Friday, 2 January 2015

Update on keeping my lowland nepenthes in the poly house

It's almost the end of my holiday time, I been able to spend more time looking at my plants.
I have a remote temperature gauge in the polyhouse . Its has registered very high temperatures at  times in our summer ,
Top temperatures twice of 42 degrees celsius at midday  but with 89 percent and above  humidity .
They are irrigated once in the morning and then in the evening but being home and with the high temperatures I given them extra water at midday .  I'll often hand water , I hand water because experience tells me to check on them contantly. I have most of them in self watering pots , I think the safest way to go .
The gauge tells me at night that the humidity levels are in the ninetys. I thought the humidity should be lower at night but the gauge tells me this constantly..The gauge tells me in the afternoon the humidity drops right down to 54 percent for a short while.
The reason I bought the poly was to get the humidity and temperatures much higher. Many years ago I killed some plants trying to get the temperatures higher and I used a solar weave product but  it gets way too hot here I found out (as I suddenly realised what I was subjecting the plants to)  when the water from the irrigation hitting the metal frame hit me and it stung it was so hot . I badly burnt them and I lost a couple of favourites before realising , and looking back, I didn't have the humidity levels high enough, it wasn't in shade  and now I wont let the irrigation hit the frame just the plants . I should have experimented first so I was cautious  getting this poly house in the right situation.
The poly house is under the shade of a tree and I didn't take all the  plastic sheets off the polycarbonate , and it gives them bright but diffused light .
The good news is its working.The ampullarias are beginning to pitcher ,In the past I only had very tiny little pitchers off one. This time a couple are goig to give me full size pitchers.
Another exciting thing I bought some n northiana seed from ebay and looks like one has germinated.
All the other lowland nepenthes are doing very well including the seedlings.

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