The Gus Orchid. (Laelia Amoena coerulea x Laelia Nina Bonita "Barbara")

We got this orchid from a friend of Steven's Gus, and it didn't have a label so we don't know what it is. We know it's the 2 leaf type of cattleya and it flowers off of a long stem laelia style rather than out of the sheath in typical cattleya style. It's pale purple and white in flower, and it grows like crazy! It was in a 4in plastic pot when we got it, but we potted it into a 6in basket shortly after that. It was only in the basket for about a year before it was totally overflowing, and needed repotting. We had always fertilized with Grow regularly, but hadn't had much experience using the Bloom booster and weren't really sure when to use it. The plant put out several sheaths that looked like they were going to be flowers and we got super excited, but then nothing happened. I eventually decided that it was because it needed Bloom boosting, so next time it put on a sheath I boosted like crazy. By boosting like crazy I mean I use only Bloom fertilizer and pour several scoops of it over the plant once a week or so when I water. That finally got it to flower. That was possibly one of our most exciting accomplishments to date. We waited so long for it, and it was really lovely.

After it was finished flowering we potted it up since it was busting out of it's previous home. We put it in a 10in octagon basket. We cut off all the old pseudobulbs that had no roots and are propogating them separately to give to friends. We cut the overall plant in 3 and potted the parts all together. True to form it is going nuts growing new growths and roots. We were worried the basket would be way too big and there would be too much medium and it wouldn't dry out fast enough, but not anymore. It has put on a ton of new roots (of course out of the basket already). We use just a basic fir bark mix. When we use baskets we line them with a thin layer of coconut husk similar to what they use in hanging baskets only very thin, just enough to keep the bark in. We water it only once it dries out like all the other cattleyas. I put a bit of sphagnum around the new growths and new roots so they didn't dry out too fast and shrivel and die. I mist that maybe once between waterings to keep the humidity up a bit.

Update!: We found out what this plant actually is from Gus. It's a Laelia Amoena coerulea x Laelia Nina Bonita "Barbara". Gus brought over the one he still had of these, because he hasn't been able to do anything with it. So now there are two. Probably we will send it back once it gets flowering, as a thank you.

Epidendrums

Epis are supposed to be easy, but we have had more trouble with these than anything else. We've had 4 and we've nearly killed all of them at least once. We got them from Cynthia (the Orchid Goddess lady we got the Phrag from) as bare root cuttings. First we tried to get them to grow roots in a baggie with damp paper towel. Then we potted them into little pots with bark, but they were so small they kept falling over and their medium kept falling out. One of them got scale and was in quarantine for a while. We knew that they liked a bit more organic matter and that some of them can be planted in the ground, so we sprinkled a bit of potting soil on top of the bark and it sifted in. They started to do well for a while and the coral colored one got really big and flowered. Then it started to look like the leaves were shriveling and turning yellow. We unpotted it and sure enough the roots had mostly all rotted because there was too much dirt in the pot and it was packed in too densely. We potted it back into a clay pot with bark only medium and it grew really well again, only to either get too much sun or a disease, because all the leaves turned yellow and fell off. Now there are just the little sprouts that  had started and rooted. The red epi was finally doing really well growing and looking good, and then when it was sending up a flower spike something ate it off! We have no idea what, but that was really upsetting- another year to wait. The purple epi we got from another friend Fred we gave away to my friend Louise because we are moving in a month or so and need to cut down.

Conclusion: don't treat them any different than an Oncidium or Cattleya and get over confident that they are forgiving. I would recommend a clay pot or plastic pot with holes in it and bark. If you feel the need to mix in any dirt make it a tiny bit and then maybe have some lava rocks in your mix. I fertilize these same as everything else with Dyna Gro- Grow every week when in active growth and with Dyna Gro- Bloom when it starts putting on a spike. They seem to like more Oncidium light levels.

Fertilizing

We pretty much always use Dyna Gro- Grow and Bloom fertilizers. I follow the bottle instructions for amount and make up buckets of both Grow and Bloom every time I water. After I have watered thoroughly with the sink sprayer I add a few scoops of fertilizer water to each plant. I fertilize weekly for the most part, but I only fertilize plants that are actively growing. If they seem to be resting for the winter or whatever, I quit, and just water.

For plants that I know bloom only at a particular time of year, maybe about a month in advance I start using Bloom booster fertilizer instead of Grow. For plants that I don't know when they'll be blooming, I wait until they tell me they are ready. If they start to put on a spike nub I start Bloom boosting instead of Grow. If they are growing and trying to flower at the same time, I use a few scoops of both kinds of fertilizer.

Cattleya cernua

This was our first miniature and our first species orchid. We have since fallen in love with both...
This little guy wouldn't bloom for us the first fall. We had just moved to Florida and probably didn't have it's fertilizer and light regime right. It bloomed for us this last September though! We were super excited. It felt like we had waited forever.

 It came to us in a little tiny plastic pot, but the new growths were soon going over the edge and the new roots weren't going into the medium and then were dying off. We repotted it into a slightly larger plastic pot, but I think we just had really bad timing with that, because a few of the new growths never got roots and eventually died off. We decided to try something new when we repotted it after it flowered. We had seen a lot of really gorgeous cernuas at shows that were mounted. We don't think mounting would work well for us, not having a greenhouse. We took apart an 8 inch basket then put it back together only about 2-3 inches tall, so we just took out some of the pieces. We put bark in it like normal and tucked the cernua in. I think it's a perfect combination of mounted so that it's not going to run into the problem of having roots outside the medium for years, and not having too much medium that it takes forever to dry out like it would in a full height basket. So far it seems very happy with it's new arrangement. When we repotted we cut off the sad pseudobulbs and have been trying to get them to sprout new growths. Once the new growths on those are big enough we will tuck them into the basket with the rest of it, and we'll have a big one!

