Expert: Christopher Littrell - 7/13/2010

Question
Hi Chris, all my nepenthes are doing great.  I grow them under two 40 watt cool white fluorescent tubes, have them on 14 hours a day, I water them with RO water, they get night time cooling, and they are all producing pitchers.

I've read that there are different types of soils that nepenthes can grow in, but I can't settle with an excellent mix.  It's starting to get me really, really confused now. Some of my nepenthes are growing in soil a little bit too wet, and my rajah I just repot is a little too course, but I'm just going to leave them all alone until they need to be repot again.

But when it comes to need of repoting, I'll definitely mess up on the soil again, and I don't want that to happen. From your experience, what is the best soil mix that nepenthes tend to like a lot?  I have Nepenthes Sanguinea, Mikei, Villosa, and Rajah of course.  Oh, and I've also seen people have live sphagnum growing around/or in the nepenthes, and they like to drop there pitchers in the bushy live sphagnum, and it looks gorgeous, and the plants look extremely happy and healthy. Even the sphagnum looks very happy.  How can I do all this for my nepenthes?

Answer
Hello Agustin,

I grow my Nepenthes in a pre-mixed soil that I obtain from cobraplant.com. It is composed of long fiber sphagnum moss, perlite, and orchid bark. It holds in some water, but provides a large amount of air pockets and great drainage. The problem is that it requires frequent watering as it will dry out rapidly.

I have a N. sanguinea and a N. truncata that both do very well in that mix.

I have never used live sphagnum, however; there would be no problem with using it as a top layer.

Christopher