FlyTrapCare Forums

I know it's not necessary but can I feed my nepenthes dehydrated crickets? I have the crickets and I have no other use for them so would it hurt anything?

Its fine but the more a pitcher is fed the faster it fades. I feed mine after they start to fade to finish it off quick why feeding the plant.

American pitcher plants don't seem to mind getting their pitchers literally jam packed full of insects. Asian pitcher plants (nepenthes) on the other hand typically tend to be light eaters. They don't need much, and whenever you give them something they tend to be quicker to not throw off more pitchers and allow the ones they have to fade.

Weird when you consider it too. Nepenthes are often massive, and living in rich jungle areas with lots of insects, so you'd expect them to eat much more than a sarracenia living in a temperate bog area often in heavy clusters. But nature is an interesting beast.

Because nepenthes have a smaller appetite, I found mine prefer a diluted maxsea solution in their pitchers over insects or osmocote pellets. Or, I guess I should say, I prefer the growth results of a feed of diluted maxsea solution over other options. But YMMV.

In my experience, jam the Nep pitchers as much as you can as early as possible. Mine definitely did decline with all the rotting bugs in them, but the plant responded by rapidly pushing out more, bigger pitchers.
However, stop doing that about two-ish months before you anticipate bringing them inside so they have time to extract as many nutrients from the bug soup before it may become necessary to cut the pitchers. You don't want to bring that smell of all those decaying bugs inside.