I water it and fertilize weekly with Dyna Grow, and use Dyna Gro Bloom when it starts indicating that it is going to flower. Because it has such little bark, I mist it probably once or twice a week to keep it humid. I also put a bit of moss around the new growths and new roots.

On Watering and Potting In General

We have an eclectic array of pots in our collection partly because we leave things in whatever they came to us in sometimes, at least for a while. My general impression is that orchids tend in two directions in their water preferences: either they like to dry out between waterings, or they don't and prefer to be evenly moist.

For the things that like to be evenly moist like Phals we keep them in sphagnum in clay pots. This has been working extremely well for us. We even unpotted our Love Orchid at one point because we were worried about the roots, only to find that there was not a single dead root! We said holy shit! This system must be a good one. We let them dry almost all the way out (tested by sticking my finger in the medium) before watering again. Depending on the weather this can take 1-2 weeks. Bulbophyllums also like to be evenly moist. Since they have such shallow roots I have been putting them in 1-2 inch deep shallow baskets or pots filled with moss.

For things that like to dry out like cattleyas, oncidiums, vandas, and epis, we keep them mostly in baskets with fir bark mix, although sometimes in clay pots depending on what we have handy. This has worked really well. Once the medium feels dry when I stick my finger in it, it's time to water. For these I generally lean towards less water is better since the roots can have a tendancy to rot. Waiting one more day doesn't usually hurt.

Vandas are seriously high maintenance unless you have a green house and sprinkler system, which we don't. When we first got them the leaves started shriveling and looking so sad. One was in a wooden basket and the other was mounted in a tiny clay pot with the roots hanging down. We were spraying them daily, and they were still sad, so we moved to twice a day spraying. This seemed to help. We decided they just needed more humidity, so we put some loose large chunks of bark, wine corks, and a few bits of moss in around the roots inside the basket. We repotted the other one into a basket also and did the same. Now we have to spray only once a day and they are no longer shrivelled! We were proud of our inventive solution, because no one I've seen grows vandas like this.

When I repot into a larger home for my babies, I get stingy with watering sometimes for a while because they often don't have much in the way of roots to dry out so much medium fast enough. So at these times, usually only for a few months, I make sure I wait until the medium is dry for my finger stick before I water, even if it takes 2-3 weeks. I sometimes spray the top or put a bit of moss near any new growths or new roots to keep them humid enough. We made up a mnemonic device "bark over moss, major root loss" because it seems tempting to mix moss and bark, but it really just makes the bark rot faster and it takes way too long then for the medium to dry out properly leading to root death. Moss over bark is ok, but not the other way around. If anything starts taking more than 2 weeks to dry out I start getting nervous that it will have problems.

Mini Cattleya (Slc Fire Lighter, Slc Bright Angel x St Orpettii)

This little plant is probably our most prolific flowerer. It seems to be in a constant state of flowering or budding or something. If you want something easy, this is definitely it. I've pondered quitting fertilizing it because I don't want to get tired of it! But then I always feel bad and don't quit fertilizing. We grow it in a 6in basket with fir bark mix. It has been really happy in this set up. I fertilize with Dyna Grow weekly when I water it. This particular type of cattleya has the skinny rather than the really thick roots, so I worry about the medium not drying out enough between waterings. I only water it once a week.

Phragmipedium bessae hybrid

We went to a repotting demonstration in our earliest orchid days at a nursery. The "Orchid Goddess" there Cynthia made a division of the Phrag and decided to give it to us because we were nice people. We were so excited about it. Steven especially, because phrags are one of his favorite types.

It's a bessae hybrid, probably Dom Wimber and Longifolium but we aren't really sure. It has long sepals and is a peachy pinkish color. We have had all sorts of trouble with this one, mostly from not following the initial instructions Cynthia gave us. She told us it wants lots of light and to keep it wet in a tray of water. We planted it in a 6 inch plastic pot in fir bark medium and for a while we did keep it in a tray of water. But then we got freaked out that we were rotting the roots and stopped doing that. Then we started fertilizing more regularly, and it seemed to be causing the leaf tips to turn brown and eventually take over the whole leaf. I think that was because we were using the fertilizer water in the water tray instead of clean water. Then we quit fertilizing but for occassionally, so of course it more or less quit growing. Somewhere in there was an aborted flowering attempt. It made a spike and bud, but then the bud turned brown like the leaf ends and died. That was one of our biggest orchid disappointments yet. We had done some research online and it said if the ends were browning it was a salts accumulation problem, but for us it was really an underwatering problem. The bessae hybrids want to be WET!

We eventually got it together and adjusted the potting so that there's about an inch of styrofoam in the bottom where it sits in water so the bark doesn't rot too fast. We put nutricote on it instead of using the liquid fertilizer that we use on everyone else. I water it once or twice a week in the sink with all the other babies and that activates the fertilizer. I keep it's tray filled with fresh clean water all the time. I had to put the plastic pot inside a clay pot because the dark plastic was getting really hot in the sun and I was worried about overheating the roots. It gets a lot of light. It lives with the couple of vandaceous orchids we have. It is finally thriving!!! It is growing where it was sort of halted before, and no more leaf browning! I'm really hopeful for a flower this year.

That whole process took about 2 years of figuring it out.