Question
I live in meridian, ID and have been a customer of yours for a few years.  I am growing a plethora of Nepenthes in a N.E. facing window that is supplemented with florescent lighting.  (I don't have any better window options as far as space goes#.  All plants are watered with tap water #about 55-60ppm) and flushed with distilled water regularly using a peat mossx1/sphagnumx1/perlitex2 mixture of soil.  i recently had to rework my whole window because i had so many plants in such a small space that there was no air movement and higher temps in this 100 degree weather so a lot of my plant started to burn.  I took all the larger plants and turned them into hanging pots that are hanging in two rows across the window and all the small seedlings and 3" pots are in trays on the windowsill.  i also put a light shade curtain across the window to allow light in but not as harsh as just the window.  This solved the problems of space, burning, and air circulation.  Now i am having a problem that i have never encountered before, dry pitchers.  i noticed all the pitchers on about 3/4 of my hanging plants starting to turn and dry up.  When i checked, the pitchers were empty of all fluids.  I used some distilled water to fill a third of each pitcher, but don't know why all the fluid dried up at the same time.  this does coincide with my having redone the whole window set-up so i don't know if it is enough of a change in environment to drop pitchers or if there was another problem that i have not thought of yet.  and as a side note, all of the small plants that stayed down on the windowsill in their original place are all still perfectly fine.  Again, i appreciate all you guys do, thanx again for your time.  Nick

Answer
Hi Nick,

It's possible you have a couple things going on here.  Did you transplant the Nepenthes when you moved them to the hanging pots?  If you did, dropping pitchers is almost a given after a transplant.  The other issue may be your shade curtain.  It's possible that you cut down the light just enough that the plants don't have quite enough light to manufacture their pitchers.  Nepenthes need a deceptively large amount of light, but sometimes you do have to find that "sweet spot" where they get enough sun, but are not burning.  I find I have to do this all the time with my Phalaenopsis orchids, and they are way more shade tolerant than Nepenthes.  Sometimes just moving them back from a window a bit is enough to minimize burning.  Also, by hanging your plants, depending on the angle of the sun coming in, they may not be getting as much sun as they were before.  I've had this problem many times.  Focus on getting the a bit more sun if you can.

Hope this helps.

Good Growing!

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