received plants with white residue all over them from foliar feeding. I wonder how much better they would have grown prior to me receiving them if they didn't have that layer of unused crap blocking the light
Ta-Da! That was your problem. You should not mess with the pitchers if they can catch insects. It's literally indigestion when you water down their natural solution.
Other plants -- foliar-fed -- remained unaffected . . .
There's a firm grasp of the obvious.....
hey Bella! You have a very nice heli as nightsky said
I'm too lazy to read what everyone is saying, but foliar feeding of Nepenthes is more or less a waste of time. Seriously, the benefit is so low that it isn't even worth the time spent mixing it up and spraying down the plant. Try the pitchers or media to get a real benefit. The best Nepenthes growers in the world fertilize through the media - not the leaves. There's no point in foliar feeding when you have two other available options that will be of greater benefit.
If you "can't" fertilize the media because you use sphag, A) stop using sphag (a good idea for multiple reasons), B) use an organic fertilizer. Lots of people that use sphag, at least as a top dressing, report benefits to the sphag when using organic fertilizer. Hell, I use inorganic fertilizer (orchid fert) and it has never killed the sphag I have as a top dressing in a couple pots.
Roots and pitchers were meant for nutrient uptake......leaves were not. Or hey, let's do an experiment.Go get 3 ventratas, and spray one down with idk...an oz of 90% alcohol. Then water one with an oz of alcohol, then fill the pitchers of a third with alcohol. The one that was sprayed will survive, the one watered with alcohol will look like hell and may or may not pull through, and the one with alcohol in the pitchers will either just lose its pitchers, but will more likely than not just die. Now what does that tell you?
Nepenthes are not orchids, and have obviously evolved different ways to take up nutrients. Foliar feeding being beneficial to neps because its beneficial to orchids isn't a good argument, and doesn't prove anything.