As some of you know, I spent last summer working in India, and that
while I was gone, the person I'd asked to care for my orchids didn't,
so almost all of my orchids died. One that survived was a catt.
Obviously, as would be expected, it sulked last year, and I didn't hold
out much hope for it to bloom this year. It had lost a leaf on each of
the two oldest pseudobulbs, and while the younger pseudobulbs are
smooth and quite plump, the older pseudobulbs are firm but a bit
wrinkled. This weekend, I discovered that its second youngest growth
has produced an inflorescence. There is no trace, yet, of anything
interesting happening on the youngest pseudobulb save some very healthy
leaves. But maybe in a month or two, this one will do something since
it is a few months younger than the one with an inforescence.

What adds to the interest is that the inforescence did not growth
within a sheath. I can see no trace of one, anyway. I may therefore
be reporting a successful reblooming os a catt (grown in a window sill
in Canada).

This was my largest catt, so I suppose the others were just too young
and small to survive a summer of neglect. But I bought it in bloom in
the fall of 2002, if I recal correctly. But this story should provide
some encouragement to those who have just begun to grow catts in that
it is clear that if you have a decent sized plant, it can not only
survive some of your abuse, but, once you figure it out, they can come
back and bloom for you.

Catts appear to be rather tougher than dends and phals since I had some
pretty large dends and none of them survived, and none of my phals
survived. Perhaps I shouldn't say this this way since a sample size of
one proves nothing, and I had another catt almost the same size that
didn't make it.

Cheers,

Ted

"Ted" wrote in
ups.com:

As some of you know, I spent last summer working in India, and that
while I was gone, the person I'd asked to care for my orchids didn't,
so almost all of my orchids died. One that survived was a catt.
Obviously, as would be expected, it sulked last year, and I didn't hold
out much hope for it to bloom this year. It had lost a leaf on each of
the two oldest pseudobulbs, and while the younger pseudobulbs are
smooth and quite plump, the older pseudobulbs are firm but a bit
wrinkled. This weekend, I discovered that its second youngest growth
has produced an inflorescence. There is no trace, yet, of anything
interesting happening on the youngest pseudobulb save some very healthy
leaves. But maybe in a month or two, this one will do something since
it is a few months younger than the one with an inforescence.

What adds to the interest is that the inforescence did not growth
within a sheath. I can see no trace of one, anyway. I may therefore
be reporting a successful reblooming os a catt (grown in a window sill
in Canada).

This was my largest catt, so I suppose the others were just too young
and small to survive a summer of neglect. But I bought it in bloom in
the fall of 2002, if I recal correctly. But this story should provide
some encouragement to those who have just begun to grow catts in that
it is clear that if you have a decent sized plant, it can not only
survive some of your abuse, but, once you figure it out, they can come
back and bloom for you.

Catts appear to be rather tougher than dends and phals since I had some
pretty large dends and none of them survived, and none of my phals
survived. Perhaps I shouldn't say this this way since a sample size of
one proves nothing, and I had another catt almost the same size that
didn't make it.

Cheers,

Ted



Remorseful for your losses I went through that when my grandmother
supposedly took care of mine back in the sixty's.

Some catt's are real vigorous some are not. I have a couple that are
incredibly vigorous. Over a month ago I did some transplanting and I put
the back bulbs in a pile on the basement floor with real intentions of
potting them up soon. Well this time I ended up procrastinating for 6
weeks before getting a round to it. Would you believe every one of those
back bulbs have put out new growths. This could be the answer to my
question why do I have so many of these two.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

I am working on a solution to neglected plants (or rather to make such
neglect impossible), but it is taking much longer than I'd hoped to get
the requisite technologies together. Some of what I want to use
remains at the bleeding edge of information technology and so suppliers
are few and far between.

I am impressed that your catts spent a month and a half neglected in
the basement and still produced new growths. Since you have so many of
"those two", are you willing to share the backbulbs? ;-) Alas, I have
nothing to trade for them. :-(

Cheers,

Ted


R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making

They are noids
look in abpo under the same heading

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

"Ted" wrote in
oups.com:

I am working on a solution to neglected plants (or rather to make such
neglect impossible), but it is taking much longer than I'd hoped to get
the requisite technologies together. Some of what I want to use
remains at the bleeding edge of information technology and so suppliers
are few and far between.

