My super happy ones

Not sure if you can see it in this picture but there is so much nectar on that peristome that it dripped onto my desk :)

This little guy has 5 pitchers opening/inflating at once :)

My Plants

N.boschania X densiflora, arrived in August 2010. The leaves that are turned away have a similar red coloring to the pitchers shown. Two pitchers with a third starting on the other side.

N.singalana, arrived august 2010. This plant has two pitchers and it has three (possibly a fourth) growing on it.

N.miranda (possibly a X I've lost the tag :( ) This plant and the next one are the ones that survived three weeks without water. The sanguinea shows much more wear from the experience than the miranda. You can see here now that I have it in proper lighting the leaves are darkening and there is a red tint starting to show through. They should continue to redden. It has two potential pitchers starting up. Arrived around Feb. 2010

N.sanguinea , arrived around feb. 2010. You can see the deformed leaves and the spotting from when it basically died off. It shot that new leaf straight up right after I started watering it and then started another new leaf before it stopped completely. It isn't growing very much at all now but at least it isn't dieing yet!

I have two 55 watt compact fluorescent lights (300 watt equiv each) that I have on between 10-12 hours a day. I have no windows that would provide enough light so I have these on at night and I keep the plants in this corner of the room where they receive little to no light to simulate a "night" time. I taped black duct tape on two sheets of foil to create a sturdy reflective wall so I'm not blinded by these lights while I am still awake. I take it down during the day so it isn't too ugly... it also serves to reflect more of the light back onto the plants. My first version didn't have the duct tape and the foil wore out pretty quick. This version can be folded up and put in a corner without too much degradation of the foil.

I put the shorter plants on extra pots to raise them up to the level of the other plants so they all receive approximately the same amount of light. The tips of the lights are between 5-7 inches above the highest part of the plant.  

Questions, answers, and happy plants

I started growing my first two nepenthes about 9 months ago and have had several questions come up and I've made a few mistakes along the way. I've learned from my mistakes and I hope to help you learn from mine as well!

My first two nepenthes were N.miranda ( It might be a miranda X ? I lost the identification tag shortly after getting it) and N.sanguinea. 

I recently purchased N.singalana and N.boschiana X densiflora. 

All of the plants I purchased were very young as I found larger plants cost a small fortune for a poor college student...I will take pictures of where they are now and give their approximate ages and growing conditions. Until recently my first two plants were not receiving enough light. They were growing fine but their color was off, they were very pale green when they should have been darker green and red.

Feel free to ask any questions and I will try my best to answer or at least to point you in the direction of some proper experts. I am not an expert, I would say I am just leaving the "beginner" class in that I have done a lot of research and grown at least two plants for about a year. Don't take my word for it on anything! Use google... it is your friend. Also the people at cobraplant.com have wonderful care sheets for various carnivorous plants I advise checking out their site. This blog is strictly a documentation of my experience growing carnivorous plants and I will do my best to share what I learn.