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starting my figs with the orchids

I've decide to start a few of my cuttings the way I did it last time.  Drop them in pots and leave them in the orchid section of the greenhouse.  Here are the first 3. 
 orchids and figs.jpg 


My phalaenopsis are on the top shelf and the fig humidity chambers are on the lower one in my grow shelves. The growing plants are under another fluorescent light in another part of the basement

The Native Calypso Orchids are in bloom on my property. Spring is here. IMG_2824.JPG  IMG_2829.JPG 


Wow, those are beautiful.

Very beautiful.  So many of the native orchids are beautiful.

Nice.

Gary,

   That is utterly cool. Just this Saturday I listened to a presentation of field trip to Lake Huron (Flower Pot Island) and Nova Scotia native orchids. Naturally Calypso was among them. Pretty neat!

Schaplin,

 You have a lot of Paphs there.

Close but those are actually Phrags.  If you look close you can see they are sitting in water.  That is the most humid section since above the Phrags are many of the hanging Vanda and Spanish Moss.  The moss grows in huge sheets over the Vanda roots and keep the humidity up around the roots while shading the Phrags.  Most of the Paphs are still in NJ but hopefully will come down on the next trip.

how do you get them to bloom at all? my wife and i were collecting orchid for sometime when we first married.. ton of effort.. humid area in the house with all the stuff to give them what they needed. ton of orchids. then one by one, they were done with flowers.. and none of them ever put on the flowers again. it was very disappointing. i'm sure there has to be something we were missing.. but we did everything we could read from books. now i'm afraid to even buy orchids. 

what is the secret?

Most of the time it's a few things.
#1 reason:  People don't give them a 10-15 deg F temperature drop and many orchids need a cool period to produce blooms.  Very dependent on what you are growing.
#2 light some need pretty high light although many don't.

Nothing better than getting a beautiful, well groomed plant that someone took care of for years and "never bloomed it" so they tossed it in a auction.  They have all this saved up energy so when they get the right cue they just explode with flowers.  The Asian's do this intentionally for big flower shows by controlling the temperature for growth without blooms so they get much more flowers.

dang.. they need temp drop too? thank god i found figs :) 

Yep, temperature drop. Really does the trick for Phals.

Had a Phrag allesandroi some time ago. I would run water through it every day. It rewarded me with the most stunning bloom. The pouch acted like a stained glass window.

My orchids bloom all year around. I have the timer set to 14 hrs of light plus it's in front of a basement window. Temp is pretty constant at around 74 daytime and 68 nights.
I lightly fertilize every other watering and I let them dry between waterings. Consistently wet roots kill orchids. You have to change the bark and or up,pot every 2 years or so.
They are really not much work for all of the flowers we get.

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