Hi folks,

Well, the urge to collect has won. I have not fallen victim to "collector's
fever", though (mainly by recognizing the signs through long personal
experience): I was able to walk by the table full of identical white phal's
for 4 Euros the other day. It seems that I am able to not buy an orchid that
is "in my price range" if it looks uncannily like one I already have. I call
this Great Willpower.

Meanwhile, though, I find that I do now seem to have two phals, a miltonia,
a columnara wildcat, two oncidiums, and a cambria, and am not entirely sure
how it happened....

They all seem to be doing OK, although I lost the flowers on the wildcat for
this year because it was in desperate need of repotting when I bought it
(roots that had forced their way through cracks in the plastic, roots dead
from overcrowding, whole poor thing planted in Styrofoam cubes). The
miltonia also came with another one that has since died; they were at a
market stall where the proprietor was dropping the price steadily in
accordance with how miserable the plants looked--the miltonias (labeled
cymbidiums!) were very nearly dead, and 1 Euro each. One, as I said, has
since died; the other has begun growing new leaves, thank goodness.

I just wondered if anyone had any particular tips, like that one or another
of these likes extra fertilizer or will die if the temp drops slightly in
its room (this is the Netherlands, and we don't have central heating), or if
one or another is especially sensitive to rot, has an unusually short or
long flowering period, etc.

Thanks,

Katrina


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My goodness KATRINA!! I live in Florida and I can't imagine living in
the Netherlands with NO HEAT!! How cold does it get in your home? Some
of your plants prefer it a little cooler than I have in Miami,
Wildcatts and your Cambria dont' like our summers, the nights are too
high in temp. Do you have names for the Onc. and Milt? But the Phals
need to be above 65F to keep growing. Usually it is recommended not to
keep the plants too wet in cooler darker weather. Is your light good??
The Phals will need to be watered more than the others. The danger of
rot is worse during damp, cool and dark weather with poor air
circulation.
Nice to meet someone so far away, best, Mary Lou/Miami


"White Monkey" wrote in message om...
Hi folks,

Well, the urge to collect has won. I have not fallen victim to "collector's
fever", though (mainly by recognizing the signs through long personal
experience): I was able to walk by the table full of identical white phal's
for 4 Euros the other day. It seems that I am able to not buy an orchid that
is "in my price range" if it looks uncannily like one I already have. I call
this Great Willpower.

Meanwhile, though, I find that I do now seem to have two phals, a miltonia,
a columnara wildcat, two oncidiums, and a cambria, and am not entirely sure
how it happened....

They all seem to be doing OK, although I lost the flowers on the wildcat for
this year because it was in desperate need of repotting when I bought it
(roots that had forced their way through cracks in the plastic, roots dead
from overcrowding, whole poor thing planted in Styrofoam cubes). The
miltonia also came with another one that has since died; they were at a
market stall where the proprietor was dropping the price steadily in
accordance with how miserable the plants looked--the miltonias (labeled
cymbidiums!) were very nearly dead, and 1 Euro each. One, as I said, has
since died; the other has begun growing new leaves, thank goodness.

I just wondered if anyone had any particular tips, like that one or another
of these likes extra fertilizer or will die if the temp drops slightly in
its room (this is the Netherlands, and we don't have central heating), or if
one or another is especially sensitive to rot, has an unusually short or
long flowering period, etc.

Thanks,

Katrina


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My goodness KATRINA!! I live in Florida and I can't imagine living in
the Netherlands with NO HEAT!! How cold does it get in your home?

Oh, we do have heat, just not steady, centralized heat of any kind. The
apartment is leaky and drafty, too, as are most of them in this part of the
city. We have a large gas-burning stove thing, as are common here. We turn
it off at night to prevent carbon monoxide accidents, and get under the down
comforter, with the electric mattrass pad in winter. Throughout the day,
except in any room we close off to conserve heat, it stays in the 60's or
70's, your temps, for the day, so doesn't have a chance to get TOO cold
overnight--even in the kitchen, which is unheated and curtained off from the
rest of the house, we usually don't get a skin of ice on a glass of water
overnight, while just out on the balcony one may be frozen solid at the
right time of year.

Some
of your plants prefer it a little cooler than I have in Miami,
Wildcatts and your Cambria dont' like our summers, the nights are too
high in temp.

