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Grow Orchids Tips during Fall

Pete — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:08:39 +0000

Cattleyas
Depending on the sub-specie, Cattleyas can bloom during fall or winter, is good to use some bloom booster fertilizers to achieve best flowers. If your plants bloomed in the spring, you can use plain water rather than fertilizer, you can start using fertilizer again when they start growing again in the spring. Make sure of get rid of any insects and fungus. A good tip to take advantage of light and achieve better results is to remove all chemical residues, to do this you can “wash” the leaves with lemon juice, this will help a lot in the photosynthesis.

Dendrobiums
Do not be scared if your Dendrobiums lose all their leaves in the fall, it is not a plant disease; it’s just their behavior during this time. Other subspecies will lose some of the leaves, others will lose some of their leaves on back bulbs; but you shouldn’t be losing all the leaves on old pseudobulbs. If this is happening, it means that your dendrobium have some kind of fungus. You can spray them with Consan or Physan. This will not kill the plant, clean the plant and make sure that the new growths are staked properly.

Phalaenopsis (Butterfly Orchids or Moth Orchids )
These are one of the easiest species of orchids to make them bloom; you should know that they need between 2 and 4 weeks of cool temperatures during the nights in order to initiate spikes. As the weather gets cool in your location, let the plants get temperatures around 60°F-70°F at night. Keep an eye on at the bottom of the plant or below one of the bottom leaves. You can start staking the little branch as soon as it reaches 6 inches (15 cm), hold it and try to keep the plant in the same position in relation to light source or you will have a twisted look to the flowering.

Watering and Fertilizing during fall
During the Fall and Spring, orchids needs less water, if you keep watering and fertilizing your orchids during this time just as you do in summer, this will cause damages to the roots and the plants. Less heat and less natural light hours means less water. Check the pots, mark in calendar the last time you watered and fertilized, change the schedule when the pots gets dry, but don’t get your orchids without water at all.
Some Dendrobiums, Cychnoches and other orchids will lose their leaves during the fall or winter months. As leaves dies, stop watering, if you keep watering your orchids you will get rot plants, check that your plant have the enough humidity during this time. Growth will start back in spring, so you can start to water your new plants again.

Phalaenopsis

Pete — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:26:34 +0000

Found in Asia. India, Filipinas, Indonesia and North of Australia, specially in warm and wet jungles, normally near wáter sources.

Etimology:
It’s name comes from the greek phalaina “butterfly” and opsis “looks like”, and it refers to the flowers of almost all subspecies. The common name all over the world is “butterfly orchid” or “moth orchid”.
This specie includes around 70 subspecies and so many manipulated hybrids, the flowers shapes, colors and sizes are very vast. Almost all orchids we find in stores are hybrids from the original species, making this specie one of the most popular amongst orchid’s enthusiasts.

It is special for beginners due its strength and easy to care. Ideal for home due to low special lighting needs a temperature almost identical to ours and overlong duration of the flowers.
This specie is an epiphyte, they live in the trees, however it is not invasive nor parasite to the trees, the roots cling tightly to the bark of the tree. However, they can live quite well in a small pot.

It has short stems, the plant produces only a few leaves (2-6) that are large and fleshy, but not very long.
The flowers appear on long, arching stems and a number to 30. Ranging between 1 and 5 inches(2.5 and 13 cm) and can occur at any time of year, lasting up to three weeks and even 12 weeks depending on the plant’s health.
The colors are variable, pink, red, violet, etc.

Phalaenopsis lives between 3-7 years at home or even more with the proper care.

Light:
Ideal range between 15.000-20.000 lux.
You can put it next to a window, looking to East or West, in a place with good light and ventilation, just avoid to put it directly to the sun, this can burn the leaves and damage the plant.

Temperature:
Between 16ºC y 32ºC is good for them, the perfect temperature for them is 20ºC at night and 29ºC during the day.
During winter, and inside the house, between 68°F and 75°F (20°C and 24°C) are just fine.
In the fall, is good to put the plan in a location around 55°F-57°F (13°C-14°C) at night during two or three weeks, this leads to flowering. Keep looking at the plant and when you see the blooms coming, you can put it again in a warmer location.

Humidity:
Constant, between 50% and 80%. Up to 60% if it is exposed to high temperatures. You can use an atomizer, just be careful to do not exceed the amount of water, excess can cause rotten roots.