I am impressed that your catts spent a month and a half neglected in
the basement and still produced new growths. Since you have so many of
"those two", are you willing to share the backbulbs? ;-) Alas, I have
nothing to trade for them. :-(

Cheers,

Ted


R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making


I forgot to ask do you grow inside (window or under lights or greenhouse)
or outside.
I'm wondering if you could install an automatic watering system. I'm pretty
lazy so I use them when ever and where ever I can. Of course if your grow
inside the house it wont work.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

I forgot to ask do you grow inside (window or under lights or greenhouse)
or outside.
I'm wondering if you could install an automatic watering system. I'm pretty
lazy so I use them when ever and where ever I can. Of course if your grow
inside the house it wont work.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

I grow in a window; two actually, one facing south and one facing east.

I was actually designing a system that would work in the housee, and be
as attractive as a nice piece of furniture. Imagine a curio cabinet or
a china cabinet, but with a metal halide lamp or two in the top (hidden
from view of course), separated from the plants by glass, and a
reservoir in the bottom containing water with rather dilute fertilizer,
and a drip tray to catch surplus water from each irrigation. There'd
be small fans to provide air movement across the drip tray to provide
humidity. A cabinet the size of the curio cabinets I've seen at Leon's
would hold two or three specimen sized phals, while one the size of my
mother's china cabinet would hold a couple dozen comfortably.

Cheers,

Ted

R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making

I grow some of mine under fluorescents. 3 shelves under 8 tubes each. Due
to no more room in the greenhouse.
I thought about using metal halide lamps but they seem to produce a lot of
irradiated heat from the lamp and they seem to require a lot of overhead
space that I don't have.

50% relative humidity is all you need any higher you get mold growing
everywhere. I don't have a problem here as my house stays around 50% both
summer and winter.

The reservoir sounds okay as long as the plants don't sit in it. Maybe a
small pump on an 7 day timer could be used to automatically water the
plants. My first thought is a harbor freight mini pump # 41287 might work
and it's sometimes on sale for $9.95, reg. price is $17.95.
http://www.harborfreight.com/

by the way is the email address in the header yours or something you've
made up to keep spamers from harvesting.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
Dusty

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:34:45 GMT in dusty wrote:
I grow some of mine under fluorescents. 3 shelves under 8 tubes each. Due
to no more room in the greenhouse.
I thought about using metal halide lamps but they seem to produce a lot of
irradiated heat from the lamp and they seem to require a lot of overhead
space that I don't have.

What do you use for 8 tube fixtures?
I'm currently under 4 tube fixtures. I even managed to rebloom a
Den Super Ise under this arrangement and most of the plants are going
nuts, but there are a couple that have the dark green "I want more light"
thing going.

--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

What do you use for 8 tube fixtures?
I'm currently under 4 tube fixtures. I even managed to rebloom a
Den Super Ise under this arrangement and most of the plants are going
nuts, but there are a couple that have the dark green "I want more
light" thing going.

I use 4 Simkar ST240RS I bought at Lowes for around $20 I'd like to show
you them on the Lowes page but it says they do not sell them even though
they had them at the lowes store the other day. how ever here is a page
with a picture.
http://www.hardwareworld.com/St-240r...e-p5GDUA5.aspx

FIRST AND FORMOST you must know how to wire a fixture before start to use
these as they do not come wired. I shout because this is very important.

I get my power cords at a local computer junk/resale store for $1 each. You
will need a strain relief for each fixture also. I put the fixtures side by
side and use a combination of cool white, day light and wide spectrum
tubes. I grow and bloom catts, dens, phals, onc.and paphs under them. The
catt leafs look the same color as those grown outside under a 60% shade
cloth.

I run three shelves isolating each self from the one below with 2 inches of
pink or blue construction foam which comes in 4 X 8 foot sheets.

The lights are just high enough on each self so that the leaves do not
touch them as even fluoresents arre hot enough burn the leaves.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:49:45 GMT in dusty wrote:


What do you use for 8 tube fixtures?
I'm currently under 4 tube fixtures. I even managed to rebloom a
Den Super Ise under this arrangement and most of the plants are going
nuts, but there are a couple that have the dark green "I want more
light" thing going.