Oh, good! They do seem to be doing just fine--the wildcat is getting a lower
nighttime temp than the cambria, and isn't doing too much, but since I
rescued it from its styrofoam hell, all the leaves are standing up prouder
and don't feel vaguely papery like they did when I bought it. The cambria
came with a lot of un-opened flowers, which are popping open about one a
day, and showing no signs of falling off. Nice deep red with a yellow and
orange lip.

Do you have names for the Onc. and Milt?

The Onc. is one of the larger varieties of the yellow one commonly called
"Dancing Ladies". The Miltonia looks like a big, showy purple-red pansy when
it's blooming, and that's all I know about it. It was labeled Cymbidium.

But the Phals
need to be above 65F to keep growing.

OK... that explains why the two in the bedroom are acting sort of dormant
right now--how bad is this for them until spring? They get the best (i.e.,
not real good) light in there, and once a couple more months have gone by,
that room will start heating naturally again, and some of the
likes-it-cooler's will have to be pulled out. Should I bring the phal.'s to
the low-light but yes-daytime-heat living room for the winter? And, I just
put a flowering one in there--if I want the already-there second spike to
flower, should I haul it back out here?

Usually it is recommended not to
keep the plants too wet in cooler darker weather. Is your light good??

Light bad. Me overwater. Crisis over... mostly... still thinking I may have
to repot one, but the roots are still white and green through the plastic
pot it came in. And fleshy. I think it'll be OK!

Thank you so much! This is all very useful information.

Thanks,
Katrina



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I hope it helps, nice to talk back and forth with an orchid nut like I
that is so far away!! 'G'. Give the Phals as much warmth as you can
cause they really don't like going dormant. I think your Milt. is one
of the cool growers (the pansey type). 'Dancing Ladies' is not a real
name, just a generic commercial type name. But I would think you would
be offered the more cool growers over there and not our warm lovers.
There are both in Onc. genus. Also there are warm growing Milts. As
you surf around the net about orchids (try google.com) you can find
information about all of them.
Now I need to go mix up my fert. - my shadehouse needs food!!
Best, Mary Lou


"White Monkey" wrote in message om...
My goodness KATRINA!! I live in Florida and I can't imagine living in
the Netherlands with NO HEAT!! How cold does it get in your home?

Oh, we do have heat, just not steady, centralized heat of any kind. The
apartment is leaky and drafty, too, as are most of them in this part of the
city. We have a large gas-burning stove thing, as are common here. We turn
it off at night to prevent carbon monoxide accidents, and get under the down
comforter, with the electric mattrass pad in winter. Throughout the day,
except in any room we close off to conserve heat, it stays in the 60's or
70's, your temps, for the day, so doesn't have a chance to get TOO cold
overnight--even in the kitchen, which is unheated and curtained off from the
rest of the house, we usually don't get a skin of ice on a glass of water
overnight, while just out on the balcony one may be frozen solid at the
right time of year.

Some
of your plants prefer it a little cooler than I have in Miami,
Wildcatts and your Cambria dont' like our summers, the nights are too
high in temp.

Oh, good! They do seem to be doing just fine--the wildcat is getting a lower
nighttime temp than the cambria, and isn't doing too much, but since I
rescued it from its styrofoam hell, all the leaves are standing up prouder
and don't feel vaguely papery like they did when I bought it. The cambria
came with a lot of un-opened flowers, which are popping open about one a
day, and showing no signs of falling off. Nice deep red with a yellow and
orange lip.

Do you have names for the Onc. and Milt?

The Onc. is one of the larger varieties of the yellow one commonly called
"Dancing Ladies". The Miltonia looks like a big, showy purple-red pansy when
it's blooming, and that's all I know about it. It was labeled Cymbidium.

But the Phals
need to be above 65F to keep growing.

OK... that explains why the two in the bedroom are acting sort of dormant
right now--how bad is this for them until spring? They get the best (i.e.,
not real good) light in there, and once a couple more months have gone by,
that room will start heating naturally again, and some of the
likes-it-cooler's will have to be pulled out. Should I bring the phal.'s to
the low-light but yes-daytime-heat living room for the winter? And, I just
put a flowering one in there--if I want the already-there second spike to
flower, should I haul it back out here?

Usually it is recommended not to
keep the plants too wet in cooler darker weather. Is your light good??

Light bad. Me overwater. Crisis over... mostly... still thinking I may have
to repot one, but the roots are still white and green through the plastic
pot it came in. And fleshy. I think it'll be OK!

Thank you so much! This is all very useful information.

Thanks,
Katrina



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Give the Phals as much warmth as you can
cause they really don't like going dormant.