Dendrobium

Pete — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:28:41 +0000

It is located in very different habitats throughout Asia, Japan, Borneo, Ceylon, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.
Its name “Dendrobium” comes from the Greek word “dendro” = “fingers” in reference to the epiphytic nature of these plants. After Bulbophilum Dendrobium is the second largest genus with over 1200 species of epiphytic orchids.
These orchids have a very large among the highest of all.
Some are evergreen which means they retain their leaves for two or three years after flowering.
These orchid plants grow rapidly over the summer to take a long rest during winter. In spring new shoots are formed from the base of the main floor and new flower buds.

The flowers are in the pseudobulbs that have formed the previous year. Others do lose their leaves at the end of the growing season (deciduous).

These orchid flowers varied in form, but with petals and sepals of the same size. These orchid plants are usually sold in Dendrobium nobile varieties, which comes from mountainous regions of Southeast Asia. The varieties have white or pink flowers, often with a dark spot on the lip width.

Leaves from 10 to 25 cm long, pianos or cylindrical, soft or leathery evergreen or deciduous, present along pseudobulbs ovoid or tapered, smooth or wrinkled, pendulous or erect, growing on a small rhizome.

All Dendrobiums are epiphytes and its name means “living on trees.” Some species of Dendrobium are in great demand among orchid lovers.

They are adapted to a wide range of habitats, from high altitudes in the Himalayan mountains to lowland tropical forests, and even the dry climate of the Australian desert.

This kind of orchids needs a good light, put them near a window, to strong light, but protect from excessive sun, as it would burn the leaves. Need artificial lighting in winter (four hours).

In the summer, after blooming , you can put it outdoors in a place where the rain does not soak the flowers. When you are in development stage, this orchid requires regular orchid fertilizer. By late summer, transfer it to a dry spot outdoors. It can tolerate temperatures down to 0 º C.

Humidity
Minimum of 60%. Spray daily, preventing water droplets are sluggish in the axils of the leaves. However, Need a rest period of six to eight weeks without nutrition and almost without water.

Orchid Pots
Dendrobium potted high but narrow, usually not very stable. It is better to cultivate these plants hang or place some large rocks on the bottom of the pot. You can also place the pot in a bigger planter and fill the empty space with gravel.
In green Dendrobium have hooked to a piece of bark or tree fern.

Substrate
Good ventilation is essential for roots.

Irrigation

The roots are very sensitive to water.
Watering every 3 or 4 days during growth. In the case of deciduous Dendrobium, water every 8 or 10 days during the vegetative stop to cool (12 º C). Once per week in winter in the case of the other Dendrobiums.
Some people never watered and are limited to daily practice that allows spray to reach the roots some moisture.

Feeding
In spring and summer, add every 15 days, a liquid fertilizer for orchids.

Transplant
Every 3 or 4 years at a narrow pot or hanging basket, where vegetation has been reactivated. Place the plant in the shade and wait a week or two before watering.

Pests
Aphids and mites.

Multiplication
Pull down and replant the keikis, those seedlings that develop on the pseudobulbs times the level of the old buds.
By cuttings pseudobulbs fragments, sand, hot (25 º C).

Cattleya Labiata

Pete — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:30:02 +0000

This plant grows in the northeastern area of Brazil, in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas. They grow to different sizes depending on the area from which they originate. Those that are growing in Pernambuco are smaller, with small but colored flowers, with most of them being lilac. The interior part of the flower is a dark lilac color. Plants from Alagoas are bigger and have larger flowers. Some varieties, such as Cattleya labiata var. semialba, have large white flowers with a touch of yellow. There is another variety of semialba, with lilac in the inferior part of the flower. This plant is an epiphyte, growing up in trees, where light is plentiful. However, there are also many other places where this plant could grow, such as directly on rock with very little soil.

The plant itself is a medium sized labiate Cattleya, with a medium sized rhizome. The rhizome has long leaves, with a tough consistency because of the aridity in the canopy of trees, due to a short dry season. For water requirements, the plant has a pseudobulb on every leaf to store water and nutritive substances, which is used in the latent season of the plant. In the wet season new leaves grow twice as fast, with a little inflorescence and with large flowers. Flowers are white colored with a spot lilac in middle of the flower, where the pollinia and ovarum are located. Pollination is performed by insects, more specifically, a type of green euglosine bee. The result is a capsule with a very large number of seeds (10,000-20,000). This plant is inappropriate for indoor cultivation, because it does not produce flowers under artificial light.

A very common and also famous variety of the cattleya labiata, is the cattleya warneri.