I use 4 Simkar ST240RS I bought at Lowes for around $20 I'd like to show
you them on the Lowes page but it says they do not sell them even though
they had them at the lowes store the other day. how ever here is a page
with a picture.
http://www.hardwareworld.com/St-240r...e-p5GDUA5.aspx

FIRST AND FORMOST you must know how to wire a fixture before start to use
these as they do not come wired. I shout because this is very important.

This I know how to do and have done for existing fixtures.

I get my power cords at a local computer junk/resale store for $1 each. You
will need a strain relief for each fixture also. I put the fixtures side by
side and use a combination of cool white, day light and wide spectrum
tubes. I grow and bloom catts, dens, phals, onc.and paphs under them. The
catt leafs look the same color as those grown outside under a 60% shade
cloth.

You just clip the end off of a standard grounded PC power cord?

I run three shelves isolating each self from the one below with 2 inches of
pink or blue construction foam which comes in 4 X 8 foot sheets.

The lights are just high enough on each self so that the leaves do not
touch them as even fluoresents arre hot enough burn the leaves.

Do you have a picture of the shelves?
Right now I'm on 48"x18" wire racks with underbed storage containers for drip
trays. By the dimensions on the lights, I don't have enough space
to hang 4 of them between the poles.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty


--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

1. My fixtures are not hung, they are attached to the bottom of each shelf
using a 1 X 2 spacer board and screws. The spacer is to let air flow get
rid of the heat produced by the lamps.

2. The lights are plugged into a TORK timer model 7100 (usually found on
Ebay for under $25.) Also make sure when buying one that it is 115/120
volts as they make them for many voltages. The important thing here is to
make sure everything is fed off a GFI.

3. My shelving unit is cheap and dirty using 8 Simpson Strong-Tie brackets
RTC-24 and 2 X 4 for the basic unit. RTC-24 is available at both Lowes and
Home Depot for around $3 each.

4. I originally made mine to fit trays that a local retailer had but it
went out of business without my knowledge. That was a surprise when got
around to buying the trays. Anyway my shelves are 24 x 54 but with the
strong tie system you can make them any size you want. with in reason that
is.

you can get the basic idea here;
http://www.strongtie.com/ftp/fliers/DIY-PROJECT05.pdf

They also have in store project fliers.

5. I made my shelves removable so I could take them out incase I had a
fixture failure but in 6 years that hasn't happened.

6. I'll post an old picture on abpo under the heading shelf picture for
Chris. it only shows 2 shelves but you can get the idea that it ain't
pretty. As for watering I take them off the shelf and water them one at a
time.

I would post a picture of the inside of my greenhouse but I get too many
questions about how do you get in there.

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty

Well Dusty,

I used my regular email address when I signed up on google to view
newsgroups and to post to them. You could try it and see if it works.
If it doesn't, then google has mangled the address to frustrate email
address harvesters. If you want to send email, perhaps the most
reliable way is to do so through my website.

As for the tray, the plants and pots would not site in it, as it would
be at least 15 cm deep. Instead, it would be used to create humidity
as necessary, and perhaps as a source of irrigation water.

There is new technology from Intel, called motes, so bleeding edge
Intel doesn't sell it directly. Instead, you have to go through a
vendor in California to get it. Ecologists have been field testing it
to collect microclimate and soil data with a minimum of disturbance to
the site being studied. (This is in addition to a wide variety of
studies in several industries, including medicine, to test its utility
and reliability.) My thought was to use motes to connect the "growth
chamber" to a computer, which would monitor everything that can be
monitoring using this kind of technology, to use the light to provide
additional heat when needed (by controlling air flow around it) as well
as light when ambient light is inadequate, and to irrigate when the
sensor says the medium is too dry, etc. Alas, it will take some time
to get it developed and tested. I hope one day to have a database with
ideal growing condition data for every species/variety of houseplant
imaginable, so that the computer would know how to grow plants that
even the owner doesn't know how to grow, and give the owner a warning
should he or she be foolish enough to try to grow a heat loving plant
with a cold loving plant, or a plant that needs near 100% humidity with
a plant that would rot at a relative humidity greater than 50%. But
that will be a long time coming. Once developed, though, it would free
us to take holidays without worrying about whether or not our plants
are being properly cared for. It would also allow those, like my
sisters and niece, who have very black thumbs, almost able to kill
plastic plants ;-), to have healthy houseplants, protected even from
the owner.

Cheers,

Ted


R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making