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To fertilize or not to fertilize?


albinkolano

Fertilizing neps  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you fertilize your nepenthes?

    • Yes
      13
    • No
      12


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I'm thinking about starting to fertilize my neps. I've read some about it and some people says that it works another that it doesn't.....

What's the truth? How many of you fertilize your plants? Do you see any results?

If fertilizing is good thing, how to fertilize then? Osmocote, orchiid fertilizer? What's the best?

What's is giving better results? Watering with fertilizer, adding fertilizer to pitchers?

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For me it is just like that:

Each plants do need nutrients.

If there aren't enough in the soil, or in the rain, plants developed such elusive strategies like carnivory.

If you grow your plants in nutrient poor soil, and water with poor water, then they should at least have the ability to catch as much prey as in habitat. If you do not have that many insects in your home (or greenhouse) as in a Borneo jungle perhaps (I hope you don't :pleasantry: ) it may be a good idea to feed them a bit. With Nepenthes it is quite easy to do it the natural way (without the risk of over-fertilizing) - but think of e.g. Uticularia! :wink:

Regards

Martin

Edited by Martin Hingst
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I fertilize mine, although not often and not very regularly. Many of them grow in soil types that do contain nutrients, although in small quantities. Some also grow large and healthy root systems and presumably obtain much of their nutrients through those. As i grow orchids also, i occasionally give them a spray with orchid fertilizer and i've also used osmocote.

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I don’t know about growing Neps indoors, but my Neps that are growing outdoors benefit from fertilization. I think the light level needs to be high enough for the plant to photosynthesize the fertilizer, otherwise fertilization will not make much of a difference. I use an organic fish extract because it doesn’t have salts, which can build up in the medium and suck the water out of the plant. The fertilizer is applied to the growing medium at half strength every two weeks, or that's the plan at least, and sometimes it's poured into the pitchers. Here's one of the fertilized plants.

2392183208_749b8f271c.jpg

Edited by jk
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Jk I have to tell ya, If my neps got that big and started drinking MY soda, I would have to cut them down to size! I wonder if it was the coke that made it so big (It works on people, why not plants?) ... You might want to start thinking about putting that nep on a diet as it could stand to lose a few pounds!

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JK - not sure what else to say except WOW!!! Thats one hell of a plant!!

Got an error yesterday trying to vote on this. I dont fertilise my neps but I am considering do so at the moment....

Heather

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Kinda irrelevent, but if you put a seed of a plant in a totally non-nutrient soil, and only gave it ion free water, would the plant grow very well?

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It really hard to be certain how much fertilizing really helps, however my N Northianas which i've had for quite a long time now, and never grew much, have recently started to get much larger (vs 2cm when i got them) and are a very healthy dark green colour, coincidentally perhaps, but recently they've had some fertilizer.

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