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Training yer neps!

Hello! Whilst I am training for my 2nd Dan black belt in VFT growing, I am a complete Nep n00b, and could use a little help, please.
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I hear these devils are climbers/trailers. At the moment, the Neps I've bought from the shop have no support to speak of, and so are trailing in the water-soaked capillary matting their pots are standing in. A lot of the pitchers are physically in contact with the matting - will this cause them to rot, or do they love a bit of ground contact?

Second bit of advice I could use is what to use as a support frame for them to grow up, in their vine-style capacity. Since the pots I bought them in are so small (really, really small) and don't have enough depth to bury a support frame of any decent size, is this a good time of year to transplant the Neps, so long as I don't disturb the root-mass and use the right compost mix?

Cheers,

Steve
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Hey Steve,
Well, I've seen people stake them up like orchid flowers....and I've also seen pictures of them vining up trellises. The really viny species will grab onto anything they can wrap their tendrils around.
My viniest one is a gracilis, but I just let it scramble across the ground. those pitchers that are in contact with the media do just fine. It does not cause them to rot.
With regards to repotting, there really isn't, in my experience, a certain time of year when they should be repotted. You can do it anytime. Just be carefull with the roots. Best to try to keep the root ball intact (unless the media is just plain shot) to reduce stress on the plant.
 
i generally agree with schoaty about minimal disterbance to the roots, however some types dont seem to mind it. i repotted my 'Miranda' a month or so ago and it seems to have kicked it in high gear throwing out its largest pitcher to date(an honest 7.5 inches) and its basal shoot has produced its first pitcher. when i repotted i split it into 2 plants for trade and removed as much soil as possible b/c it wasnt very good anymore. so root disterbances doesnt seem to bother all Neps. just my 2 cents.

Rattler
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (schloaty @ May 20 2004,8:23)]Hey Steve,
   Well, I've seen people stake them up like orchid flowers....and I've also seen pictures of them vining up trellises.  The really viny species will grab onto anything they can wrap their tendrils around.
Right... here's where I reveal just how much of a noob I am: when you say tendrils, where do they come from? AFAIK, my Neps don't have any tendrils to speak of. I'd suspected it was the leading shoot that did the clambering, but now I've got images of Clematis and Honeysuckle in my head, tendrils galore.

Thanks for the advice re: repotting. Might investigate a bit more about supports etc. before I go ahead, but I feel a bit more confident about that now.
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Tendrils are the mini vines that the pitchers come from.

Repotting is best done when something is wrong with the media or plant ex: stagnant soil, rootbound, pest infestation, algae buildup, nutrient levels toxic, etc. Repotting is best done in early spring to ensure a healthy establishment of the plant in the growing season.
 
Steve, the tendril is the thin vine between the pitcher and the tips of the leaves farthest from the stem. see here a small pitcher from my diminutive N. campanulata which according to all reports I've read stays very small and does not climb:
campanulata1.jpg


Some plants vine vigorously such as my N. hamata is a very fast grower when the vining stage is reached. the plant supports itself by making new types of pitchers (called "uppers") and the tendrils on many climbing species begin to grab hold of nearby plant stakes for support like this tendril from my climbing N. hamata:
hamata8.jpg


As you can see in the above pic I just use the bamboo poles from the garden center (10 for $1.99) I cut mine off at 3 feet tall cos my grow chambers are not much taller than that. I push the stake in close to the stem and secure it loosely with green garden twist ties-these are metal but covered with a soft green weatherproof vynil. I leave about 1 cm loose from the stem to allow for thickening as it gets older/taller and try to think to check the wires when i add new ones at the top to be sure they're not too tight and cutting the plant lower down.

If it's in a small pot it will benefit from repotting, you do not need to remove all the soil from the rootmass, just transplant into a new pot of new media. Run your fingers around the soil ball and let the loose stuff come off and then just set the ball in the new pot of soil at the same soil level (I always repot into double size larger pots with a very light and freedraining soil such as 50% long fibered spahgnum, 45% small orchid bark 5% charcoal so that I will not need to repot for another 1- 2 years or until the plant must be cut down due to outgrowing the space.
 
Thanks for taking the time to write that post, Swords. Unfortunately, I'm just getting the red-cross-in-white-box broken link error where your pictures are. That's a shame, because I get the feeling they'd give me all I need to know.

I've got this picture in my head of the tendril looping itself once or twice around the support, with the attached pitcher growing from one of its ends and the tip of the leaf on the other. Is that correct? I had no idea that section of the plant was going to be so busy!
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Is it a petiole, in case I ever need to impress stuffy horticultural types?
 
Yes, lucky for me, the host server of my websites has vanished into thin air with my cash so my sites (and theirs) are gone from the web. Please check this post again between wed & thurs and everything should* be back to normal and the pics will be here. The site has to be redirected to the new server I've hired to host Jurassic gardens. Please visit my site (when it's up again) as there is a lot of reading material for the armchair botanist. You'll learn a lot of fun stuffy botanical terms on the Genus Nepenthes pages where you can see an anatomical "key" to the various parts of the Nepenthes pitcher, Nepenthes FAQs, species profiles of the various lovelies I grow, photo galleries, cultivation/grow chamber setup info, etc. Hopefully it will give you a useful dose of the things I've learned over my years growing and asking questions and getting advice of the good folks here.
 
Sorry to hear that, I know how that can be. How much traffic do you do a month (in GB)? Is the move to your new host permanent or temporary?
 
  • #10
Hopefully the new host will be permanent!
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 I hate wasting time hunting down services and frantically tring to get back online. It really sucks when your Ebay auctions suddenly have no images! They really ought to make laws against these guys just vanishing without having to inform their customers they've gone bankrupt or whatever ( a refund for the monthly fee from now til Nov would be nice too). I dunno how much traffic I had cos it's a hobby site so I never bothered watching that. I looked once or twice and the most I had was 18,000 hits in one month. I don't excatly know what that means in GB terms. The account I have now is 5 GB of traffic stretched out over my 4 sites.

Getting of topic i guess but anyway, there will be tendril pics up soon as I'm now able to upload stuff to my new server so i'll be hoping to it!
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  • #11
Swords, for now, if you would like to email your pics to me I will put them up for you.
 
  • #12
I can see the pics now can anyone else???
 
  • #13
I can see the pics just fine... and I must say, that N. campanulata is just beautiful.... thats next on my ever growing to buy list...
 
  • #15
Don't worry Stevie, i'm sure it's just taking the DNS entry a bit longer to propagate out to your neck of the woods.  Give it a day or two.
 
  • #16
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Flip_Side_the_Pint @ May 25 2004,10:10)]I can see the pics just fine... and I must say, that N. campanulata is just beautiful.... thats next on my ever growing to buy list...
All the pictures I've seen look great, definitely on my to buy list along with those ones with the sticky goo on (sorry, don't know the names yet).
 
  • #18
Doesn't load with or without the http for me.

EDIT - okay it does now.
 
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