Its almost the end of winter and for the first time I've been able to leave the nep bicalarata in the polyhouse outside. What a relief . Those leaves get bigger and bigger every year.
One day at work, I suddenly thought (at the beginning of autumn), .Here you have
outside electricity points, why not get an electrician to put some outside power switches on the outside wall of your house? The other thing is I double checked the safety switch in the power box to make sure it worked because well, power running outside the house can be dangerous.
I thought well I could move the polyhouse up next to the house and have horticulture heaters working inside through winter. Now the poly house isn't gap free and I did wonder how much warmer it would be.So it was all done, a nice russian electrician came and installed the power points for me.
I left it late in autumn to move the poly house and had to do it by myself as I only had one day to do it in.I moved all the plants out in the middle of the day and shifted it eight metres.
Moving it had fixed the gaps. I placed thin blankets on the top and sealed around the base gluing stips of heavy plastic and bubble wrap to insulate from the cold air from coming under.
Doing this, and with the heaters I've kept them eight degrees above the outside temperature.
I kept the bical on a thermostatically controlled heat pad ( one with a dial), I tried a simpler heat pad but it couldn't keep the temperature high enough and the other nepenthes I kept warm with a tube heater .Most have done well though I lost a couple. I decided to repot when I shifted them for the move. bad decision.
Here are two pictures of my nepenthes bicalarata and one of my nepenthes ampullaria.
