Question

Hamata  
Hamata   QUESTION: Allexperts,

I got the nepenthes Hamata a while back from you.  I'm afraid that I am going to lose the plant to heat exhaustion.  The temperatures that the plant is growing in, is 84 degrees during the day ,and at night  75 degrees at night.  The humidity is at 40-60%.   I have read that the plant need to be much lower during the day at least somewhere in the 60s at night.   Any suggestions that you can give me would be great.  


 Growing info:
Water= Distilled
Light= 14hours
watts = 60 watts.

Sincerely,

Weylin

ANSWER: Hi Weylin,

Fortunately, you plant looks pretty good.  The day temperature isn't the big concern, it's getting that night cooling.  One suggestion is to move your plant to a terracotta clay pot.  The bare ceramic sides of those have a great cooling effect due to evaporative cooling.  You just need to be very attentive to the watering since they can dry out faster.  You could put a small fan on the pot at night to assist the cooling, and that would get the root temperatures down fairly well.  You wouldn't need (or want) more than just a slight breeze.

If you do this, try not to disturb the roots at all.  Just lift the whole soil mass together and set it in the new pot.

The only other option I can think of is to cool the room the plant are in more with a window AC unit, or use a little thermoelectric chiller, but that is going to get expensive.

Hope this helps.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Allexperts,

I put the plant by a a/c vent in my room ,and I also put Ice packs around the fish bowl in an attempt to lower the temperature some.  Why I am asking a fellow up question, is that I was thinking about what if I used Led lights?  Do Led lights give off a cooler temperature than CFLs?   

I neglected to mention that the plant is growing around other plants with their own lamp ( A Helianphora x2 lamps , Darlintonia x 1 ,and a lowland terrarium.

Just wondering if this could work. I don't want to change the soil. The soil does not look like it would come out the pot a whole clump.  As always thank  you so much.

Sincerely,

Weylin

Answer
Hi Weylin,

For the repotting, I'm not recommending changing to soil, just the pot.  What you do is let the whole clump fall into your hand with your fingers around the plant, then place the whole soil mass into the new pot.

The LED lights could be a great idea since they are much cooler than CFL's.  Along the same line, if you were to switch to a 48" shoplight fixture suspended over your cool growers instead of CFL's you would get more light, cooler temperatures, and it wouldn't cost anything as much as LED's.  Use either T-8 or T-12 cool-white tubes, or "Daylight" tubes.  We've had great luck with both.  Cool-white is 5,000K and Daylight is 6,500K color temperature.

The other thing I mentioned before is that your N. hamata looks good.  It doesn't look stressed at all, so what you're currently doing seems to be agreeing with it.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com