As the sun becomes warmer under glass, both spring forced bulbs and early blooming cool-loving orchids make a nice display in the greenhouse. Note the Dendrobium kingianum on the right, a cold-loving Australian orchid.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Of all the orchids in the genus Dendrobium, D. speciosum may just be the largest. This plant, in a 24″ basket, now weighs nearly 60 lbs, and although hardly perfect, with some leaf burn, it is impressive with many, long spikes of flowers. It’s so big, that it’s difficult for me to photograph it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nAs many of us in Eastern North America discovered, this weekend in last February was our fist taste of spring, that is if you can call 48\u00ba F spring. With temperatures rising above freezing, I decided to repot some orchids – a long overdue chore – is it OK to admit to you all that I only decided to do this because while looking for more bags of bird seed on the back porch, I found a big bag of orchid repotting supplies that I had completely forgotten about? – with tshirt weather under glass, brilliant sunshine and only the sound of winter birds outside the glass, I could use some orchid-repotting therapy right now – especially after 4 snow storms in one week.<\/div>\n
I don’t have the perfect greenhouse for raising many orchids, we keep a few in the house during the coldest months of December and January, with many occupying windowsills and plant windows, where they sit on gravel trays which provide some moisture, but most of these orchids are ordinary super-market purchases ( still beautiful, but not botanically interesting to folks like us). So although we keep these phalaeonopsis and paphiopedilum, the lady slipper orchids, warm and safe, as they like the same temperatures we do, and throughout the winter, they provide us with at least some hope that warmer weather will eventually return. We can’t grow all of the orchids, but I do keep a few selected rarer species – the real treasures, out in the greenhouse, where I am limited to those species that can handle the colder temperatures, of which, there are plenty.<\/p>\n
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Cymbidium orchids have been bred into thousands selections, which thousands of named crosses now available. Most are cool to cold loving plants, and will thrive in a cool greenhouse in the north, or outdoors on terraces and in containers in areas that do not freeze, such as Northern California. This selection was bred in Massachusetts, and it is called ‘Bay State’. I leave plants outdoors until a hard frost hits, and I bring it in just before it freezes, which stimulates it to form spikes. There are cymbidums to please most every taste, and varieties that will bloom in most every month.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nYou may think that all orchids need tropical rainforest conditions, but that’s just not true, as there are many which prefer cool or cold winter temperatures, and even some which can handle very light frosts.Orchid collectors divide the great orchid family (one of the largest plant families in the world) into three broad groups, based on cultural conditions – cool growing, intermediate and warm. Cool growing orchids (those which perform best with some periods of either near freezing or night time temperatures around 40\u00ba are best for us, while we find some success with intermediate orchids, which often can handle temperatures around 50\u00ba at night. Warmer orchids are not growable, as they mostly demand hot and steamy conditions, and cannot tolerate temperature swings often preferring constant temperatures above 70\u00baF.<\/p>\n
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This Dendrobium aggregatum, a miniature creeping dendrobium likes to grow on a slab of tree fern bark. I purchased this young plant in a pot, but I am repotting it to grow as a ‘slab’ orchid. I first remove the old growing bark, wash the roots carefully, wrap them in long fiber sphagnum moss which was soaked in warm water, and then wired the entire plant to a square block of tree fern bark. I a few years, it will completely cover this slab, when it blooms in the spring.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Once wired and pinned, I wire the tree Fern bark to a wooden slab, which will allow me to hang the plant in the greenhouse during the winter, and outdoors, under trees in the shade in the summer, where the plant can enjoy summer downpours and thunderstorms. When it blooms, it could look like this:<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
While repotting my Neofinetia falcata, I need to do some housekeeping, as I had been slacking. Old fans which had died, needed to be removed, as well as dead roots, and dead flower stems, This is a genus that like to form clumps, and it makes a better specimen plant if allowed to grow large, but to get them to any size, one must keep the plants clean. I could have divided the plant also, but decided not to.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n