OK. Thanks! They're back in the living room now. Do they mind drafts of hot
air, if they're misted/washed enough? Not like a hair dryer or anything;
it's just that there's one shelf in here that gets a constant bath of desert
air, as it were, moving upward from the heater. If that's fine I can move
some over by the heater, but most plants aren't happy there, at least in our
experience. It even nearly killed a pothos and a sansevaria! The rest of the
room is nice and warm by day, not so bad by night, and the plants are fine
where they are now for heat, but will get a bit crowded if another one shows
up...

I think your Milt. is one
of the cool growers (the pansey type).

I hope so. It's a rescue job for a Euro, but that doesn't mean I'd be less
unhappy if it keeled over.

'Dancing Ladies' is not a real
name, just a generic commercial type name.

Yeah, I know. But it's what I see it and other very similar ones labeled as
most often. There's a real lack of Latin labeling these days, at least here.
Here's a link to a picture I found with a Google search that looks like the
flowers on this one. Not that I'm saying it's definitely THAT one, mind
you--but it's near enough as damn it, as they say.
http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nroberts...m_goldiana.JPG

But I would think you would
be offered the more cool growers over there and not our warm lovers.

That's what they keep telling me.... I can't afford to go to real growers,
either, so most of these are rescued from florists who don't know what they
are specifically (or, often, generally!), but who DO stock the ones they're
less likely to kill in this climate through lack of knowledge. Except the
two new phal's I got in Germany. They're not labeled any better, but you
sure can tell they were grown and "stored" with some care, compared to these
others. One poor new phal I rescued a week ago even has huge, oblong leaves,
I mean HUGE, and a massive spray of GORGEOUS white and purple flowers--and
clear evidence that someone's been chopping its roots off to stay in this
tiny pot, God knows for how long. Now, I'm no expert, but I'd say that's
bad. Poor thing has no crown to speak of, just massive leaves and big
flowers coming straight out of the ground. Not so much medium as old, dried
out roots in there. But it sure is vigorous! I'll ease it into feeling a
little better, then give it some room and some nice new medium. Poor thing.
It was 4 Euros, stuffed behind some cyclamen and sedge and a croton at a
balcony-gardens stall at a nearby market.

There are both in Onc. genus. Also there are warm growing Milts. As
you surf around the net about orchids (try google.com) you can find
information about all of them.

Yup, getting to be a real junkie about that. You should see my "want list"
just based on ones I come across online, not to mention my "sure wish it
wasn't impossible here" list.

Now I need to go mix up my fert. - my shadehouse needs food!!

Feed, feed!

Thanks again for your help.

--Katrina



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I think your Milt. is one
of the cool growers (the pansey type).

A quick google search of only a few hundred photos nonetheless reveals that
this un-named miltonia on somebody's page
http://www.jillbelldesigns.com/jillsplants.html is the only one I see
offhand that mimics both the appearance of the flowers on mine AND the
growing pattern, with the flowers sticking out from right among the foliage
instead of on long stems. Any ideas what this little fella might be?
Thanks,
Katrina


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OK. Thanks! They're back in the living room now. Do they mind drafts of
hot
air, if they're misted/washed enough? Not like a hair dryer or anything;
it's just that there's one shelf in here that gets a constant bath of
desert
air, as it were, moving upward from the heater. If that's fine I can move
some over by the heater

Still wondering about this one; it'd be nice to put one or two on that
shelf. And one on the television, which also generates a waft of hot air.

One poor new phal I rescued a week ago even has huge, oblong leaves,
I mean HUGE, and a massive spray of GORGEOUS white and purple flowers--and
clear evidence that someone's been chopping its roots off to stay in this
tiny pot, God knows for how long. Now, I'm no expert, but I'd say that's
bad. Poor thing has no crown to speak of, just massive leaves and big
flowers coming straight out of the ground. Not so much medium as old,
dried
out roots in there. But it sure is vigorous!

Repotted this fellow yesterday. He's perking up: one of those giant, floppy
leaves is dramatically less floppy, and all the small leaves are sticking
out straight. How long after a plant with root damage is repotted does one
leave it before watering, to avoid rot? I know it varies from plant type to
plant type. The two I just did are both phal's, one with very large foliage
and flowers, as described above, the other with standard foliage and oddly
compact, waxy green flowers. Both the plant I repotted yesterday and the one
I repotted the day before because I *had* overwatered it are opening a new
flower today. I hope that's good, and not a sign of shock? These are buds
that have been getting larger and becoming colored like the other flowers on
the stalks.

Thanks,

Katrina


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