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[hereje]

Name: Asian Pitcher (Nepenthes Ventrata)
Home: hanging basket (plastic)
Soil: 100% long cut peat moss cased with 20mm short cut peat
Drainage: 25mm from bottom of pot
Light: broken/filtered sun with 1.5hrs full late evening sun
Water: RO / distilled water twice a week till flooded
Habitat: unsprayed apple tree with ample ammounts of bugs - next to a farm field sprayed with 2inches of water  once a week with no insecticides or fert - crop dusters spray my apple tree but this year they are growing green beans so no crop duster has hit this field since last summer and i live in illinois which rarely gets below 85%humidity in the summer

Im curious if any one knows why my pots are beginning to dry at the lip
This pair of pitchers have been growing well in this location for a few months and over the last 2-3weeks they have begun to dry at an alarming rate
The plants have begun to throw new pots as well and all pots are well stocked with flies, mosquitoes, wasps, ants and moths but they are looking sickly

Anyone have experience with these? Is this natural? Is it a fungus or disease? Improper care?

[TBM]

Maybe this carnivorous plant is similar to Venus Fly Traps where to get the pitchers they need to be 'starved'. I had a pitcher plant for a little while, and whenever I'd intentionally feed it an insect, that pitcher would eventually shrivel and fall off, so maybe it's catching too many bugs?

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[hereje]

Thats a very interesting hypothysis
when the apples fall off the tree the bugs love the sugar and they almost swarm to the apples on the ground
the pitcher plant has had a large increase in bugs over the last few weeks  because of this
so it may very well be that each pot can only absorb so much nutrients before it withers
Im gonna do some digging on this subject and see if i can find anything related to this

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[nobody]

What is the humidity lately? I have never grown them but I do get to see them in the wild quite often and the average humidity is 80% or above. They also almost never grow in direct sun in the wild here.


nobody

[hereje]

I found that too much food in the pitchers can cause them to die off so i think the apple tree is a bad location
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Our average state humidity is around 85 in the summer months

we got a lot of rain and some hot weather reciently so its been anywhere from 60-95% dependin on the time of day you check it

Ive aloways been worried about the ammount of light it gets - ive been told they dont like deep shade or direct sun but nothing ive seen really describes what kinda light they need - thats why i gave it a location with filtered light and a very brief period of evening sun - based on what you have seen in the natural habitat do you think it would benefit from being under a larger tree with no direct sun at all?

[nobody]

The ones I have seen usually get dappled sunlight. In the nurseries here they use a heavy shade cloth, looks like closely woven black netting.

nobody