On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 12:19:12 GMT, "J Fortuna"
wrote:

Vic,

Your story makes me realize that maybe I am the one with the misconception
after all.

I consider Phals easy, even though I do have grow lights for them, since I
(like you) have only north-facing windows in my apartment and I turn these
lights on every day before I go to work and turn them off at night before
going to bed, and even though as mentioned in my other post when the whether
is in the 60s at night I tend to open the window to give them the 10-15
degree difference in temp. Before I did all this, my first two Phals did not
reflower for me for two years. To me this still is not too much to ask, so I
consider them "easy", but I guess as compared to a plant that just sits
there in a corner of the room and gets watered once in a blue moon, they are
not all that easy. However, I can't keep houseplants alive that other people
consider hard to kill -- such as cacti or dumbcane, a plant which I killed
very quickly, and didn't care enough about to try to prevent from dying. So
I guess, whether Phals are easy to grow in part depends on ones definition
of "easy", how much one is willing to do, without feeling put upon.

I look forward to someday moving to a place with eastern windows though --
my dream house will have an eastern bay window for the Phals :-) and then I
won't need to do anything special to get them to reflower.

Joanna


Joanna,

Well so far my orchid is doing better than the African violet and
kalanchoe I tried. I've got lots of basic greenery growing but I want
something that flowers, and I refuse to count my spider plant which
suddenly came back to life just as I had decided to pitch it out.
There's just not enough bloom on it to consider it a flowering plant.
(I don't really have enough light to keep a spider plant truly happy,
especially in the spot where I want to put it. Its eventual fate is
still hanging in the balance, although it will have a home on the
patio for the summer.)

I usually try wintering my outdoor planters by bringing them inside.
Some of my herbs survived staying indoors, some didn't. My planter
geraniums (and their companion green fillers) are growing like crazy.
I've even got a bloom on one of them.

I'm willing to give any plant a chance, but I'm not going to change my
lifestyle or comfort level just to coddle a plant. Even if I could
open the window closest to my phal, I doubt I would. I hate freezing
at night, and just because cooler temperatures are helpful to the
orchid, they might not be for some of the other plants I've got
growing.

I've got plenty of patience, but I don't know if I'd wait two or three
years for an orchid to rebloom. I think a year would be about as far
as I'd go. Fortunately I didn't have to wait anywhere near that long.

As you said, it all comes down to our individual definitions of
"easy." To me that is pruning and watering. Even feeding is a bit of a
stretch. I don't want to have three or four different compositions of
fertilzer to accomodate everything that is growing around me or to
have to worry about switching feeds depending on the time of year or
the growing cycle of the plants. That's way too complicated for me.
g
--Vic